There’s a reason why Intuit consistently ranks amongst the top of the table when it comes to companies whose software is generally better than the offerings from their competitors in the accounting and tax preparation space but the company itself is absolutely loathed for it’s often monopolistic / anti-competitive behaviour, abysmal customer service, continual price-increases / cash-grabs, and single-minded focus on implementing new features rather than fixing the numerous bugs in the current version of the software.
All the new features in the world don’t do a lick of good if the software still fails you and makes one’s life a living hell.
And then when you’ve experienced that bit of joy and engage support…that’s usually when the blood pressure really starts to hit the boiling point.
Take for instance the bit of good news that arrived via EMAIL on Nicholas’ birthday where they want me to pay up-front for next year’s software and returns based on the number of returns I prepared this year.
If you read that EMAIL carefully, there is not one word in it that prepares you for what you’re going to see when you actually see the number they’re pitching at you so let’s go down the rabbit hole and take a look at the quote.
Hmmm, yep…same anaemic “discounts” for each return with an end price still well above the competitor’s pricing that’s trying and failing miserably at disguising the $5 or so price increase per return. Greed located…check.
I made the mistake of going ahead and paying up front the first two years after I moved to ProConnect and it put me behind such an eight-ball of stress and really didn’t save me anything truly meaningful so this year I decided to just get the returns as I needed them and save myself that hassle and joy of providing Intuit what is essentially an interest-free loan for over half a year that a $19B company hardly needs.
If my laptop MALEFICENT wasn’t so bloody ancient that it won’t run Windows 11 without me going the RUFUS route to install it anyway in spite of not having TPM 2.0 hardware, I’d have told Intuit to pound sand right then and there and gone to Drake which still has an up-front licence fee but they throw in ten Form 1040 individual returns before they hit you up for more per additional return.
At a per-return rate roughly *HALF* of what Intuit demands.
Having never used Drake, I can’t say how their software compares to ProConnect which does have a couple of features I really do like and would hate to lose but if it has 90% of the features, I’m more than willing to learn the differences to cut my costs of producing returns to roughly 1/3rd what I’m losing now to Intuit’s greed.
And by the way, the reviews on their support (and based on my one call with them, I’d agree with the crowd) are that they’re generally top-notch and that they’re based in the mountains near Franklin/Sylva would make that decision a no-brainer.
Alas.
But it was the next screen that truly blew me away with a staggering cash-grab that is impressive even by Intuit’s standards:
For those keeping score, the first year the “user access” fee came into play for the TY 2024 filing season it was $99 so that ProConnect would graciously allow me to continue using the printing and E-filing features I *ALREADY HAD* and are kind of essential.
This filing season it was $105…sucks to get another increase but hardly surprising in this economy.
So they’re *DOUBLING* the cash-grab for features that the software really ought to have and the development should be more than paid for several times over with the princely sums they charge per return without screwing the people who are paying a fantastic sum to them to properly do tax preparation.
I’ve never hidden the absolute disgust and disdain I’ve had for Intuit’s penchant for being a rather exploitative and abusive “partner” and their regular forays into my wallet to satisfy their greed.
It’s a darned shame because the software is generally the top of the heap even if they’re not at all interested in fixing a critical bug I’d researched and verified with NC DOR over two years ago that *STILL ISN’T FIXED* and seems like it will never be.
So you can imagine my frame of mind when I decided to have a go at support via chat to see if this was a sick joke on their part and let’s just say the response and sense of concern exuding from the person I was communicating with that’s clearly halfway round the world was more than a little underwhelming.
Let’s just say the canned marketing-speak wasn’t exactly helping my mood.
This response from the transcript after their agent hit me with “I understand your frustration with these changes” should give you as good an understanding of the brick wall this conversation was turning out to be as it gets…
Do you truly “understand”? I don’t think so.
Number one, it’s not frustration…it’s incandescent rage at being raped and exploited yet again in a one-way relationship with an entity that seems hell-bent on destroying small firms with anti-competitive behaviour that violates the very essence of the Sherman and Clayton Antitrust Acts as amended.
Number two, the “it sucks to suck” attitude from “support” has gotten beyond tiresome.
This is about as crystal clear an instance of “abusing one’s monopoly position in the marketplace” as it gets and even though there are a couple of other big players, that hardly absolves Intuit of behaviour that seems designed to crush everyone that has zero power to stand up to such abuse.
So how about you get me someone who can actually speak to my actual concerns intelligently and cogently.
Nearly three weeks on, I’ve had some time to think about it further and I’m still not a huge fan of being forced to pay for features I may or may not be able to actually use and are likely going to have bugs aplenty for the next few years given the glacial pace at actually fixing them (if ever) Intuit has consistently shown.
But Intuit marketing could have gone a lot further in the initial EMAIL to be up-front about the cash-grab rather than hiding it behind a portal and to point out that at the volume of returns I’m doing in a given year, it’d likely be close to a wash as compared to the DocuSign electronic signature facility they’d bodged into ProConnect a few years ago which charged extra per signature.
I at least had the choice of whether to use the DocuSign feature or not based on if it made sense for the client.
More often it didn’t because I often would meet them in person at least once or twice during the return preparation (which I actually prefer anyway to give that “personal touch”) and I could just as easily get the wet signature on the documents I have to retain per IRS regulations.
Certainly, electronic signing can be more convenient but that’s only if the person can get past the Knowledge Based Authentication (essentially it does a soft enquiry against your credit reports to come up with questions like “did you finance this car” or “did you buy a house in XXXX year” and so forth) and has the technical savvy to deal with an electronic user interface.
For some clients, that can be a deal-breaker of a challenge.
If you look at the fine print, it also mentions that this electronic signature facility apparently is only good on individual returns which does nothing for the 2-3 corporate returns I prepare each year…likely because there’s really not an easy way to do effective knowledge-based authentication and corporations typically don’t wander round with a photo ID card which is the other allowed identity verification method.
Again, I don’t mind the old-school wet signature on paper thing for clients that I’m certainly going to see a few times in person before it’s time to electronically file the return but I’d certainly love it for Form 8879-CORP (which ironically enough serves as a signature document for an electronically-filed return!) which is often the only wet signature a corporate package needs.
Bottom line…I’m still not a fan of a seemingly ever-increasing bribe to use core features of a software package that I’m already paying a fortune per-return for printing/filing as it is.
I understand Intuit is far more interested in their bottom line than my survival as a small tax preparer but they might be well served to actually do something to mend the fences they’ve not only breached but frankly dropped the TSAR BOMBA upon over the past couple of years and actually fix the many bugs that vex us tax preparers every working day.
Unfortunately, the nature of software development even when I was still slinging code was that development teams are all about the sexy new features at the expense of maintaining and improving the ones they already implemented. When promotions and raises often go to the nerds working on those sexy features, it’s the rare developer that actually didn’t mind maintenance and support work as an equally interesting problem space.
I happened to be such a one but I came from a beta-testing and maintenance/support background for my first few IT jobs so it’s always been something I’ve viewed as critical but increasingly ignored by the pointy-haired bosses and CEOs detached from operational realities.
You know…the ones that go running round like their hair and their asses are on fire when everything goes to hell and their programmers that are all about the new features who have no clue how the system actually works are flailing about trying to fix things under pressure and often make things worse.
Somehow I doubt they’ll ever learn and next year it wouldn’t shock me if they throw in a massive increase in the user-access bribe for only the Lord knows what then but I strongly suspect will really only be a cover for their rapacious greed.