BloggernityQuickBooks Or Rather Intuit Sucks
ByIntuit Sucks. In case you missed that first part, let me repeat it. Intuit Sucks. Allow me to explain.
I bought 2008 QuickBooks Pro and installed it. It opens fine, it does what it’s supposed to do. And then I click on the “close” button and it just sits there on my screen. It refuses to close.
So I have to open up my Task Manager, find the QuickBooks .exe file, and shut it down.
Now, I know a bit about computers. I know that the problem is probably a conflict of some sort with a driver on my computer. It’s probably not Intuit’s fault.
However, I went online to their web site and couldn’t find an answer. No big deal. The big deal was that there’s no way to get help from them without paying them $79 up front.
All I wanted them to do is help me get their product working properly on my computer. I even called the corporate office. The receptionist told me the same thing. You can’t get technical help until you pay $79.
Only a software company would have that level of arrogance. We’re so big, we’re so dominant, we just don’t give a damn about you. Pay us up front to help you or go screw yourself.
Imagine if I told all my clients, you can’t call me for help or answers unless you pay first with your credit card. Then we’ll talk. I’d be living under a bridge in a cardboard box inside a month.
I just looked online. The average price I saw for intuit’s QuickBooks Pro 2008 was $130. So the $79 fee is 60 percent of the price I paid for QuickBooks Pro 2008.
Imagine if you went to your car dealership a week after you bought the car and said, “the car has a slight problem. The engine doesn’t want to shut down and I have to pull the cable to the battery to shut it off.” Then imagine the service person says, “Fine. Pay us sixty percent of the cars original price and then we’ll look at it.”
“Let’s see, I paid $17,000 for the car last week so you want $10,200 to look under the hood. Hmmm…I’ll just put that on my credit card.”
Did I mention that Intuit Sucks?
Originally posted 2008-10-18 11:21:07. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
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35 Comments
March 24th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Intuit sucks. They will disable the email function of my QuickBooks if I do not pay them another $80 – $100.
May 5th, 2009 at 10:07 am
I started with QB 97, it was fairly good and hardly ever crashed. Then I upgraded to 2005. Much bigger and slower loading. Crashed a few times, the last time it corrupted my company file. Unfortunately I hadn’t been making backups as often as I should have. The QB tech recommended I upgrade to 2008 and use the convert older file feature. No luck. Now I’m running QB 08. It has to be one of the most bloated programs out there. It takes fully as long as XP to load on my PC (which isn’t exactly a cutting edge PC). Also, it seems to crash much more often, and I never have been able to get the multi-user networked part working. And believe me, I’ve tried everything in the books and then some. Definately would not recommend QB anymore. They (and their software) have gotten too big for their own good.
May 5th, 2009 at 10:29 am
I feel your pain, Nelson. I’m still using Quickbooks because I finally got it working but I’m busy looking at other options. Something liteweight, fast, and easy to understand.
If anyone has any suggestions for alternatives to Quickbooks that fit those criteria, I’d love to hear about them.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:24 am
We use QB where I work. I detest it. Google should come up with an accounting program. It would probably trump QB without even trying.
I second the “bloated” comment. That and we call it “slow books” around here because it takes a full five minutes just to boot up. And don’t even think of trying to open/use another program while it’s booting because it will lock up the whole system. And this is on a newer computer, not ancient tech.
July 9th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
To give you another perspective on Intuit’s tactics. they are making as much money off of the financial institutions as they are from the general public that purchases their quicken software. They charge the banks thousands of dollars to be listed in the downloads directory. Even though the downloads are freely available on the open financial exchange. They also go to the vendors of financial institutions to extort money, by saying that they have to be “certified” to offer these downloads and the directory listing.
reality is, fewer and fewer people are using quicken. It is a dying / failing product as more online financial management solutions become available. Within 3-5 years, all of these capabilities will be available right within online banking or through a number of online (often free) services like Mint.com
So currently, Intuit is trying to suck as much money out of this old dog, as they can get. Myra, commented on Google! Give it a couple of years and that will happen. Intuit is heading into a rough period for them. They are rapidly losing their grip on this industry.
July 27th, 2009 at 10:05 am
“Sucks” is too kind a word for what Intuit has done to its customers. For way over a year now, they have heard their customer rail about the “new” online banking interface only to ignore them. My guess is that they will try (it will be try in my case) to sell us the new & improved interface (old version) in QB2010. I’m not buying. I’ll get back to spreadsheets first.
August 8th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
I wish I had read this before I got involed, this company is the worst!!!!!!!!!!!! Even their customer services sucks!!!!
BUYER BEWARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!111
November 2nd, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Immoral company. Running 2007 for Mac on OS 10.4. Bought a new MacBook running 10.6 (VERY MINOR UPGRADE for those unfamiliar with Macs).
2007 will not register when installed on 10.6!
WTF?!?
Companies official stance is “2007 is quite old”. You will need to upgrade for another $199! Mind you the software runs just fine, but without registering, you only have 15 uses and then need to delete and reinstall!
November 19th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Intuit is one of the WORST companies I have ever come across. As someone who has worked extensively in the software industry I can attest that they are #1 in poor customer service, buggy software, arrogant upgrade and transfer policies as well as they hold their clients hostage to crap unwanted services and service fees down their throats. I have never encountered a more irritating company in my 20 + years of computers. NEVER. I cannot wait to see the day where they go out of business. I EFFING HATE INTUIT !!!
December 1st, 2009 at 3:16 pm
I cannot agree more strongly. Intuit really is a horrible company to deal with. I purchased QB Premier Pro 2009 in July as an upgrade to a previous version that no longer worked with my email client, Thunderbird. After to upgrading my OS to Windows 7, QB 2009 was no longer able to print or email invoices for my clients. Intuit’s answer, 1) pay us $60.00 service charge and we’ll troubleshoot with you, but we don’t have a fix for that or 2) you’ll need to buy QB 2010, at full price, even though your software is less than 6 months old because it’s the only product we support for Windows 7.
So, idiot that I am, I purchase it, confident that it will fix my problems, only to find out, the company policy is to ONLY allow emailing of forms from Outlook, Outlook Express or Windows Mail, NONE of which are available with Windows 7. As a user of Thunderbird, I don’t want to use a microsoft email client and don’t see why a) intuit will only allow it or b) this wasn’t stated clearly in the system requirements.
I too hate Intuit and want the world to know!
December 10th, 2009 at 11:07 am
I just spent two days and a total of 4 hours on a customer support lin repairing the Bug filled R9 ‘upgrade’ for my QB 2009. It destroyed my ability to generate PDF files and then proceeded to make both my old and new Datafiles inaccessible! I had to resort to generating HAND WRITTEN invoices yesterday in order to get shipments out. Do not hit that R9 upgrade button unless you have a bunch of repair time and enjoy de–bugging your system!
December 19th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
I have the Quickbooks 2009…had to call customer service to get the software registered…was on the call for 1 hour and 31 minutes…over an hour on hold because I refuse to give a credit card number for the so called service plan…I asked the non English speaking rep to transfer me to a supervisor…she refused…out right refused…thank god there are other programs out there that do what Quickbooks does…you are completely correct….Intuit SUCKS…
December 19th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Just a few comments…I am an accountant and have to agree with all the comments posted. First to comment on t Cabrinha’s post Intuit recent purchased Mint.com (in addition to Paycycle) because they more than likely saw the writing on the wall and in an effort to stay “big” will find a way to charge the end –user for those services. In regards to the recent problems regarding the updates and QB 2009, be sure to stop by my blog (http://www.bricodaily.blogspot.com/) for the latest regarding the continuing problems with the R9 update. Intuit recently released the R10 update, but that still has not resolved all the problems thus an R11 update is on the way.
Their (Intuit) business model is getting a bit old and they are moving toward an online accounting solution like QB Online Edition (thus buying Mint) for all of their service offerings. What most small business owners do not realize is there are quite a few solutions already out there and they should switch to those asap. Right now there is Netsuite, Accountants World’s Accounting Relief, Working Point and others. These solutions allow small business owners to work from anywhere (even on their smartphones) and have anytime access to their data.
My main reason for not liking Intuit is their deceptive marketing practices. Intuit plays both sides against the middle. On one end they sell to the small business owner telling them that their software is so easy that they don’t need an accountant. Then they turn around and come to us accountants and tell us that we should sign up for their Pro Advisor program so that once the small business owner screws up their books we can come in and be the savior all the while Intuit is getting money from both the small business owner and accountants. Sorry Intuit I’m not buying it. I can use your software just fine without purchasing your Pro Advisor membership and still service my clients with the highest level of professionalism and expertise. I could go on and on (esp. about how cloud accounting solutions are cheaper to implement than boxed software) but I digress.
April 1st, 2010 at 11:37 am
Please add me to the “Quickbooks sucks” list. THEY SUCK. I’ve been using QuickBooks since ’96. The so-called “small business” bookkeeping software. I cannot even handle my very very small business. Yes, I have a multi-thousand dollars coporation! Anyway, a few years ago I was having lots of problems with QB. After many many many calls to support I was told that my data file was too big and that the only way to solve that problem was to upgrade to Enterprise Solutions to the tune of $3,000. Unforunately, I bought their mantra hook, line and sinker. After using it (and after converting the datafile)I kept on experiencing the same problems and then talked to somebody different in support who told me that Enterprise Solutions would have NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on the pronblems I was experiencing supposedly related to a data file that was too large. Oh, great. Then come to find out that support is something like $800 a year. AND now that I have a new Windows 7 computer Enterprise Solutions IS NOT COMPATIBALE with Windows 7 and, golly, gosh, they had a “deal” for me. It would only cost $2,500 to upgrade to Enterprise Soltuions 9.0. What a deal! They can suck eggs.
April 1st, 2010 at 3:27 pm
Boy, Cindy, if I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard Intuit Sucks, I’d retire to the south of France. I feel your pain. This is the most commented on blog post on my site. People complain about how crooked the banks and credit card companies are…they should have to deal with crooks like Intuit.
April 20th, 2010 at 9:37 pm
Quickbooks does suck. Yes they may have plenty of features for the money but I have had more software issues with Intuit than all my other programs combined. Anywhere from sending an email, to crashes, to imcompatibility with windows 7, to saving an invoice as a PDF format. I was in the process of trying out Peachtree vs Quickbooks and downloaded both their free trial. For the past 2 weeks I have entered my data into Peachtree with no problems. When I tried to convert my peachtree file into Quicbooks so I can try out Quickbooks (Peachtrees competitor), I had another software issue and called Tech support. After 20 minutes of being on the phone with tech support, the lady advised that I pay a $50 fee for them to convert my Peachtree file to a Quickbooks file! Why on earth should I do that? I am trying out YOUR program to decide if i want to purchase it and you have the nerve to charge me for it? I immediately hung up with her and gave my money to Peachtree. Better customer support and NO software issues. And they dont nickle and dime you.
May 24th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Got a letter from QB saying I must upgrade to QB 2010 by 5/31/10. Oh and support for payroll would be going away on 6/1/10. So – I get this thing in the mail – It requires a minimum of 512MB of RAM, 1Gig recommended, 2.4 ghz processor and runs only on XP (sp2)Vista or 7.
sooo- I can take my three year old computers and pay for memory AND have one machine also scrubbed ‘coz it’s running win 2000 OR I can go out and buy new computers.
So I’m thinking that I’ll install it on my BRAND NEW laptop – that took me 5 hours to get past the hang-ups.
Just got off the phone with them. Refund my money for 2010 and refund half of my payroll subscription. We’ll see. I will run QB2007 until the cows come home and then I’ll be looking for new software. QB/Intuit have officially jumped the shark. THEY SUCK.
May 24th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Go get ‘em, Dawn. If you find a software that works for you, I’d appreciate it if you came back here and let us all know what it is. And how you like it after using it.
July 6th, 2010 at 10:32 am
Funny, I just googled why Quick Books sucks and it directed me to this blog. Add me to the list. I recently upgraded or should I say downgraded from QB 2007 Contractor to QB Pro 2010. I had no problems with the 2007 version and only upgraded because software support and email service was ending for the old software. If I had know how flawed the new version was I wouldn’t have done the upgrade. I had a work around for the email thing but I upgraded anyway. It crashes twice when I start it, it crashes if I try to use Help, it has constant and persistent pop up ads for other QB services that won’t go away. When I do backups it corrupts the files, it is a new bug every day it seems. If I had the time I would print out all my transactions for the past month, reinstall 2007 and restore one of my old back ups and then input all new data manually but I figure that would take most of a weekend so I’m stewed at least for now.
July 14th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
QB Online down AGAIN today. They just suck.
August 26th, 2010 at 12:21 pm
I purchased the Accountant 2007 version of QB, it was working find, until the message came up, “Quick Books has stopped working”. So I called tech support, they were nice at first and tried to help, then the clincher. Your OS is not compatible with 2007, upgrade to vista 2008 and buy for $199 I said, no!, I want a supervisor. I paid good money and this should not be happening. To resolve first time took over a day. So install uninstall, set up new admin account. It happened again they couldn’t resolve, so they said my original disk was corrupt. I received a new disk in the mail and called but for any additional support I had to pay $79 now and $39 for each additional month, and I could cancel anytime. This is ridiculous. Is this legal, it looks more like a scam to me, selling faulty, bugged merchandise and then asking for money to resolve issues that are chronically affecting everyone, its defective merchandise. Intuit sucks big time.
August 26th, 2010 at 2:11 pm
They will probably keep getting away with it until someone calls their state Attorney General and gets some action. Heck, just send them to this page and they’ll get a pretty good idea how Intuit operates…
October 13th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
You are absolutely right, intuit sucks. I am a computer technician. Whenever I have to reload someone’s computer I ALWAYS have problems with quickbooks. On the current computer I am working on, it will not install because of a dotnet error message. Intuit wants to charge $79.. luckily I found a fix online, but this is ridiculous. How can you charge when a computer is FRESHLY installed and your software won’t install. It’s ridiculous and a scam. FU intuit.
November 30th, 2010 at 4:34 pm
I used Quickbooks for payroll for about 10 years. This juse we ended all payroll because the two part time employees, one had cancer and quit, the other got a full time job and wuit and at the same time I was RIFed from work. I did not renew the subscription for payroll and never authorized any program purchases. On Nov 16th, Inquit charged my bank account $400.18 as “authorization” and on Nov 17th, actually about 9 hours later, sucked another %400.18 out of my account. A Total of $800.36. As a result, I was changred a $32 over draft fee since I only had my $390 unemployment deposit int he account. I e-mailed the bank immediately and told them it was not authorized. I called Intuit and complained on the 17th when I discovered the unauthorized charges. On the 18th, the first $400.18 was reveresed, but not the 2nd $400.18. I was given a case # and told it would be refunded in 5-7 business days. BULLSHIT.
It is now Nov 30th, 13 days 2 weeks tomorrow, and still no refund. I called Intuit again, and was told the refund had not been processed and given a different “refund number” and told it would be refunded in another 10 working days. So 4 weeks will lapse before I can even hope of getting my $400.18 back. THIEVES This is not the first time INTUIT has screwed me. Two years ago they charged me for a program I never ordered and it took 5 weeks to get a refund. Only this week I got a refund of $3.28 that was charged to my account two years ago that was not refunded.
Did I mention INTUIT SUCKS?
January 16th, 2011 at 10:12 am
I can’t stand the program. I have used Quicken for my personal finances for years and have been satisfied, with some minor problems. I decided to use QuickBooks for a newly-formed, family-owned consulting firm and have had nothing but problems. I have tried to generate 1099s with limited success, so am printing out all the input and sending it to the accountant for him to do the forms, for an additional charge. Logic does not dictate here. QuickBooks sucks.
January 25th, 2011 at 11:54 am
I sell, install, and support quickbooks. Nobody hates them more than I do. Their products are crap, they never work right even when you install them on a new computer that has been tuned by me so it screams and runs the best it can. I have done this over, and over, and over. I loathe their tech support even if it’s free. They are all in India and I hate talking to the dots.
The poorly written program and the cost of support isn’t the only problems. Have you ever used Intuit Payment Solutions? Don’t go there. They will stick it so far up your rear end you’ll have a lump in your throat! And they won’t even give you a courtesty reach around.
Ever use the built in emailing service? What percentage of your emailed estimates and invoices were lost in space? I’m averaging about 50 to 60%!
Peachtree is a better program. It’s not perfect by any means but it doesn’t make me want to kill people like Intuit does.
February 4th, 2011 at 2:54 pm
QUICKBOOKS REALLY DOES SUCK! I want to post this everywhere and yell it from the roof tops to stop anyone I can from ever becoming a Quickbooks customer. I am a book keeper for many companies and have used QB online with ease and great customer service. So why does QUICKBOOKS treat their customers like garbage is beyond me.
One you can never reach a person for support, and get lost in a maze of a phone system. In the products department like check orders and envelopes that fit QB invoices if you reach a person its not even in the United States, its some global phone line that is cutting in and out and on the other side of the line is some person that you cant understand. So after QB rapes us with charges they cant afford English speakers and good phone lines??? Cheap bastards. They are total frauds. Ever order a product and click the wrong item, FORGET canceling. There is no cancel button. And when you call they say there is no option to cancel. Even though the UPS tracking number proves it has not been picked up yet for shipping! Its all a scam!
The whole wrld things QB is the only thing out there, and treat everyone like complete crap because they can. PEOPLE UNITE! use other software! do something but put more money in the pocket of some fat cat getting rich off complete terible customer service and no compnay values. Quickbooks is a tyrant!
March 15th, 2011 at 5:12 pm
I am utterly pissed with QuickBooks — I do not understand for the life of me how they can justify disabling the manual payroll function. It’s “manual”. If you buy something once, that should be it.
Now I am stuck trying to figure out how to process payroll doing general journal entries — I’m not a trained bookkeeper and it is very confusing.
This is totally false advertising. No where on the package does it say, “you can do payroll, even without subscribing to our program, but, after a few years, we’re going to turn it off”.
If I buy a car, I don’t expect the manufacturer to come back at me in three years and say, “oh, we’re taking the seats back — you can still drive, of course, but it’s going to be very uncomfortable unless you pay us more money and upgrade to the 2011 model”.
April 4th, 2011 at 9:42 pm
I swore I would never buy QB’s again. But in 08, their brochure said that emailing invoices was independent and that the option would always be there.
I just received a message from them that in May, we will no longer be able to send your invoices by email unless you upgrade.
DO NOT SUPPORT THIS BUSINESS. They are not there to help, just to suck your money!!!
April 6th, 2011 at 10:35 am
Amen! Glad I’m not the only one who has had this maddening experience.
EVERY version of Quickbooks I have ever owned has stopped working.
It takes an act of congress to get it to function. Give it another month and it will crash again.
I haven’t been able to do invoices in two months because Quickbooks 2007 stopped working. Reinstall. No good. Bought their stupid 2010 version. No Good. I’m done.
Handwritten books would be faster, easier and less aggravating.
I will take any program that will open my quickbooks files. Anything would be better than quickbooks.
July 9th, 2011 at 3:00 pm
Add me to the list of I hate Intuit users. Customer service is terrible, deluged with advertising. Three hours to get it registered because Intuit screwed up the license number, and it wouldn’t validate. Had to send it in a get a new copy. I Bought QB 2010 – put two companies of data in over the year and off to the CPA for taxes. Oh, oh… you cant do a Balance Sheet by class in QB 2010 – IO had to buy QB 2011 premier. WHAT A RACKET! Your product doesn’t work so buy a new one.
Registration problems again – have to call in and they want every bit of personal information you can dream of to deluge you with ads and services and phone calls. No way . Find something else – Intuit sucks!!!
August 1st, 2011 at 7:57 pm
Intuit sucks. Quickbooks 2005 just quit working on my Vista system. No fixes have worked. I can’t install it on my XP or my older windows laptop. They won’t help…It’s not supported… Thanks Intuit… You suck
September 25th, 2011 at 6:12 pm
Thank you for providing a place for me to vent…. I ran QB 2006 for about 3 years or so. The program was installed on a an old computer that died sometime after we closed down the company in 2010. I backed up all the data on CD so I could restore easily if I ever needed access the data again. Well, today I’m ready to start up again and wanted to run a few reports from that old data… NO CAN DO….
I still have the software CD but that the old computer is long gone and I’m running Windows 7 now. Well, guess what…the old software is not compatible so no way to install on the newer computer. Ok, so so I decided to give QB Online a try…. Simple Start or whatever they call it…. nothing simple about it. Wouldn’t you think they could make it as easy as the restore from backup feature on the PC version? Nope. Their stupid PDF guide only gives instructions to import data if the application is up and running on your PC.
So I wasted 2 hours reading through their support pages trying to figure this out. Couldn’t find a single reference to importing from CD….. soooo frustrating I finally gave up and cancelled my trial subscription. I was actually planning to go forward with QB Online but now I’m looking for other options. Anybody care to recommmend an alternative?
September 26th, 2011 at 12:47 pm
I don’t use Quicbooks but I recently canceled a web service account. After going through the steps to unsubscribe I was sent an email telling me how I can transfer my domains to another host. I was required to email some credentials so I immediately replied with all the requirements. But to my dismay, I received an email saying that I could no longer get any support because I am not a paying customer anymore. I frantically call the hotline number provided by the response email but to no avail. INTUIT SUCKS BIG TIME!!!
October 18th, 2011 at 7:35 pm
I have never had any experience with QB, but I made the mistake of using intuit as a web hosting service, and it was ok at first until I logged out and then tried to log back in, I put in my user name and password and it gives me this message “You have experienced a server error and cannot log in, please try again later” WTF? I didnt experience an error, they did! 60% of the time i cant log in, for hours…. that doesnt really help me make time in my busy schedule to update my website
i cant just wait around for their servers to work, dont use intuit web service, it sucks