The consumer banking software industry changed file formats. Whether by one company’s decree or by agreement of all involved, it changed. This cost Intuit, and banking and lending institutions money. This cost is passed on to you-whether you like it or not. And no, I don’t think it’s unethical.
While you think I’m saying “Everybody is doing it, so it’s ok”, what I’m really saying is: Just because you’ve always done something one way, doesn’t mean it’s the best way, OR the way it’s always going to be.
It’s the cost of doing business, chief. Sorry if y’all don’t like that.
File formats change all the time. That’s not what happened with Quicken, at least not when my version stopped working. My bank still offered the data in the file format for my version of Quicken, the program just started refusing to open it, having received the signal from headquarters to break itself. Had the bank stopped offering the older version for download, I’d have understood. Had the newer version of Quicken offered some banking features that they couldn’t support with the older format, no problem.
This is not the same thing as evolving format standards.
I had to upgrade last year when my version (2003) stopped working with downloads. OK… there’s a cost (however small) for them to provide the stock-price downloads. And maybe for the bank direct-download capability.
But - NOWHERE on the original packaging did they say “download your stuff… but only for a while”. Nor was there any sort of option to, say, pay a small annual fee and be able to continue downloading. My only choice was to upgrade, as I’d gotten hooked on the ability to download my credit card data.
So my real beef is the LACK OF PRIOR NOTIFICATION - not the email a few months before saying “buh-bye!”, but at purchase time. THAT’s when they need to tell you: “This software includes a license to download, for up to 3 years”.
Re the OP: I think you should contact INtuit. They had no DAMN business taking your full purchase price on 2-year-old software. At the least, they should credit that toward purchasing an upgrade.
If you pay for tax help you deserve what you get.
They just put your numbers in the holes and add one column.
Any 10 year old can do your taxes if you give her the numbers.
Having defended Intuit once in this thread, I will now turn around and slam them on the subject of QIF files. I am a good boy and have Quicken 2007. If I want to export a brokerage file, the only format it supports is QIF. But then Quicken will not suport the import of QIF into another brokerage account. What madness is this?
Why would I want to do that? Quicken only allows you to have one customer ID per financial institution. My wife and I both have IRAs at the same institution, so we have different customer IDs and therefore cannot download them both automatically. I wanted to download one into a separate Quicken file (i.e. .QDF) for my wife, then export it, then swap to the household QDF and import it in again. No can do.
If anyone has any bright ideas as to how else I might achieve this, please let me know.
Thank you, WhicheverGodIsInChargeOfMoney, for a government that twiddles tax tables slightly every year but which also provides a new tax-calculation program free of charge whenever they twiddle the tables.
Pluto: a character wholly owned, trademarked, and copyrighted by the Walt Disney Corporation. Protrayed as a clumsy and dimwitted, though loyal, canine servant to a common household pest.
There’s a joke in there somewhere, I’m just too depressed to find it.