Intuit Apologizes for Product Activation

pcworld.com ^ | 10/9/2003 | Peter Sayer

[Born Conservative]

Intuit Apologizes for Product Activation

Controversial anti-piracy technology caused trouble for many TurboTax users.

Peter Sayer, IDG News Service Thursday, October 09, 2003 Intuit apologized to TurboTax users for the trouble caused when anti-piracy technology stopped them from installing the same copy of the personal finance software on multiple computers.

Some users, for instance, prepared their tax filings at home, and then could not install the same software on an office computer in order to print the filings at work.

A new version of the software, due later this year, will work on multiple computers, Tom Allanson, senior vice president of Intuit's consumer tax group, wrote in an open letter to TurboTax customers on Thursday.

"I want to personally apologize for any frustration you may have experienced due to the restrictions that came with our use of anti-piracy technology," Allanson wrote.

Change of Heart Intuit announced in May that it would remove the technology, after users brought a class-action lawsuit against the company.

The company has now changed its software license to explicitly allow customers to install the software on multiple computers to prepare tax returns for members of their household, Allanson wrote.

In addition, users of the current version of TurboTax, for the 2002 tax year, will also be enabled to use it on multiple computers, according to Allanson's letter.

[Born Conservative]

I guess there are some companies that will actually LISTEN to pi$$ed off customers.

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[Orangedog]

They lost my business last year. When I heard about the activation crap I bought TaxCut 2002 instead. When they scrap the activation altogether, I'll go back.

[Born Conservative]

Me too; I had used Turbo Tax for at least 5 years, but last year switched to TaxCut. I'm sure there were MANY others who did this, especially if they are now apologizing.

[NutmegDevil]

Me too! My system crashed & I was only able to re-load TurboTax after their Customer Service gave me another activation code - after many, many frustrating hours of attempts & re-attempts. Customer Service folks were great, by the way. That undocumented hidden spyware check, though, has me seriously considering TaxCut, and I've been using TurboTax since its first year out. Treating me like a thief was what irked me. I ain't. And I've been loyal to a fault.

[MainFrame65]

I bought it, installed it, and activated it on an old Win95 computer that I have used for several years. The reason I put it there was that all of my old tax returns were prepared there, so all of the old records are present. After I installed it, my CD-R stopped working reliably, and my system started crashing once or twice a day.

REMOVING THE SOFTWARE DID NOT CURE THE PROBLEM, BECAUSE ALL OF THEIR SPYWARE AND CRAPWARE WAS STILL THERE.

So I restored a backup system, bought TaxCut, re-entered all of the data, and hope that Intuit dissolves into a stinking puddle of vomit, like their add-on software.

To get my business back, they need to publicly fire the idiot responsible for this mess, refund my money for 2002, give me a free copy of their product for 2003, and develop and post removal patches for all of the crapware on their site for free download. Also, they need to make all of the adware an optional install instead of the base.

[jammer]

Me too, but I won't go back.