Is Quicken the most biggest rip off ever?
Pardon me while I rant.
This afternoon I was looking at my finances. Not a terribly exciting task, but a task that needs to be done. When I last rebuilt my PC, I had neglected to install my copy of MS Money 2004. This was not a great issue, as I had been using a spreadsheet for a while.
But something was missing. You see, I am planning a few OS trips next year, and need to plan the finances. I needed to see that my assumptions would hold up. In short, I wanted to see pretty pictures, and I am lazy enough to not want to bother with the analysis etc of creating these.
So I started looking about for some alternatives to MS Money. I did this because it seems that Microsoft have left Australia off the map again (not surprising considering our small population) and the only versions available are now US only. This rankles, but I can understand the reasons for it.
Quicken is top of mind as an alternative of course. I used to use Quicken a few years ago, but was “forced” to go to a competing product due to their draconian licensing practices.
Let me explain. I had Quicken 2002 installed, and was very happy with it. It did everything I wanted it to do. 2004 came around, and they started bombarding me with upgrade notices, essentially telling me that I would no longer be able to use the product to its full as they were stopping support etc. Instead, they wanted me to upgrade to the newer version. The one catch with this, however, was that it now required activation.
This is not a problem in itself, but the licensing terms were draconian. For example, if I needed to re-install the software (for example due to re-imaging, hard ware failure etc), they would charge for re-activation. This was going to far in my mind. I mean, I am not even using their services, and have a legitimate reason to re-install, yet am treated like a thief. As a direct consequence of this, I switched to MS Money, as they did not have this requirement. They did, however, have something almost as bad: having to login to the file using a passport account. I was ok with this, as I had one anyway.
MS Money has served me well for the last 4 years, but the interface etc is looking a tad old and worn and I am hankering for a change.I thought I would have a look at Quicken, and see if they had mended their ways.
Well, I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. After trawling through their site, I downloaded a trial of Quicken Plus 2008. No problems. Installed and ran. This is where I started to get annoyed.
The program crashed a number of times. Now, I admit that I am running Vista 64 with all the latest patches, and that they say that 64-bit is not supported, but I mean, really. This is 2008 guys. Kinda unacceptable, particularly when you are looking at shelling out AUD$170!
Then I tried to import my MS Money file. Amazingly, they do not have an import utility. Something so simple, yet they do not have it.
Then I noticed on their online store, that the only way to purchase Quicken Plus 2008 is via a subscription. A AUD$65 a year subscription. What they fail to mention is that if you go and *buy* the software from a retailer, that you can get the non-subscription versions. AND they still require activation and force you to pay for re-activation. I don’t know about you, I don;t buy a car and ask the dealer every time I want to park it in a new garage whether I can do it or not. Why do we, as consumers put up with this crap?. It seems that they have been taking their ideas from the Music industry.
Just out of curiosity, I browsed to the American site, and lo and behold. There is no activation requirement, and there is even a place for customers to give feedback, and function conspicuously missing from the Australian site. And software companies wonder why their software gets pirated? If you get ripped off, don’t you feel like ripping them off back?
The saddest thing about all this is that there are no real alternatives here. You have Quicken, and you have Money. Quicken is like sleeping with a morally corrupt politician (they will take your money and promise the earth but actually do nothing), while MS Money is sooo not interested in you.
I think that I will stick to my trusty spreadsheet, and spend the time to create the charts etc.
Thank you for your patience during this rant.