Quicken Advetising Popup

Hit a nerve, John?

Ah, Statistics 101.

"Quicken has been Intuit's least profitable major product."

All that tells me is their other products are doing better.

And if they're doing that badly with Quicken, what really bad business model have they been using?

I haven't "made enough already", either. Have you? Do you not want anymore income? Should you work for free? Should Inuit?

Intuit is in business to make money. If they don't do that, they don't stay in business.

I sure don't want Quicken to be dropped. Very few of my friends use Quicken. They view it as *extra* work. Frankly I don't understand this attitude. Yes, it's extra work at the start (unless you start at the relative beginning of your "financial" life like I did). I'm amazed at the number of people I know who'd rather just use paper and pen and write checks. Ugh.

Regards,

Margaret

I'd prefer to be asked if I were interested in receiving ads like this. A short survey of financial interests would allow targeting the desired audience instead of blanketing everyone. Further, I'd be willing to pay a bit extra to avoid seeing ads. I've been buying the Premiere version annually since it initially became available. I plan to downgrade to Deluxe with 2012, but if buying a more expensive version spared me big pop-up ads, I'd do it. But perhaps I'm in the minority.

Regards,

Margaret

With stuff like, "Do you not want anymore income," you're just acting childish.

I'm not asking for Intuit to give anything away for free. As Margaret said, I'd also be willing to pay an extra (minimal) fee for a version that didn't have any advertising. Or a yearly fee for the opportunity to use a past, stable version that didn't sunset. But, instead, Intuit puts their money into making changes and introducing new bugs.

The old "woe is me, I'm losing money" just doesn't fly.

Not to dispute what you're saying, but if you have a link to a site that states that, I'd very much like to see it.

I never thought about this before, but thinking about it now, I would expect TurboTax to be more profitable (since you need a new copy every year) than Quicken (since a copy can last at least several years).

Is it actually *losing* money, not just being its "least profitable major product"?

I'm with you almost entirely, and I also have friends who see it as extra work they don't want to do. I think our only difference is that I *do* understand their attitude; fear of something you've never done before and don't know how to do is common.

But I wouldn't mind terribly if Quicken were dropped, as long as the current version continues to work the way it does now. In recent years, Intuit has pretty much run out of ideas for improvements in new versions, and from one year to the next, it's always much the same. So if I had to stay with Quicken 2011 forever, it wouldn't bother me much.

It was in a publicly available document from Intuit; it (its contents, and/or a link to it) was posted here before.

Was Money actually losing money, or just Microsoft's least profitable major product?

Whatever ... Microsoft dropped it due to insufficient profitablity (a product doesn't need to actually lose money to become not worth making).

If you think about the concept, there's a great deal of similarity between Quicken and Money; and since both Intuit and Microsoft are in business to make money, I think there's good reason to believe that both products are/were subject to the same pressures to make enough to be worth making. The things that Intuit has said publicly have been unpleasantly similar to the reasons Microsoft gave for dropping Money.

As you said about Quicken: "I also have friends who see it as extra work they don't want to do". While I don't have friends who think that way, I see a LOT of posts about Quicken that reflect that attitude. They're from folks looking for something that doesn't require them to learn anything, or to do anything (they scream bloody murder, if they're asked to make one additional mouse click): just feed them whatever results they think they should get. Something like Mint.

Only Intuit knows whether Quicken is, or will be, worth selling. Or whether Mint will replace Quicken. None of us will know until/unless Intuit tells us. [Despite signals from Microsoft, and from at least one Money user with contacts at Microsoft; many Money users were shocked - and extremely angry - that Money was discontinued. But then, and now, many of those same folks love to point out features of Money that (they believe) were better than Quicken ... features that probably helped Money not to be profitable enough to stay in business (free OFX/QIF downloads perhaps, for example-which, I believe, also means that Microsoft was eating the cost of Yodlee).]

But if Intuit is hearing from a sufficient number of Quicken users that Quicken is too difficult, and/or doesn't do what they want (and, astonishingly, that Quicken costs too much) ... and that they're looking for another product; why shouldn't Intuit try to keep those users in the fold? If those users weren't going to stay with Quicken, better they go to Mint than some non-Intuit product. And how better to reach those users than via Quicken?

If Quicken became some sort of billboard, available to all willing to pay Intuit, with constant advertising; I'd be unhappy too. But Quicken's advertising has been awfully minimalist in my experience, most of it I don't even notice unless someone else brings it up. [I haven't seen this particular one at all yet; maybe because I'm only using the R5 release of Q2011.]

Frankly I don't buy the notion that just because a product was paid for, the purchaser should be entitled to no advertising ... though I realize there are a lot of folks who think that way. I'd love to get rid of most of the ads on my tv, ads delivered by the cable company that I pay every month. But, short of pay-per-view, that's not happening.

I don't think the question should be whether the customer paid something for the product, but whether they paid enough to be free from ads. Maybe users should ask Intuit to sell Quicken with an option to pay an additional amount, and buy the right to have no advertising. I realize it's probably not practical, but it would have the dual advantage of not penalizing Intuit for not advertising, and letting users demonstrate how important an ad-free product is to them.

Yes, it did sound childish. Just like complaining about Intuit making money, and equating them with Charlie Sheen. I really don't get that connection.

All Intuit did was to put up a pop-up advertising an alternative product. I use Quicken at least once every day, I've seen it once. It went away with one mouse click. I just think the entire thread was an over reaction to a tiny incident. It was kind of a "woe is me" over a very minor thing.

Where is this ad? I'm running Quicken 2011 Premier, and I don't think I've ever seen it.

It was a pop-up add that came up once when starting Quicken. One click got rid of it.

Agreed. The people complaining probably are also screaming at newspapers and magazines that they shouldn't contain advertising either. They need to chill.

You seem to be more attached to Intuit/Quicken than most, so...

Question: Why doesn't Intuit sell only through their Web site, at a price comparable to the discounted prices seen at retail stores?

The middle-man is eliminated, with all profits going to Intuit.

Sounds like a better business model than one with as low a profit as is suggested.

Am I missing something?

Not to me, and I only use Quicken to pay bills and maintain checking and credit card accounts. I don't use anything of the financial features because Schwab does it for me. I don't even use bill pay reminders or recurring payments. It doesn't get much more basic than that. I tried Mint and it just doesn't keep things as well organized.

Uncal Bob price comparable to the discounted prices seen at retail stores?

It's not clear what you are propsoing. Intuit does sell Quicken in both box form and downloadable form at prices similar to retail. I think you are proposing that they go electronic distribution at a reduced price to stimulate sales. Basically split the savings.

The problem is that Intuit would jepordize their retail sales if they did that. We obviously don't know the numbers, but clearly they have decided they will get more sales by having those Quicken boxes in front of people at the office supply stores than they would if they went downloadable.

That said, if intuit ever did decide to spin off Quicken, the new owners might come up with a model that involved electronic only distribution.

Thanks. Then maybe I did see it once and since it never came back, I had forgotten it. I agree that if that's all it is, it isn't worth getting worked up about.

And for me, even if it came up every time Quicken was started, I'd hardly ever see it. I keep Quicken running all the time, and since I usually go many days without rebooting, I very rarely start Quicken.

I'm using 2011 Deluxe and so far, no spam for me.

Perhaps Intuit's major benefit from the sale of Quicken is that many Quicken users are inclined to buy Intuit's more profitable product, TurboTax. If this is true, Intuit would probably not want to remove this referral source.