Slaughters.com

OK, I don't actually have ten reasons, but top ten lists seem to be all the rage on the net these days, and I'm really a conformer.

My hands are currently shaking I'm so pissed. Why? Because I continue to use and get burned by Intuit's Quicken again and again.

My latest problem? Quicken consistently crashes if I attempt to restore from any of my weekly backups.

I've been using Quicken since 1996. Back then it was a rock solid program. It never crashed (not in a Mac way where you just deny the crashes happen, but literally NEVER). My data was always safe.

Well, I may as well provide a list, considering the abundance of reasons why Quicken is junk:

• Adware - Quicken costs close to $100, yet it's full of ads for other quicken products. Many of these ads are buried in the Quicken menu along with legitimate options.
• Crippleware - Intuit cripples functionality in it's products after 3 years so that you're pretty much forced to upgrade if you want to continue to sync with your online data. Shameful.
• Worst support in the industry (and all other industries for that matter) - A few years ago, you could at least get a member of Intuit support on the phone if you were willing to wait on hold long enough. Now if you call the support number, you are told you can get a callback in ten minutes by going to a certain website. But if you go to the website, you end up in link hell. If you do figure out how to request a callback, there actually is NO CALLBACK. I guess they figured they'd made the "request a callback" process so hard to find they'd never have to call anyone back. But I found it!
• Junk self-help support - Quicken has introduced a number of online support forums (quicken.custhelp.com, quickencommunity.com, qlc.intuit.com. I think one used to be called 'quickenusers' or something. Now they have some new thing called "Live". If you have a simple problem, you are likely to get very good help from one of the other users (Quicken seems to have a very smart and helpful user base). But if you have a complex problem, like data corruption, forget it. Presumeably Intuit would want you to use their latest website, qlc.intuit.com, yet an issue I posted there about a week ago mysteriously disappeared, question, answers and all, gone.

There actually is currently a way to pretty solid support from any company, but it's not going to last very long. A website called Getsatisfaction has done a pretty good job creating a community of corporate representatives and customers. The idea is that customers can voice issues regarding products and reps from the corresponding company can respond. It's basic old school customer support. The reason it works, for now, is that it's new. Companies are paying attention to it in case it becomes relevant. Users are slowly finding it and excited about using it because the response rate from companies is so good.

But as soon as enough end users discover this site and flood it with requests, it will become no more useful than your average custsupp 800 number.

Why don't you just shut up and use something else?

That's a good question, I'm glad you asked. The reason I'm stuck with Quicken is because no other program I'm aware of allows you to send and recieve data from your bank. Some of them allow you to download transactions, but none of them seem to allow me to send payments electronically through the desktop application (rather than the web). I'm sure M$ Money probably has this ability, but I'm just not willing to trust anything important, like financial data, to a M$ product. Intuit had my confidence at one point. M$ has never had my confidence.

Moneydance has been a promising alternative for years, but they still haven't gotten the bank data syncing part down.