I am about to kill Intuit. I recently bought a new copy of Quick Books Pro and after the install process, I am informed that I have to register the software by phone or over the Internet with Inuit. I normally wouldn’t have a problem with a company protecting themselves against piracy for their software product, however there are some difficulties with how Inutit goes about validating this information. The only time in my schedule to complete financial transactions is outside of normal business hours, usually Sunday afternoons or weekday evenings. Intuit provides me a number of options for registering:
- Web-based registration
Intuit provides me with a handy Web enabled access to register the software. However since this machine stores our primary customer database, credit card transactions and patient records, I don’t want it connected to the Web. Particularly because it is running Windows and being a Mac user I can lock it down with any guarrantee that I am not exposing customer and patient records. - Phone Registration
This would be great, except that every time I call the offices are closed. Because I use the software during non-business hours I am unable to contact the Intuit offices - Mail or Fax Registration
This would have worked if I had done this immediately upon registration, but because I am provided a number of other options I figure I just use one of the other options. So my trial period has expired and I still haven’t printed out the registration form
User Support
Tog talks about his experiences upgrading Photoshop 6, and having to call Adobe technical support to register their software. Well if I could return Quick Books Pro after opening it, I would. Companies seem to have forgotten that even during tough times it is customers that ultimately buy and use their products. Intuit has made it so that I can buy their products, but since I don’t work regular hours I can’t use it. If I had wanted this much difficulty I would have just let my banker do my book keeping.