Quicken disables the software you paid for to force paid upgrades

Norvy sez, "I bought Quicken 2002 when it was the current version. I received a letter in the mail this week telling me that Intuit will be disabling the online bill pay feature for my version because it's too old! I'm really dissapointed because these transactions pass through my bank, not Intuit, so they shouldn't have any real interest in terminating my service, other than to sell more software. When I bought this software I didn't expect a product whose license would expire and force me to buy a new one three years later. Intuit has lost a customer on this one."

Make that two customers — for life. This is the dirtiest of pool imaginable. Bait-and-switch. I wonder if it's even legal. You'd think that if Intuit had actually made a compelling new product that it could entice its customers to buy an upgrade; seems like they've decided that instead of improving their products, they'll just extort money from customers who were stupid enough to buy from them in the first place. That's a mistake I imagine very few of us will make again once word of this gets out.

Link (Thanks, Norvy!)

Update mrquizzical sez, "Following up on the post about Quicken extorting money from customers by expriring Quicken 2002: Intuit is extorting money from financial institutions, big time, by eliminating support for their own QIF format,replacing it with OFX functionality but forcing financial institutions to pay them an exorbitant license fee. I work for a credit union, and we're being held up for $60,000; otherwise our members will lose the ability to import transaction history into Quicken 2005 or later"