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Mike Block Mainly Responsible for $40 Million QB2000 Price Cut! (see CNET story) |
| February 16, 2000 - Mike Block and biz.comp.accounting were mainly responsible for getting Intuit to drop a $40 million tax table price increase. According to Brian Livingston of Cnet and InfoWorld: |
This major victory for consumers of Intuit's financial products was almost certainly caused by a gigantic hue and cry in the Internet discussion group known as "biz.comp.accounting." Block, owner of a Florida tax consultancy, BlockTax (no relation to H&R Block), is the moderator of the discussion group and led the battle against the new fees. |
Rich Walker, head of the QuickBooks Professional Advisor program, announced today that QB will only charge $6/month for each copy of QB. It will not charge for each company that processes payroll with one copy of QB, even if it is a five user copy. The announcement timing may relate to February 15, the date when QB6 and 99 tables expire. It also may relate to this recent message from Mike Block to Intuit: |
"I do not think Intuit realizes how close it is to class action suits, organized calls for FTC and Justice Department intervention, organized boycotts, major magazine articles, action by CPA groups, state constitutional amendment petitions and legislative action." |
| It also may relate to Accounting Today and CNET stories about the table controversy, Mike Block and biz.comp.accounting. I also made sure Intuit knew about the two QuickBooks-using lawyers I hired to sue it and the many of us who contacted friends, legislators, reporters or CPA groups. There also was the Florida constitutional amendment petition I drafted to stop sale of programs with features that expired (I had lots of experience drafting and leading successful tax cut petition efforts). Here is a quick estimate of what the change cost Intuit: |
28,000+ QB Professional Advisors eventually switch to QB2000 or later releases. One CPA said he did payroll for 500 companies, but let us assume Advisors average 21 companies for payroll. The change means buying one table, not 20. A 20 table saving, times 28,000 Advisors and $72 a year is: |
| $40,320,000 a year. |
Many more non-Advisor CPAs were probably affected by this, so this is a low estimate. Mike feels everyone should now thank Rich Walker and members of the QB Payroll Task Force for a change that should be as good for Intuit as New Coke and Classic Coke were for Coca Cola.
PS: Mike still really dislikes QB2000. He recommends that only those using payroll, online banking and other Y2K affected features upgrade to it. To the contrary, QB2001 and 2002 were mandatory upgrades for his clients and 2003 looks good. |
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