January 18, 2005

Follow-up on Intuit QuickBooks

So today I called QuickBooks back and had a very different experience.

The timeline:

0949 --- called 888 number. Busy.

0954 --- called 888 number. Ring. "Welcome to intuit. Thank you for calling the QB Suppoert Network. Enter your 10 digit business phone number incl area code now."

0954 --- I enter the same 10-digit business phone number I entered yesterday.

0954 --- There's a long pause, and then: "Please hold while your call is being transferred to the next available support representative. This call may be monitored for quality assurance."

0955 --- After a very short wait, "Hi, my name is Robin and I'll be your customer support representative today. Can I have your first name?"

0955 --- I give Robin my first name. Then I explain the problem I had yesterday with trying to register software and the registration key code supplied by Intuit itself turns out to be invalid with its own software product...

0956 --- "That's a known issue, we have a ouple ways of dealing with it. Let me get your account up here.... " She had my phone number, company name, company address, and my name, and she asked me to verify stuff for simple authentication. Then she said, "I am going to call over to a resource team who have access to the database, hopefully we can get your key code from them.... so if you don't mind holding I'm just going to call over to them........ "

0957 --- Now on hold, listening to happy guitar music....

1000 --- Happy guitar music fades out, syrupy saxaphone with putrid piano and cheesy strings music takes over....

1004 --- Syrupy saxaphone with putrid piano and cheesy strings music fades out. . .

1004 --- Horn music comes on --- a happy cheery cheese plastic version of 'Signed Sealed Delivered'.......--- bnut then the music suddenly cuts off ---

1004--- Robin's back on --- "The keycode is in our database.... I should be able to register it and register by phone. Let me read you the keycode.... write it down on the yellow sticker.... " She reads me the long number.

1005 --- I paste the number into QuickBooks' register dialog box... it takes it! But then it comes up with a new form asking for a registration number! I don't have any such number... so I have to read to her the big long number that's on the screen. "I just have to generate it in my system..... you should write it down in your manual, in case you ever get a new Mac, you'll need to re-register, you'll need to have it written down... ok here it goes, it starts off with five zeros....." And she read me the long number. I read it back to her, clicked OK in the dialog box, and it said, "Thank you for registering!"

So, all done.

I then quit the application because the thought of spending any time in QuickBooks today just made me go bleh . . . soon, I think, soon I will force myself to get reacquainted with this app . . .

Posted by brian at January 18, 2005 05:40 PM

Comments

Thanks for the update, and glad to hear you had a better experience today. Sounds like the moral of the story is: Don't bother calling Intuit customer support on a holiday.

Posted by: Lyle at January 19, 2005 07:32 AM

Brain,

Did you ask whether their customer service department is located? I always ask that. We may want to start a off-shore list and keep stats on all the companies that have moved the customer service dept offshore vs. the ones that prefer to stay domestic.

-levin

Posted by: levin at January 19, 2005 11:31 AM

Brian,

As an FYI (and not to discourage you), I have found that certain aspects of QuickBooks are easier if you have some accounting knowledge. Probably different opinions on this matter, but having worked with some non-profits that use QuickBooks, we always debated whether QuickBooks was too hefty for the need. Programs like Quicken, require much less accounting knowledge.

My main suggestion would be to the menu-driven capabilities of QuickBooks as much as you can. If someone gives you a mechanism of handling a transaction using accounting techniques (e.g., your tax person may recommend certain journal entries or you may have a weird transaction like a potential uncollectable), try to use a method that is "approved" in the QuickBook online help. Bank reconciliation is one area that comes to mind. If you don't use the menu-driven capabilities of bank rec, then if you try to just check off check in the register, you will have "broken" the ability to ever use the menu-driven capabilities and reports for bank rec.

My $0.02.

Posted by: Steve Shu at January 19, 2005 04:16 PM

To put it in kind of computer-speak, the menu-driven capabilities for QuickBooks are like the approved application programming interface (API). If you go outside of the "APIs", you can sometimes get things to work. Sometimes things will break, and you will not realize this until later.

Posted by: Steve Shu at January 19, 2005 04:19 PM

974 right spot ruffus

Posted by: hoodia at February 3, 2005 04:38 PM

I wish I had your success. I cancelled an order with Intuit for QuickBooks 6.0 last year becuase they sent it to Ohio, instead of Illinois -- Twice. A glitch in their zip code system I was told.

okay.

I bought it from buy.com. I didn't get around to opening it for about 6 months cuz I was setting up my business and whatnot. So, I try to register and it asks for a installation key code. I called Intuit. It turns out I don't have a yellow sticker on my product. I talk to 5 very nasty people over the next 45 days. Then, finally, I get one who tells me I must call buy.com because my software is probably pirated. I call buy.com and they say they can't help me it has been more that 30 days and the software is legit.

I'm left with a $240 purchase that I can't use. Any suggestions welcome. Please. I'm ready to cry.

Posted by: Elissa at February 7, 2005 05:45 PM

any chance of you posting that keycode and registration number?

Posted by: cisco at February 28, 2005 06:08 PM

Had similar experience on hold with Q-books. Payroll still doesn't work. The numbers they give you (which didn't work) are long enough to calculate the number of atoms in a galaxy cluster! Why???

Posted by: Dr. Scott Phillips (dentist) at March 4, 2005 09:42 PM

Does anyone know another business software company? Quickbooks latest programs self destruct unless we buy increasingly expensive upgrades. Is anyone taking legal action due to unfair business practices. Can I start one?

Posted by: Dr. Scott Phillips (dentist) at March 4, 2005 09:53 PM

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