Listed below is my letter to MS when I shipped my product back with the 30
DMBG. After reading another excellent post (Subject: Open Letter: I'm
skipping M05) in this group I decided this group was a good place to post it
to help others avoid the same issues and just suggest you skip the 2005
version or wait till MS has fixed the issues.
Thanks,
-Tim
----------------
10/6/2004
Dear Microsoft Money Team:
I purchased Money 2005 Deluxe at Costco a few weeks ago and ended up paying
decent price after rebates. I decided to test the conversion a number of
times using MS Virtual PC 2004 on my desktop. I am sad to say I am giving up
and sending it back for the 30 Day Money Back Guarantee.
A few significant issues that force my return decision:
- Existing MSN Bill Pay account would not work. Ended up canceling
MSN BillPay it after a year's service and moved to my free Wells Fargo
BillPay on the web.
- 3 of my accounts were completely off on the balance. My checking
was $14K in the hole and two VISA cards showed me zero balances. These
issues happened on every conversion, but my Money 04 file works fine. Ran
the Quick and Standard repairs on my Money 04 file, same results.
- I had duplicate accounts in the Account Register that looked like
they came from online downloads. It is one thing to "stop typing"
transactions, but I should (need/must) be in control of what accounts are
created in Money, not MS. (Also, the merge account option did not have any
of these duplicate accounts listed, so that was no help)
- Advertising everywhere.... I paid for a product and did not
expect to have it be ad filled MSN web pages. Funny.. I paid $20 a year for
Hotmail Plus and see no more ads on the Hotmail site, but when I pay $50 for
Money 2005 the ads are everywhere and I can't remove with a button click.
- MS does not clearly state the protections to customers about
using MSN Money website online synch. I never used this feature with 04
since I don't need it, but with 05 I need to use it to get access to some of
the "new" banks that were listed on the MS web site as "available." It was
not make clear on the site that this "new" integration worked only through
the web site. So, OK... maybe I would have decided that I was willing to
synch with MSN Money for a single credit card that was only available on the
web site through 'Yodlee integration' but why would I want my checking,
savings and other credit cards which use Direct-2Way through my other banks
to be uploaded as well? As the owner of the information, I should be able to
decide what is uploaded. The "all or nothing" approach just does not apply
to personal financial information.
- Lastly, I feel like my Money 2004 to 2005 upgrade took almost as
much research, planning and testing as my Exchange 5.5 to 2003 migration.
This is 'personal finance software' and it should/does not need to be this
difficult.
Costco would probably let me return it because I could have explained why I
needed to return it, but Microsoft needs to know how releasing products
before they are ready and tested is just bad business. Who here is going to
trust 2006 when it is released? Will I need to setup a test lab for that
version of the software too?
How come MS can spend 2 years and millions on XP SP2 but don't test or hire
real world users of personal finance users for their release team? Was this
product developed in one of the MS India development center where no one
uses it on a daily basis? Did the MVP's test this and provide feedback? Did
the release team review the feedback and make changes which are how the
process is supposed to work?
I have been a participant in the Money newsgroup for a while and if MS
wanted to know what their customers needed and wanted they really just
needed to read posts. A personal finance package should be flexible enough
for the long time users (I have used Money since M98) as well as brand new
customers and this is not the case. (Example, why pull out a small thing
like OFC from this version and break the product for a large number of
customers? How about waiting another cycle until smaller banks migrate to
OFX?)
I am an MCSE and I work for a long time MS Gold Partner and our software
solutions are based on Microsoft technologies. I spend my entire day working
with various MS technologies. I'm very embarrassed that MS released a
product with this many issues and just cannot personally keep "explaining
away" why these things happen. The MS Money team made serious errors in
judgement and release dates with 05 and users need a patch as soon as
possible.
I would like my $48.99 plus WA sales tax refunded and I'll be sticking with
Money 2004 Deluxe for now.
- Tim