After a long frustrating weekend focused on personal finance, I’ve come to the conclusion that Intuit is encouraging us to use OS X.
You see, it all started with tax season: I ordered the latest version of ‘Turbo Tax for the Mac.’ (Why they don’t call it MacInTax any more, I’ll never know…) While shopping for a good price, I found that I would qualify for a rebate if I also ordered an upgrade to Quicken 2002 Deluxe, so I did.
Last weekend was the chance to upgrade Quicken 2000 to Quicken 2002 Deluxe. I expected a relatively smooth transition, as I’d been using Quicken 2000 for nearly two years to submit electronic payments & gather banking data from BankOne.
However, I quickly found that I had an error generator on my hands, once I got Quicken 2002 Deluxe installed: it couldn’t connect to the server for sending payments and downloading statements. A quick call to Intuit only caused frustration: they *refused* to connect me to technical support without a credit card to charge their $1.99 a minute support time against.
And, after twelve minutes on the phone with them – $24 later, all they had to offer was: you need to call your ‘financial institution.’
To be fair, once I got connected to the online banking help desk for my bank – BankOne, I found out that there was some justification to the problem. BankOne had shut down the server that I’d been using for the past two years, right about the time I’d upgraded!
Ahh, the fates have interceded yet again to add excitement to my life! BankOne provided written instructions to their customers, except me! And I could download the instructions from their Web site: once I’d created a login/password that Identified me and my BankOne account.
The good news here was: I finally had the chance to change my account number to something other than my social security number.
Once that was done, I printed the instructions and followed them: backup data, update Quicken Deluxe 2002 to release 3, delete transactions since March 1st, change the Quicken settings to see the new server, restore the transactions since March 1st, download a new statement, and send payments.
It all worked – except sending the payments! I was even able to download recent transactions, but not send payments. After five (5) calls to the online banking help desk, one of their technicians let the reason slip: some OS 9 customers were having troubles, especially those using a dial-up ISP. (I’m on DSL) However, those who were using OS X were most successful.
After a quick reboot, I finally had it: a reason for regularly using OS X! Forget that the interface is better, or that I’ll need to learn where things are and how things work, again! Now, I’ll be able to get bills paid.
