Intuit has long held the lead in personal-finance software with its Quicken line of products. In recent years, the action has moved away from the desktop and into the “cloud” as online competitors have begun to spring up. The most interesting of these is a platform called “Mint,” which offers much of the same functionality, some new features, and is free.
Quicken has been around since 1984 and recently started offering an online solution – most would say that was done in response to Mint’s meteoric rise. The company was founded in 2006, won the grand prize at the TechCrunch 40 in 2007, and has raised $5 million in venture funding. With a new kid on the block like that, can you really blame Intuit for looking over its shoulder?
A few weeks ago, Intuit got on its “private attorney general” kick and sent an overbearing, officious letter to the upstart. Among other things, they couldn’t believe some of Mint’s claims:
“While we do not wish to suggest that Mint.com is engaging in false advertising, the substantial difference in claimed user numbers over a short period time [from 600,000 to 800,000] is of some concern. As a result, we’re requesting that you provide us with the Substantiation and evidence that you rely upon to support the above reference claims… before February 6, 2009.”
More about the lawyer sending the letter, Mint’s response and Quicken’s back-pedalling after the jump.
The author was Liza Emin Levitt (George Washington undergrad, USF JD), Assistant General Counsel of Intuit. She was admitted to the California bar in 2000.
Mint ignored the issue of what business of Intuit’s it was to go fact checking other publications’ articles. Instead, Mint took the high road and responded with plenty of detail about its numbers, which it claims are actually joining at a faster rate than Intuit cited.
Intuit tried to save some face by getting back to TechCrunch with this response from a spokesperson:
We’d like to apologize to Mint.com if our letter came across as anything but a simple request to understand how they count their users. Businesses do this all the time and we appreciate their reply.
He also tried to tout his own company’s numbers, but didn’t provide any backup (and I’m not going to do them the favor of providing the rest of the quote that is nothing but self-serving indulgence). If there’s anything we’ve learned this week, it’s that companies should be thinking twice before sending overbearing letters.
Frankly, if Intuit is going to take on the role of fact checker for the world, they should do us all a favor and find out whether the ShamWow really does all those wonderful thinks Vince Offer claims it does.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
ShamWow has nothing on Slap Chop.
ShamWow has nothing on Slap Chop.
the shamwow absolutely does work… one under my drying rack in the kitchen, one in the car. 2 thumbs up
the shamwow absolutely does work… one under my drying rack in the kitchen, one in the car. 2 thumbs up
Intuit has every reason to be concerned about competition, I just purchased it's quicken premier product and have yet to get it reconciled and/or working correctly with my investment transactions. There price is steep, it is the most non-intuitive program I've ran across in some time, help files are link after link of mostly time consuming reading with no solutions and support is essentially non-existence. Seems the only thing that improves each year is the rhetoric on the box and website. Many users I know use it mainly because of historical data and switching would be more difficult than tolerating the issues they've learned to live with. Maybe the cloud solution is the best way to go? And it's Free? Intuit better get your act together!
Well, this is a pretty old story. Since the time we wrote this, Intuit went and bought Mint, much to the chagrin of a lot of people. Supposedly they'll be keeping mint free, though.
Intuit has every reason to be concerned about competition, I just purchased it's quicken premier product and have yet to get it reconciled and/or working correctly with my investment transactions. There price is steep, it is the most non-intuitive program I've ran across in some time, help files are link after link of mostly time consuming reading with no solutions and support is essentially non-existence. Seems the only thing that improves each year is the rhetoric on the box and website. Many users I know use it mainly because of historical data and switching would be more difficult than tolerating the issues they've learned to live with. Maybe the cloud solution is the best way to go? And it's Free? Intuit better get your act together!
Well, this is a pretty old story. Since the time we wrote this, Intuit went and bought Mint, much to the chagrin of a lot of people. Supposedly they'll be keeping mint free, though.