Quicken Upgrades Cause Hissey Fit

Boingboing launched a hissey fit over a letter they received from Quicken. /. jumped into the frey. The blind started leading the blind down a path of Quicken bashing. Anonymous Coward finally offered some words of reason. Jeesh! Quicken

Missed in the entire discussion is that fact that Quicken is phasing out QIF import format for checking accounts switching to OFX support. Quicken spins the discontinuation because QIF "was designed for technical support purposes, it was not for transaction download." Hmm ... QIF seemed to work fine for that purpose.

In contrast, " OFX offers customers an easier, faster and more accurate download experience." Um, OK.

Reading between the lines, the key reason Quicken introduced the change is that it allows Intuit a bigger hammer to entice banks to become a partner.

On a personal note, I first became of the changes when I received in the mail a package from Intuit containing a disk with Quicken 2005 Premier. A free upgrade! That's good.

A consequence is that I can not download transaction data from either of my financial institutions-- First Federal or Sky Financial; neither supports the OFX format. I've called and emailed First Federal's online banking support folks several times over the past 6 months enquiring about their timetable for updating their system. I'm still waiting for a target date. Meanwhile, I'm without the ability to download checking account transactions. What a PITA!!