Why Mint.com + Intuit is a Big Idea

Aaron,
I sincerely hope that Intuit remains true to their word as you have quoted them. I’m also not a fan of Intuit or their services. I feel they are extremely outdated and will not understand the Web 2.0 customers that Mint attracts.

Also, “Our ability to respond quickly to user requests” I wish I could agree with you that Mint already offers this. If one thing were to change in the merger I would hope it to be this. I’ve never had quick or reliable service from support when I’ve had problems with my Mint account.

Other than that, congratulations; it’s quite impressive what you have managed to achieve with Mint.

Add me to the list of people who will probably not continue after the Intuit acquisition.

as a “liberal” IT admin, there are only a few “consumer” programs I won’t let our users install on their computers. One of them is “quicken” and other products from intuit. I put them in a category of software called “gorrila marketers” they wreak havoc with you system (hidden programs and hooks) and abuse your email address. I’m so sorry to see this product falling into the hands of these guys. I was more than willing to pay up to use this great program. I’ll be canceling soon since I really don’t trust them at all… all of you beware with them (intuit) having access to your information.

I’m sad to see this news too. I use QuickBooks to track my finances for my interior design company, however I acutally use mint.com to see how my business is really doing. QuickBooks is the worst piece of software out there, it can’t even import my credit card transactions properly, which is why I had to resort to mint.com to quickly see my net income and expenses each month.

I’ll keep my mint account open, but I hope that Intuit doesn’t screw this great application up. Hopefully they will learn some things about how to write a solid application that actually works and makes sense to end users.

Best of luck Mint.com crew.

This news is terribly dissapointing. I opened a Mint.com account b/c Intuit software is so terrible. Now Intuit is going to send users like me running away to something else. Weak!!

This is the time to wait and see and also to influence Intuit and Aaron post acquisition. The next few months we as users of Mint have the most power to have our voices heard. This means to make sure to stay onboard, not cancel accounts and see if this thing can be a win win for Mint users as well as for Quicken. That’s the best possible outcome.
How we can tell: Is the Mint team intact? Are they able to make a difference? Do they receive an injection of resources to do what they have not been able to do up to now? Can they further quantify real savings for us? Can they further enhance the automatic categorization?
If not, we can go somewhere else.

I noticed that in your update, you didn’t answer one of the main questions: will our data still be private? Will there be safeguards in place so that Intuit doesn’t sell our data to marketers, or start spamming us?

“Intuit is, and has always been, a very customer-centric organization, with constant usability studies and follow-me-homes that observe how people use software and the problems they’re trying to solve.”

Are you KIDDING ME? Have you seen QuickBooks at any time in, oh, say the last 10 years? Usability is not something with which it appears that Intuit is familiar! I’ve loved mint.com’s iphone app, which lets me see at a glance all of my credit card lines and my bank accounts (although the whole wamu -> chase thing has my annoyed until it completes, and usbank integration doesn’t appear to work for my accounts, but I disgress). And the web interface is simple, straightforward, and *beautiful*. Hopefully, hopefully, Intuit leaves *you guys* in charge of the experience and just has you add new features/functions to bring it up to the level that QuickBooks has (along with a monthly fee, of course).

I suppose that the allure of taking a large cash settlement and having an Intuit GM title was simply what you were after all along. Another example of great services selling out just as HOTMAIL did with Microsoft.

Another great example of why NOT to trust, or otherwise believe anyone that touts a new idea online. I mean, I know we are all out to make money, but selling out because you cannot handle the business yourself is very lame and speaks poorly to your character and capacity and further to the character if a company the size of Intuit.

Surely, Intuit has the ability and resources to be more innovative than to simply consume businesses such as Mint,com. Presumably Intuit, you and the many thousands of other sellouts lack a definitive mind share as it relates to the entrepreneurial spirit of commercial interests.

I cancelled my Mint.com account today.

Ciao

Mint, I think you’re worth more than $170 million. However, a deal is a deal, I guess. Although I deleted my account a few minutes ago, I wish you the best in your future endeavors with Intuit. Just don’t let the big guy talk to your face with five fingers. Farewell.

I was disappointed to learn of this. As a financial advisor who also uses both Quicken and Mint, I saw Mint as a very easy way to ease clients who do not already track their expenses to do so using Mint. You’d be surprised how many high net worth people do not have a handle on their actual spending.

Quicken is a very capable product but the online version is stripped down so as to not offer a complete solution. Also, many clients of ours find the interface and vast capability too daunting and never get started as a result. It just tries to do too much.

My perspecitve on Quicken has changed a lot over the years. I now see them creating very modest but mandatory upgrades with a fairly regual frequency and this seems to be a naked attempt to just milk the last dollar from every customer. In it’s early years, Quicken was very customer friendly (to a fault–maintaining too many versions)–now i see them as one of the leading exploiters of their customer base in using this extortion tactic (upgrade or you’ll lose the ability to download transactions!). Sad.

I had been waiting for the collarborative product from Mint that would allow financial advisors (with client permission) access to their Mint accounts in a “view only” or other mode–with client permission. I thought that was goig to help us help clients. But with Intuit i have my concerns this will not happen.

I compliement your efforts with Mint. I still like Quicken but for different purposes. I just with Quicken were not trying to milk every dollar from my clients and myself every 2 years and would make the interface more streamlined–perhaps allowing one user to “turn off” investment, planning and other functions that they may hire a professional to do.

Aaron – Here is why I deleted all my accounts from MINT and opened a Yodlee account:

- You had access to all my financials. I trusted MINT, not Intuit. If you were to announce something as big as selling MINT to Intuit (which as you can see most people are not too found of) you should have at least sent a quick note earlier, not in the afternoon, when all the blogs and news were already announcing it. Receiving a late email blast from you in the afternoon, basically saying ” Oh, and by the way, I sold MINT and forgot to tell you earlier”, just doesn’t feel like an “ability to respond quickly “. Yes, I understand that your fiduciary obligations during the negotiations prevented you from comments before the announcement, but dude, Monday morning – call some marketing guys at MINT early in the morning and tell them to send a couple of lines to your userbase, telling them to expect more details later. Don’t just run to TechCrunch50 and make the announcement there. Very bad taste, dude.

- OK, so now were all shocked that MINT will be Intuit. So we go to point #2 – MINT will be Intuit!!!!! Are you kidding me??? Do you know how far away from those Quicken boxes do I walk when I go to Best Buy or Fry’s???? Quicken Online???what in al Heavens is that???Nobody knows. The main reason I went to MINT is because….MINT is not Quicken. But guess what? Now MINT is Quicken….and TurboTax…and QuickBooks…and who knows what else. It will take you at least 2 years to do anything with those products. What will happen to MINT during those 2 years??? You can’t tell, neither do we. Will you add new features to MINT while fixing Quickes (if that is even possible)??? Will you Delete Quicken Online and force their users to be MINT customers (there will be way better off)??? Will I have to start watching myself not to run into MINT software (prevoiusly Quicken) at Best Buy??? MINT is a completely different product from Quicken. And that’s why we liked it.

Anyway, there are some good news for some people with this deal. I do have to thank you for 1 1/2 years of being in “Personal Finance Heaven” with MINT. It will be very much missed. I really hope you can turn Intuit Personal Finance group around, and that you can convince me, and a lot of other people, to close our Yodlee’s account and come to you.

I am surprised and a little taken back by the fact that Aaron Patzer has not addressed any of the issues that the many Mint customers have expressed in the comments of this post.

Aaron?

Well, that was fun while it lasted. Too bad you sold out to Intuit. If it had been anyone else (I was hoping Google would pick you up) I would stick around. Oh well, I’m off to Wesabe. I’m just not going to reward this type of thing by continuing to use your fine service. I doubt it will stay fine for long now that Intuit has you. Even if mint continues at it’s current quality, I’m still leaving on principal. Perhaps if enough people vote with their feet (eyeballs) it will deter some other independents from selling out to the dark side. Probably not, but one can dream. In a nutshell: I want NOTHING to do with Intuit!

I can’t say anything that anyone else hasn’t said. Mint.com for me was exactly what its name partially implied–a refreshing presence that made me better for having had it. So congratulations on being able to sell it.

However, Intuit is something akin to the “anti-Mint”. As others have pointed out, Intuit has proven nothing if not that it is inept when it comes to making applications and supporting its customers, particularly those who need cross-platform compatibility and feature parity. In my opinion, Intuit has done very little to earn the support and respect of its customers, but has done much to draw our ire. I would much rather have paid for a Mint.com service, than see it go in this direction.

I have already deleted my Mint.com account. That app on my iPhone won’t do any good now either. (That too, I would have more than gladly paid for.) Good luck to both the Mint team, and Intuit in future endeavors.

I hate Intuit. I guess I have to cancel my account as well. My husband uses QuickBooks because he has no other choice – they have the monopoly on business accounting software. They charge astronomical prices for their help line and charge you while you wait ON HOLD. Dumb idea Mint. Really really dumb.

Good luck with your new endevours; I don’t think you will be able to spread to more customers, you sold your soul. I don’t expect any more innovation from your team.
If Quicken/Intuit had a great software products and management, I am sure you had no reason to exist.

I saw a name Yodlee here, are there any other open source providers around too. Please share your experience for switching.

Goodbye Mint

I’m disappointed. I started using Mint because it’s so much simpler than quicken/intuit, etc. I don’t want it to morph into quicken. yuck!

For those who do not know, Intuit also owns a Personal Finance tool that assists with bill management. It is called PayTrust (www.paytrust.com). PayTrust is a complete bill management system. They scan your paper bills, go online to collect your online bills, and either mail checks on your behalf or use electronic payments. And, until recently, they would tie in with your bank account and reconcile your outstanding payments with your current balance using the SmartBalance feature.

This tool has been amazing and I have personally been a subscriber for nearly 10 years. Well, that was until they stopped supporting SmartBalance. One cautionary point is that when Intuit acquired PayTrust, they did absolutely nothing to integrate it into their existing Personal Finance products. So, although they performed full bill management, there was no clean way to tie into a Quicken Online or Quicken personal edition. Now, PayTrust has stopped supporting SmartBalance completely. This is most likely because they have never integrated with the other Intuit offerings and had their own bank account access tool. This turned out to be too problematic for them to support, so if they can’t talk to your bank, they just give you an “aww shucks” response. Quicken Online can connect to almost any bank without issues. Mint can connect to almost any bank without issues. Now that they will be under the same organization, they’ll probably share that technology. But, PayTrust does not support it.

Aaron, I congratulate you and the rest of your company for this great opportunity. I ask that you please figure out a way to pull PayTrust into your organization and bring all of these products together like they should be. You have the tools, we just need your leadership to make it work.

Thank you and Congratulations!

For all the people thinking about canceled mint`s account, I found a very interesting product named mybill-e that seems to be much better than Intuit or mint, you should try it, it`s also free

what a shame!

Aaron is going to work on Quicken online for Intuit, leaving Mint.com fatherless. Nothing good for Mint will come of this.

“In addition, by joining Intuit, we can accelerate our ability to add more fantastic new product functionality into both Quicken and Mint.com.”

That’s just a press release way of saying “we can take some of the awesome of Mint and shoehorn it into Quicken to make it even less focused and more bloated!” Now that Intuit owns both Mint and Quicken online, why on earth would they invest in /both/? Mint will die, and Quicken Online might inherit some of Mint’s features. but make no mistake – this purchase was about killing off competition and hiring some great talent at the same time. this deal has nothing to do with keeping Mint alive or healthy.

“It’s humbling to work with the people who really pioneered the field of personal finance applications.
” Oh, Aaron, //you// were pioneering the field of finance! But hey, not anymore, eh?

Aaron, you should’ve looked Intuit in the eye, grinned, and said, “oh no, in ten years /i will buy you/!”

I trusted Mint. I don’t trust Intuit. I’ll be moving on… account deleted.