September 30, 2004 10:44 AM PDT
Users say Microsoft's Money is broke
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Customers posting comments in a Microsoft community newsgroup and various product review pages say the new Money 2005 has made it difficult or impossible to access online bill paying services Microsoft runs through its MSN subsidiary.
Pierre Aterianus, an electrical engineer from Whitefish Bay, Wisc., said he followed Microsoft instructions to turn off MSN Bill Pay before installing Money 2005 and then reactivate the service, yet he still can't pay his credit card bill. Attempts to initiate payments either aren't sent or result in a "duplicate payment" error message, he said, and Microsoft support personnel haven't been able to provide a solution.
"I now basically have one week left to resolve this issue or be faced with either a bank overdraft fee from duplicate payments or a late fee from the credit card company for not paying my bill," Aterianus said. "This upgrade has been the worst I have ever experienced and the first to make me seriously consider switching back to Quicken," Intuit's market-leading personal finance software.
Steffen Urban, a systems administrator from Riverside, Calif., said he spent several hours in fruitless chats with Microsoft support personnel trying to get bill-paying services to work. When he finally was able to connect to the service, thanks to trial-and-error work of his own, he found every bill he had ever paid through Money recorded twice, causing the program to report a deficit of more than $2 million.
"Microsoft's response was terrible," Urban said. "Only through the newsgroup I found out that I am not the only customer with this problem. Just a little e-mail, stating that there is a problem, would have done the job."
AnnMarie Coe, Microsoft marketing manager for Money, said bill-paying problems have been isolated to a small section of customers upgrading from Money 2004. Microsoft support has worked with such customers individually to work through issues, she said.
"We implemented an upgrade process that has caused some confusion among a select group of users," Coe said. "They don't need to re-enroll (in MSN Bill Pay), they just have to turn it off temporarily, and I think that's where the confusion lies."
Money users were thrown for a loop earlier this year by a prolonged outage in accompanying MSN services
Other Money 2005 customers have reported problems accessing information from brokerages and other financial institutions that offer Internet downloads of account data. Further complaints have centered on corrupted data and other glitches in transferring account data from a previous version of Money to the new one.
Steve Conklan, a teacher from Centreville, Ala., said he had to replicate a few accounts by hand and eliminate duplicate accounts to make the shift from Money 2004 to 2005, a process he considered typical of previous Money upgrades.
"The truth is that Money never does a good job of converting last year's file," Conklan said. "There have been years when I have to export every account. It wasn't very hard, but I am fairly knowledgeable with computers, software and Money. For new users and casual users, however, Money can be a real pain."
A Microsoft representative said such problems are isolated incidents, and support personnel will work with customers on a case-by-case basis to address them.
The glitches come at an unfortunate time for Microsoft, undercutting any possibilities to cash in on customer dissatisfaction with Intuit's Quicken, the perennial leader in personal finance software. Quicken 2005 buyers have complained about changes in file format support that have prevented access to online banking functions in some cases,
At least Microsoft can't blame the Money glitches on black magic. The company made like an elevator and skipped over the number 13 with the program, going from version 12 with Money 2004 to version 14 with Money 2005. The change was intended to align Money versions with corresponding MSN services, according to a company statement, but several online wags have seen a little superstition at work.
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issue. Consider this, if Microsoft can't fix the problem and
decides it's not worth the trouble to repair. (Consider Microsoft?s
failure to deliver on service packs for non-XP users and the
decade-old wait for Microsoft vaporware, Longhorn.) Well,
you?ve lost money. Feeling smug now?
Microsoft has an amazing capacity to deliver less than optimized
software and not to deliver promised goods on time. But, like
most Windows users, you consider Microsoft's antics and failures
the cost of business. At least you can take that to the bank ? for
now.
Also note that the latest version of Money for Pocket PC does NOT work with Money 2005. Microsoft states that the new version of Money for Pocket PC will be released soon. Until then, I'm S.O.O.L.
My advice, wait a month or two before upgrading. Maybe by then, the software will be ready.
Talk about corrupted files. They have a corrupted program.
At the end of the day, Microsoft (and others), your crap doesn't work right and I don't want to hear your spin. It's one giant headache.
ARRRRGGGHHHH.
before the clinical trial to be able to make an informed decision
to participate. Since Microsoft is currently running the world?s
largest and longest ongoing set of beta projects I would have
thought that you were given adequate informed consent to be a
test subject for Microsoft.
Common side effects to Microsoft products include headache,
nausea, vomiting, tremors, increased blood pressure, blurred
vision, tearing, anxiety, depression, and nervousness. Please,
report all side effects to FDA MedWatch.
As for "Microsoft representative said such problems are isolated incidents", this is simply a lie. The way online setup is integrated in Money 2005 makes inevitable scenarios when Money shows incorrect dollars. For instance, if two Money users have a joint bank account, Money will download it twice, with twice all transactions. This was not the case in Money 2004, and there's no way to fix that in 2005, it's by new design.
I agree that this is the worst upgrade process I have seen from any MS product. I've been a user since '99.
The whole upgrade process is poorly documented IMO. It gives you a window of what to do next, but you have to close it to do the actions. The new features of downloading statements from many location is nice... But hasn't been working yet. I've worked with tech support - haven't had any success there.
I've rebuilt my linked account with MSN a couple times which result in duplicate transaction from billpay. My main account go so messed up that I had to wait till I got my new statement to try and rebalance the account - so I am somewhat confident in the current balance now.
My recomendation is for previous users - don't upgrade yet. For new users, it probably will work great!
The other minus on this upgrade is you only get 3 months billpay paid while in the 2004 version you got a whole year.