I've been spammed by them too. They're terrible.

Oops.

Intuit as a company is pretty terrible.

Speaking from experience as a tax accountant, even their professional level products are riddled with advertisements for other Intuit products.

Yeah, I was a little unclear on what was so great about this service, since you can get the forms online yourself and you still have to pay the state filing fees. And if you need help, the library and small business administration both have forms, guides, and (in the case of the SBA) help.

apparently a good way to get free magazines though....

Oddly enough, I've used them and haven't been spammed yet. I did request their service over the phone though.

@wickedpixel: Yes... but many free "magazines" are little other than one long advertorial (well some times many short advertorials).

There are a few that are worth it, but generally they require you request them and provide information that they can pass along to advertisers (occupation,company size, etc.)

@astraelraen: We don't use their tax software, but ditto anyway. I am so sick of doing annuals who use QuickBooks, because QuickBooks is actually a pretty good product, but I hate that this reasonably expensive piece of software is constantly trying to sell me more crap. "Here is your reminder to: Buy overpriced supplies direct from Intuit!"

I will never buy another Intuit product ever again. I'm tired of their anti-consumer money-grubbing practices.

@astraelraen: The "Feature" I detest is getting a PDF of the invoice. They'll email it for you! Through their servers.... BS on that, they have no need for e-mail addresses of anyone I do business with. I've e-mailed them to myself when I need to do that, they already have my e-mail address...

@Repique: Amen...

@SacraBos: I *thought* they were overpriced, but got bored this afternoon and actually checked, and basic W-2 printing supplies from Intuit are about twice as expensive as from Office Depot. Ridiculous. But, anyhow. The email sends through them? I've never done invoicing through QB, but that's awful. I'd just get a PDF print driver and email them myself, thanks.

Intuit blows.
My favorite of their many tricks:
I installed QuickBooks 2006 on a Vista laptop. A warning popped up during Setup that it was "not supported" on Vista, but I clicked through it; the program ran fine.

A few months later, I allowed QB to update itself over the Web. The result was a nagging dialog box warning me every time I opened the program:

So, they are so desperate to force me to upgrade that they modified my existing version to show me this blatant advertisement, and require me to click "START QUICKBOOKS" every time I run the earlier program?
I decided, at that moment, that I would never buy another Intuit product, and that I would run QB 2006 on XP until I close my business or switch to an alternative accounting program.

BTW, I clicked through that warning for months, but I never experienced the threatened "instability and unreliable behavior..." probably because I never again allowed them to "update" the product.
Fark Intuit.

@Eyebrows McGee:

My local State U offers a free adult education class titled "how to start your own business". I am sure other U's do as well. Give it a shot. IT IS FREE and will have support information from working professionals.

Yes, I get all kinds of junk mail to the new company name I formed through them. It's horrible. Everything from Verisign junk mail to First Data by Cardservices International for credit card machines. I'm actually thinking about bringing a lawsuit against Intuit for this. I read the TOS and all other things presented and nowhere did I see anything that says they have the right to sell me off to other companies.

@oldgraygeek: that's a good idea. I work for a bank, in online banking technical support, and we have to support quickbooks. My understanding is that now Quickbooks 2006 won't work at all on Vista. :-\

Hi, I’m Deborah from Intuit's MyCorporation and I’d like to address some of the comments listed here. First and foremost, we take our customers’ privacy very seriously. We do not share, sell, or rent our customer list to third parties for marketing. After a business is incorporated with its state, whether we do it for you or you do it yourself, the information contained in the incorporation documents becomes publicly available. Some companies may use this publicly available information for their marketing. Again, we do not share, sell, or rent our customer list to other companies for marketing. Also, any marketing we send out with MyCorporation or Intuit products includes an opt out link that we promptly honor.

I hope this information is helpful. We will be happy to follow up on any specific issue you may have with MyCorporation. You can contact our customer service department at 888-692-6771.

Deborah
MyCorporation

i checked out the free offer a while back when it was posted either here or on lifehacker. i didn't complete the process at the time but i still receive spam from them on a regular basis. my suggestion, and this is what i tend to do, is to get yourself a free email account (gmail, hotmail, yahoo, etc) and designate it as your 'i might get spammed for signing up for XXXXXX so i'll just use my junk email' account. i have a hotmail account that's pretty much a spam account and as a result my personal account stays nice and clean. after signing up for something, if it turns out to be spam free, chances are you can change your email preferences with said service anyway.