Another impediment to Linux removed?

[Detonate]

I discovered this yesterday. Don't know how long it has been available, but I have had folks unwilling to switch to Linux because they use Quickbooks.

http://quickbooksonline.intuit.com/m...ards-features/

[blobfish]

Re: Another impediment to Linux removed?

Yes, quickbooks been a "no go" for several people I know also. I just could never steer someone into being more dependent on Intuit. The extortionist practices I am sure will only get worse once they have total control of your data. Terrible company!!

[sithlord48]

Re: Another impediment to Linux removed?

Yes, quickbooks been a "no go" for several people I know also. I just could never steer someone into being more dependent on Intuit. The extortionist practices I am sure will only get worse once they have total control of your data. Terrible company!!

i agree completely. i've had very bad dealings with intuit , vendor lockin and then complete extortion. their tech support is an expencive waste of time. the one company i do still work with who uses quick books will hopefully be moving to another set up like gnucash and lemonpos. the bad part is 99% of whats set up in QB i will have to redo from scratch for a new system so it will just cost the buissness more time and money to not use quickbooks then to contiune to pay insane license fees and for the other "services" that they provide. the worst part is i told them before they purchased quickbooks it was going to be very expencive and a waste of time as i can't make it do most of the things they thought that it would do for them.

[Detonate]

Re: Another impediment to Linux removed?

I completely agree with the distaste for Intuit. I'll relate my two bad experiences with them. Many years ago I used and online, check writing program. I can't remember the name of it now, perhaps "Checkfree". I was on dial up at the time. You would simply use their program to write your checks, the upload a small file to them and they would issue the checks. Took only a few minutes. Worked great. Intuit bought them out. Next I get a notice that I will no longer be able to use the service unless I installed Quicken. I did not want Quicken but in order to still have the service it was required. I had to pay for Quicken. At about the same time, I was working as a tax preparer. I was a very early user of TurboTax, the only name in the game at that time. I would go to the store and purchase the program every year. One year, the made the program available for download from their web site. This was well before their online edition. I decided to give it a try, went to the site and purchased the download. IIRC it was about $50. Imagine my surprise when my credit card bill came and I discovered the had double billed me. I contacted them immediately and they apologized for what they said was a computer glitch. Said they would refund the overcharge immediately. It was two months before the refund appeared on my credit card statement. I started thinking about it, if a large company that has hundreds of thousands online customers found itself with a cash flow problem they could use this trick to borrow a huge sum of money interest free for a short time. They may not even have to pay back a significant portion of this "loan" as many people never even examine closely their credit card statement.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Another impediment to Linux removed?

....
I started thinking about it, if a large company that has hundreds of thousands online customers found itself with a cash flow problem they could use this trick to borrow a huge sum of money interest free for a short time. They may not even have to pay back a significant portion of this "loan" as many people never even examine closely their credit card statement.

Reverse kiting.

I noticed that several years ago when I stopped at a "Gas & Rob" to fill up my tank. Instead of using my credit card I used my debit card. My gas came to around $10, and the pump knew immediately I had enough money in the back to cover the cost of the gas, but they dinged my account $50 and held on to it for for days before releasing $40 of it.

I did some calculations using the fact that the franchise had 952 stations in the midwest and assumed that, like the store I visited, a person used their debit card every 10 minutes around the clock, 24/7/365, and had $40 "borrowed" from their account. That would amount to over $2M/year. Assuming that stuffed that money into a credit card company at 30% interest they made about $700 interest every 4 days, or about $5K/month, $60K/year. I bet it went into ownership "bonuses".

[dibl]

Re: Another impediment to Linux removed?

I started thinking about it, if a large company that has hundreds of thousands online customers found itself with a cash flow problem they could use this trick to borrow a huge sum of money interest free for a short time.

Here is the consumer version of this game -- equally dishonest and disgusting. I never did it, but I remember hearing some college classmates discussing how "great" it worked:

End of the month, and you're short. Write out the checks for the telephone bill, the electric bill, the gas bill, and whatever else. Put the checks and the bill stubs in the wrong envelopes. Apply postage and send them off. Now you've got about ten days to two weeks of free float while you get together the shortfall -- then you "correct the mistake" as the wrong checks come back, and then you've got 2 or 3 more mail days before the checks actually hit the bank.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Another impediment to Linux removed?

How would that work?

Wouldn't the company getting the wrong check simply apply the policy that your payment is late and begin assessing late fees and service charges, even if they sent the "wrong" check back?

[claydoh]

Re: Another impediment to Linux removed?

Reverse kiting.

I noticed that several years ago when I stopped at a "Gas & Rob" to fill up my tank. Instead of using my credit card I used my debit card. My gas came to around $10, and the pump knew immediately I had enough money in the back to cover the cost of the gas, but they dinged my account $50 and held on to it for for days before releasing $40 of it.

I had noticed the same thing a number of years ago myself, but it was never longer than a day as far as I remember. But I believe this has changed as most businesses process debit/credit transactions 'on the fly' instead of daily or in regular batches, I use debit as I don't have a credit card, and I do not see holds any longer. They have to pre-authorize as they cannot tell how much gas you are going to buy ahead of time so they have to do this. I don't know if it is the store, or the credit card processing company that does this, but I am guessing it its the processing folks.

So, say I use my card for gas, and my wife uses her card tied to the same account to buy lunch for herself at the same time i am pumping an unknown amount of fuel, and I only have so muuch in the account. So 50$ is pre-authorized. and my wife's debit transaction declines Or vice-versa, and I cannot pump the gas

The credit card processing is where a ton of money is to be had, though you have to be doing it on a massive scale. At my restaurant I believe we pay at least a 2% charge for each credit receipt, plus some other per-transaction charge. For me the percentage part alone can cost 50$ on a busy day. I don't know what the other charges add up to. American Express we have a 4% charge.

I think straight debit is cheaper as I see some gas stations giving a discount for cash/debit sales. We don't do straight debit at my restaurant.

[Detonate]

Re: Another impediment to Linux removed?

That's why a lot of businesses no longer accept American Express.

[dibl]

Re: Another impediment to Linux removed?

How would that work?

Well, they might or might not apply a late fee, since they did get a timely check (this practice was in 1972 so I'm not sure it would work so well today -- late fees were negotiable in those days).

[Detonate]

Re: Another impediment to Linux removed?

It used to be a safe practice to issue a check a day or two before it would actually get to the bank. That's not true in a lot of places now. Checks issued to some store, Walmart for example are immediately processed by EFT right at the cash register,just as if they were a debit card transaction.

[woodsmoke]

Re: Another impediment to Linux removed?

The first time that I ran into this was after a vacation. I had rented a car for two days, returned it, no problems etc. etc.

A couple of weeks later i couldn't use the card because it was till "burdened" by the car company.

It took a call to the car company and then the credit card company to get it "un burdened" but during that time "both companies" had 400 dollars to put "on the float"...

multiply that by thousands of cars a day...

I now positively, standing in front of the desk of the dealer, request written proof that the card is not "burdened" and then, in the presence of the person call the card company to verify that the "burden" has been removed.

the people at the rental companies either:

a) go on with their business because they don't DO it...
or
b) get defensive.....

As to a tax program.... we tried an "online" one and were...well....less than happy....tried TurboTax and were....less than happy.....did the H & R Block thing....and were less than happy....

We now do it "ourselves" and are ...quite happy.

woodsmoke

[DoYouKubuntu]

Re: Another impediment to Linux removed?

Here is the consumer version of this game -- equally dishonest and disgusting. I never did it, but I remember hearing some college classmates discussing how "great" it worked:

End of the month, and you're short. Write out the checks for the telephone bill, the electric bill, the gas bill, and whatever else. Put the checks and the bill stubs in the wrong envelopes. Apply postage and send them off. Now you've got about ten days to two weeks of free float while you get together the shortfall -- then you "correct the mistake" as the wrong checks come back, and then you've got 2 or 3 more mail days before the checks actually hit the bank.

I know from personal experience that this trick USUALLY doesn't work. For one thing, I knew someone back in the '80s who accidentally put two checks in the wrong envelopes while paying bills; let's just say they were for the gas company and the electric company, as I really don't recall and it doesn't matter. So off they went to the wrong companies--and BOTH companies deposited them anyway, with neither of their banks catching the error. For the company that should've gotten the smaller payment, she ended up with a credit balance, but for the company that should've gotten the larger payment, she ended up being charged late fees, etc. Second, I was the programmer at a major data processing company in Dallas. One of our clients was Sprint. We'd receive thousands of bill payments every day, and pretty much every day our data entry operators would spot checks that were included with Sprint bills but were NOT made out to Sprint. We certainly didn't catch all of them because the data entry operators weren't focused on that; they were focused on entering the data, first from the statement [account number and amount due] and then from the check [amount enclosed]. If they happened to spot a discrepancy as far as the payee was concerned they'd alert a supervisor, but I can guarantee you that the vast majority went unnoticed and were processed by the bank; what happened there I really can't say.

[SteveRiley]

Re: Another impediment to Linux removed?

I started thinking about it, if a large company that has hundreds of thousands online customers found itself with a cash flow problem they could use this trick to borrow a huge sum of money interest free for a short time. They may not even have to pay back a significant portion of this "loan" as many people never even examine closely their credit card statement.

Airlines pull this crap all the time. In a previous job I flew biz class international once or twice a month. Sometimes my travel plans would change and I'd cancel a trip and get a refund. While the airline is perfectly happy to ding your credit card the $6000 the moment you buy a ticket, they can take up to four weeks to issue a refund.