Intuit's dedication to sunsetting older versions of its products often leads it to remove features. "It comes as no surprise to see that the folks at Intuit are at it again, with Quicken 2004 now being sunsetted in favor of 2007," wrote one reader. "As you noted in 2005, the 1999 version sunsetted after five years, and now we are down to only three years. But the worst thing about this is that 2004 is the last version that supported QIF file import and at least one of my financial institutions does not support the newer methodology that I believe Intuit charge them pretty heavily for. If I switch to 2007, I will be able to download stock prices, but NOT my 401K data. If I stick with 2004, I will lose the ability to download stock prices but will be able to download and update my 401K data. Whichever option I choose will give less functionality than I enjoy today. So if I switch, I lose the ability to import; if I don't switch I lose the ability to download stock prices etc. Switch or not - I lose! Intuit's programs in themselves are good, but their predatory marketing practices stink."

Other readers complain that even some basic features seem to turn off for periods of time. "Many users of Quicken are frustrated by Intuit's apparent lack of interest in addressing a specific issue that has been occurring recently for users of the program," a reader wrote last month. "It incorrectly downloads equity closing prices, assigning the prices to the next day's record. As you probably know one of the major reasons many of us subscribe to Quicken is to track our financial investments and if quote data is missing or inaccurate, our records are compromised. Similar issues have arisen from time to time in the past, but now it's taking much longer to get the attention of Intuit's management and get them to fix the problem. And if they do fix it, whether it will continue to work and for how long is a concern."

Perhaps the oddest Quicken complaint involves a problem that seems to be the result of both Intuit's fondness for crippleware and indifference to customer support issues. "My latest nightmare with the increasingly irresponsible Intuit tech support transformed a one-minute solution into a six-hour nightmare," a reader wrote. "I've been using Quicken to manage our personal finances since 1993, so our data file has gotten kind of large over the decade and a half, but it worked very well until I upgraded to Quicken Deluxe 2006 and had a heck of a time getting the file to open. After much effort I found a way to open it -- after Intuit support kept telling me the file must be corrupt and put me through reconstructing it via Quicken' s tools. But after upgrading to Quicken 2007 this year and converting the recalcitrant file into Quicken 2007 format, I could open it once and that was it. Subsequent attempts to open it resulted in Quicken instantly closing."

The reader again had to work his way through more layers of Intuit tech support who insisted the file must be corrupt, even after he discovered it would import perfectly into a free trial version of Microsoft Money. "Finally I got a response to an e-mail I had sent with a link to what turned out to be an incredibly simple solution that Intuit keeps pretty secret. Apparently beginning with Quicken 2005, Intuit has imposed a secret file-naming scheme that does not comply with Windows' conventions. Keep in mind that Intuit never sought Windows XP certification for some of its products like QuickBooks and Quicken because it didn't want to comply with some of Microsoft's technical specifications. It turns out that Quicken data filenames cannot be more than 8 letters and numbers long and that the full filename path cannot exceed 39 characters. Once I used my file manager to change the name of my Quicken file to a shorter name, the file opened without any difficulty. I certainly can live with this restriction, but it is astounding that Intuit would change the file naming convention and not shout it out to purchasers of its software. At a bare minimum, there should be a sheet included with the boxed software that alerts customers to this change or the installation program should alert you at the beginning of the installation. Heaven only knows how many hours of customers' time (not to mention the anxiety of possibly losing access to 14 years of financial data) has been wasted due to this inexcusable oversight! Heaven only knows how much tech support time has been taken up due to this oversight! And only heaven knows why so many Intuit tech support people do not recognize this possible -- and easily solved -- problem! What an industry."

It is indeed an odd business where a company seems to think that giving its customers less capability is technological progress. Have you seen any examples of technology going in reverse? Tell me about it on the Gripe Line voice mail at 1 888 875-7916 or write me at Foster@gripe2ed.com.