Intuit's April Fools - Our CC is where?!?

Last week, on Monday April 1, our QuickBooks went into "Your copy has expired and needs activation" mode.

Since we are on a subscription with Intuit, it seemed strange that we would be receiving yet another expiry message.

A while back, we needed to change our business credit card numbers due to an unscrupulous online merchant. We found out what a "Forced Transaction" (previous blog post) is.

We made sure to notify all of the companies that were automatically debiting the credit card that the numbers had changed as soon as the new card arrived.

Of course, that included Intuit among others.

That was January, this is April. And, it is the third time we received the above expiry message. The second time we chalked it up to clerical error and happily gave them the new credit card numbers again.

This third time around, we made sure that the person on the phone understood that we better not be receiving the expiration message again and they assured us that the error has been rectified.

This begs the question: What happened to the credit card numbers that we gave them on the previous two phone calls?

The first time was pretty obvious since the old numbers were right before the Intuit support person's eyes. The second time, the old numbers were still there. The third time however, there were no numbers associated with the account at all from what was gathered during the phone conversation.

One of the most sensitive information security issues with companies that do online transactions and subscriptions via credit card is the protection of their client's personal data.

When one needs to call in on several occasions to give three different people the same credit card information, one is not inspired with confidence in the process. And, it begs the question, can the person and the organization they work for on the receiving end of the sensitive information be trusted?

This is one dilemma faced by any company when outsourcing portions of their products and services.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

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