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The power of social media: TurboTax pricing issues headache
Earlier this century, TurboTax had huge PR issues when they shipped their software with activation protection. It caused huge pushback from users and many switched to TaxCut. No idea how many switched back but I can guarantee that it wasn't all. And that's taking into account that TurboTax is far better in UI than TaxCut.
Fast forward to the age of blogging and social media. A story out on Digg today shows, "TurboTax Online Charges Safari Users More". The user who posted the story on his blog shows an image of trying to signup for TurboTax Online using both a Mac and a PC. This happened with Amazon a few years ago and the story made headlines around the country. Here is the example image on Flickr. My guess (along with several Digg users) is that they are doing some A/B segment testing and that the pricing differences are not per OS or browser just on some time or other characteristic. So you could either pay nothing or $15 depending on which bucket you get put into. No matter what the case, this is why social media sites are so powerful.
I did a test to verify the results. Here are the results from a PC running IE6 and FF1.5. As you can see the pricing is different. I have never been to this web site before. Please report in with what you see in various browsers at http://turbotax.intuit.com/
Here are a couple of links to monitor this story:
Internet Explorer:
Firefox:
Let's see what the response will be from TurboTax this week. Will they ignore this or immediately come out with a reply?
TurboTax makes no pricing distinctions based on an individual’s operating system or browser. We do, however, perform extensive testing (A/B testing) of pricing, product offerings, creative design and marketing messages during the tax season. Another reason you may see different prices for TurboTax Online is because many financial institutions offer discounts directly to their customers from their own sites.
Bob Meighan
VP, TurboTax
Thanks for replying Bob, I appreciate it. You may want to visit the link to Digg (updated) in the article above and comment there.
Interesting note, I used TurboTax back in 1993 when I was studying for my tax accounting B.S. — I believe it was your first year offering a corporate product. Sure have come a long way from that (I think DOS) version!