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They have to make up that $150 million+ they paid for Mint somehow. I still don't know how they intend to really do that, but thats up to Intuit.
My bigger worry, and why I've never signed up for Mint, is what happens to the data? Now that Intuit owns it, does the privacy policy change? If I had signed up, would all my bank information and/or the statistics that go along with it now belong to them?
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Creditkarma.com will give you your score for free.
@FatLynn:
They'll give you a pretty decent approximation, but it's not truly a FICO score. You can only get that from Fair Isaac.
@NeverLetMeDown: I think tt is not FICO, but it is not just a estimate either. Other credit bureaus have their own credit score system and Creditkarma is using those non-FICO scores.
But from what I've heard it is usually good enough.
@NeverLetMeDown: I did not know that, but it's fairly precise. I saw mine go down a point one month, and was able to investigate and find the problem (card assigned to me that wasn't mine).
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exactly why i canceled my mint.com account the very day i heard intuit bought 'em up.
it sucks when something great is bought up by something not as great. should be the other way around...
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-400379-100x100.png\")
Offers like this were always how Mint made money. It was only a matter of time before they started pushing lucrative score reporting services.
At least the ads include the monthly price and the note that they're \"Sponsored\". Less misleading than freecreditreport.com's own commercials.
Intuit lost all credibility with me after the boot sector fiasco with turbotax. This move does not surprise me at all.
I have been using Mint.com for over a year and they have had freecreditreport.com as one of its ads/things to offer.
@zjmuse:
Yeah -- people are just looking for ways to hate on Mint since Intuit bought the,, but this has been there for ages. They make money by referring people to different credit products, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that they back freecreditreport.com.
I'm rather glad now that I left the Mint/Quicken Online nonsense. I added my accounts, set up reminders for my bills, then gave it two months in hopes that its cool interface and ease of use would actually be, well, cool and easy.
I then found myself frustrated there wasn't actually have a mechanism to tell it, \"Yes, I've actually paid that bill that I asked you to remind me of\" or even \"Perhaps when I ask you to remind me of a bill, maybe you should actually, y'know, REMIND me of the thing until I acknowledge that I've paid it, you binary piece of...\"
In other news, everybody in the country is entitled to get their own credit reports once per year from each of the three credit reporting bureaus: Trans Union, Experian, and Equifax. To get it, just to go [annualcreditreport.com.] That's the only truly free (as in beer) site that won't try to upsell additional features to you.
Sadly, though, it's all a profit deal at some level -- those credit agencies WILL try to upsell you once you get to their sites. Just look for the \"No thanks...\" links to continue.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-370594-100x100.png\")
Haven't noticed on my mint account yet... and am still happy with Mint. Even if I see notification trying to get me to sign up for a service once in a while, it's not going to make me stop using it. It's a free service and they need to make money someway...
I am again reminded that my decision to cancel my Mint.com account as soon as I heard they were being bought out by Intuit was the correct decision to make. Sorry Mint.com - it was fun while it lasted :'-(
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1082888-100x100.png\")
I've seen plugs for freecreditreport.com well before they were bought out, so I wouldn't blame this on the Quicken takeover. Maybe it's more blatant now-- I haven't seen the new ones myself-- but they were definitely pushing the whole \"get your credit score here\" thing before they were bought.
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@aloria: Exactly, it's funny how people scream OMG it's Intuit's fault...Mint's gone ROGUE!!!!!
It's been around for a long time now, i've just ignored it.
@rickhamilton620: Okay good I though I was seeing the future. I remember also seeing those on there long before Intuit tookover.
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Gee, I liked Mint once upon a time. Let the exodus begin.
What's with the knee-jerk reaction? Mint has always advertised financial products; I've been a user for over a year now and although I can look at the ads, I don't have to click on them. The screenshot attached to the article clearly displays the fees associated with the services. We only dislike sites like freecreditreport.com when their marketing materials fail to disclose the fees attached to the ongoing monitoring services, but this is not the case here. There's nothing fundamentally flawed with a monitoring service charging a fee, and there's nothing wrong with clear, non-misleading ads on a free product.
Agreed,
Most people are whiners so they look for any action/event to criticize. Mint has been advertising financial services to help pay its bills for years so making a big deal out one more offer that on the site is nothing short of \"retarded\".
Just keep in mind that if they didn't offer these services & ads they wouldn't have been able to provide the service. COMMON SENSE here people.
@dreamcatcher2: Exactly, it's not a new thing. I tried Quicken Online once it went free but couldn't get used to the way it did balances-it assumed i had a set salary with that real balance thing.
Has anyone found an alternative to mint that works well? I always like to try new things and competing services. :)
I've tried out Thrive (http://www.justthrive.com/), which seems to be pretty neat, with different features from Mint, though they're owned by LendingTree, if that scares anyone (the way Intuit + Mint scares people). And I haven't tried Money Strands (https://money.strands.com/), but I heard it's similar to these as well.
We're glad to hear you find Thrive a useful tool for your personal financial life! I guess you've noticed that we only make recommendations that we think will really help you. Thrive also provides a free credit score estimate, and we offer personalized advice on the steps you need to improve your score. And all of this is absolutely, totally free.
We are always working to make sure that our service is providing you with the tools and resources that you need to improve your financial life. If you think of anything we could do better, please let us know by emailing support@justthrive.com!
Thanks so much!
Elisa@Thrive
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That's a shame, I was about to join mint prior to Intuit purchasing them, I've been avoiding them since. I've used turbo tax for years but I had a bad customer service experience with them last year.
A bug in the MA state tax portion kept me and many others from e-filing. Even their context sensitive help on the problem page, which pulls questions from their user forums, kept pulling up unsolved questions from users with the same issue.
I used their email customer service system which takes 48 hours to respond. They finally sent me a response to my question 2 days later asking me another question in their response. However there was no way to reply to the email to answer their question. The email originated from a donotreply address and there was no additional contact info provided in the email, no phone number, no reply address, nothing.
I eventually solved the problem on my own with a few suggestions from the forums but it basically ended up with me having to submit a property ownership form with a fake address instructing the IRS to ignore this form. Not exactly comforting for a product that cost me over $70 to use. I should note this happened in late January too, it wasn't a last minute tax thing so I'd hate to be someone on April 10th waiting 2 days for an email response.
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@Hooray4Zoidberg: Please try:
[www.taxact.com]
$70 my eye! This one has never given me a bit of trouble for 7 years, and for state AND fed costs $20 a year, if you decide to purchase. (free fed e-file included)
You can also download the software for federal for free and use it fully to get your printed federal forms before deciding to purchase the rest. (or just print out the fed and mail it in) IF you can fill out your state form directly from the federal forms, and mail everything in, it will come out costing you nothing.
There's also software for more complex returns, like for businesses, that are still a lot less than $70.
Download federal for free just to test it out, use info from last year's returns to answer the questions, and see what you think. (NOTE: The totals may not be exactly the same if you use LAST years numbers, and THIS years tax forms because of tax code changes.) Be aware the free version does have a lot of \"please upgrade\" nag screens.
I just logged in to my Mint account and that didn't happen.
Not sure how the people behind Mint think this is a good idea... My main use of Mint is to identify and cut wasteful spending. Now they're trying to get users to sign up for useless wasteful products. Intuit has a good history of sucking. I'm sure they'll figure out how to ruin Mint, it's only a matter of time. Hopefully someone else out there can make a competitor that won't turn to shit.
@NICU:
In other words, a competitor that provides the service for free and rejects all other avenues for generating revenue?
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Just canceled my account last week, the email updates were too far behind and nothing synced properly with my bank. It's useless if it doesn't work right.
Plain English Department - Wouldn't it be nice if the FTC adopted a rule that said that when a merchant used the word \"free\" in an ad, the product or service really had to be free with no obligation to pay anything ever? Nah, that's fantasyland.
How come nobody ever mentions moneycenter.yodlee.com which is way better than mint ever was, plus its free, plus ad-free.
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I've had that message pretty often on Mint but I never clicked on it because I apparently screwed up my credit score the last time I tried to figure out what the hell my credit score was combined with trying to get a decent credit card (whups turns out nobody let me know that applying to multiple cards in an attempt to get a decent one hurts your score, guess I learned that one the hard way.)
Why is everybody all \"Oh no Mint sucks, time to leave\" about this? They've been ad-supported for as long as I've been using it (1+ years).
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How do you \"update your credit score now\"? It's not as if you can affect it by providing some immediate info in a form or something, right?
@scoosdad: Theree's a credit score form in mint. You can enter in a score range and it'll give back suggested stuff.
Give me a break. You are just looking for a scapegoat. Mint.com was doing this kind of advertising long before Intuit bought them, and now it's bad?
Do what you will, but Intuit made the founder of mint.com the head of their personal finance products division including overseeing all of Quicken.
They realized that they had a crappy product and their doing something about it, that's what I see.
THIS WAS NOT INTUIT. Why was this story posted with the start \"It didn't take long for Intuit to start ruining a great product. They've begun upselling Mint.com customers to two \"free\" credit report sites that are anything but.\" when that was nor correct.
Who fact checks before putting things up? Ya, I see the \"UPDATE\" but the damage was done already.
Personally, I feel the credit reporting companies should not be allowed to run freecreditreport.com. They should be shut down.
This ad has always been there for me. When you fill out your initial profile, it asks you for your credit score. When I checked \"I don't know,\" it served me this ad.
I don't think this has anything to do with Inuit. This is how Mint has always made its money.
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This actually has nothing to do with Intuit. They were advertising freecreditreport.com before the buyout. I wrote them a complaint letter about it back in April.
Aaaand there goes my mint.com account. At least they make it easy and painless to close your account.
I noticed the upsell to free credit report on one of my mint email updates last year and I actually emailed them to ask why they were pushing scammy advertisers. They sent me back a cookie cutter response that didn't really say anything.
Yeah I agree with everyone above. Stop freaking out, they have been advertising FCR for as long as I've been with the site. They've gotta make money somehow for providing a service as awesome as it is and free as it is. Can't have your cake and eat it too I suppose.
Mint has been doing this since before they were bought by intuit...
@Ben Popken- Thanks for posting a bogus story. Likewise, even if this was something new, do you think your readership here at the consumerist isn't already aware of these facts? Basically you have written a story which is based on a false statement (Intuit has ruined Mint) and then tried to make it sound like you were giving out great advice. I can see why this appeared in \"Horror Stories\" (the section this article is in) and hope that next week you can tell me about other scary ads I shouldn't click on when they show up at respectable sites.
Keep up the good work.
I got duped by one of these \"free\" reports. Ended up costing me about $40 in the end. Shame on you Mint!
We're glad to hear you find Thrive a useful tool for your personal financial life! I guess you've noticed that we only make recommendations that we think will really help you. Thrive also provides a free credit score estimate, and we offer personalized advice on the steps you need to improve your score. And all of this is absolutely, totally free.
We are always working to make sure that our service is providing you with the tools and resources that you need to improve your financial life. If you think of anything we could do better, please let us know by emailing support@justthrive.com!
Thanks so much!
Elisa@Thrive
Apologies,
This was supposed to be in reply to Squeaks response to rickhamilton620 regarding Thrive. I've pasted it into the correct window above.
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I held out for a while hoping this wouldn't happen. I was the only one out of a group of friends not to jump ship as soon as the purchase was announced.
I hope there's a piece of driftwood still left for me to grab.