Intuit, purveyors of what may be the world’s most feature-restricted software (Quickbooks) is acquiring Mint.com.

It’s a move that’s already prompted some to close their Mint accounts, and is sure to, if anything, erode confidence in the popular web-based service. Mint is one of those things that people evangelize about, a service that, in theory, is supposed to corral all of your accounts into one handy place and simplify your financial management chores. I so wanted Mint to work for me. I painstakingly entered all my accounts, never fearing a security breach (like some who wanted to try it but were reluctant) and then… it never got up and running, for me. Despite having verified the logins time and time again (logging onto Mint, then using the same bank or credit account pages to verify over and over that my information was correct) Mint was never even able to update one account for me. I gave up after 4-6 weeks of trying, and even now, I get weekly e-mails showing my accounts, frozen in time last November.

But for some people, apparently it worked beautifully. Now some fans are afraid that the company that has unneccesarily added to their workload might add the same restricted functionality and painful maintenance to their beloved personal financial organization program. I don’t blame them. Commenters on Consumerist summed up user sentiment on the issue pretty well:

PhilFR: “Ugh. This is a sad day. Mint has made my personal finances infinitely more organized. The only question is which will happen first: will Quicken screw up the product, or start charging for it?”

Blueoysterjoe: “What, Intuit will buy Mint and suddenly have great ideas about how to run a personal finance website? No. Intuit will apply its crappy ideas to Mint and turn Mint into crap.”

calchip: “Long ago and far away, Intuit made a great little product called Quicken that sold for 10 bucks. Then they came out with Quickbooks, which in its original incarnation, sold for maybe 100 bucks and did everything.

More recently, Intuit has turned into a complete and total piece of sh*t company that gives you the privilege of paying $250 for a crappy, bloated, crippled piece of software that nags you every single time you use it to buy more of their overpriced crap, refuses to support a product that’s more than 2 years old, and basically makes a product that is almost unusuable unless you’re willing to pay hundreds of dollars a year for crap that you either don’t need or should have been (and was at one time) included in the basic product.

I wish the management of this company would shrivel up and die and be replaced by people that actually believe in *earning* a customer’s business rather than shoving services fees down their throats.

This can only be a bad, bad sign for mint.com. I wonder how long till they ruin it?”

On news of the acquisition, shares of Intuit climbed 6 cents each. Mint sold for $170m, and the deal is expected to be finalized in Q4. So what do you think? Do you trust the people behind Quickbooks to run Mint or are you going to flee, too?

[Source: NYT]