On September 14, 2009, Intuit announced that it would purchase Mint.com, a personal-finance tool with a great reputation among its users. Not having much faith in Intuit, I cancelled my Mint account promptly. Whenever I cancel any service like this, I attempt to log back in, just to make sure I’m really out; Mint wouldn’t let me back in. And, I got a confirmation email.
Class act so far. Then yesterday, I got an SMS alert warning me about my budget. It took me a second to understand what this was.
Holy crap, I thought. Not only am I still a Mint user, they’re still checking my accounts.
I tried logging in again. No problem! My bank accounts were still in and up to date. So I deleted my account… again.
Some observations:
- It’s funny to blame Intuit for this, but it sure looks like a pre-Intuit Mint bug.
- And I do believe it’s a bug, not a deliberate policy of never actually deleting accounts, because that would be completely insane.
- Many of you will laugh at me for ever giving a company like Mint my financial info. Mint provided a useful and convenient service for me; unless you live totally off the grid, we’re just debating how much personal info to trade for what functionality.
- I have since switched to Yodlee MoneyCenter; it’s similar to Mint, except dorkier.
