QuickBooks Users Launch Class Action Over Data Loss
QuickBooks Users Launch Class Action Over Data Loss
December 27, 2007: Intuit, the developer of QuickBooks Pro is under fire from its customers after deploying a faulty automatic product update that is alleged to have deleted purchase orders, spreadsheets and a host of other sensitive business data.
The firm’s customers have launched a class action suit against the firm, claiming that on the weekend of December 15-16 this year Intuit sent out a faulty update to QuickBooks Pro for Macintosh which subsequently caused the wholesale deletion of their QuickBooks data and other files.
The lawsuit, entitled Create-A-Card v. Intuit, has been filed in San Francisco’s federal court by businesses located in California, New York and Florida that use QuickBooks Pro for their accounting and other data storage purposes.
Juan Loredo, the owner of plaintiff AGCJ, Inc., operates a bar called the Vinyl Room in Burlingame, California, alleges that on Sunday, December 16 he opened QuickBooks and received the software update from Intuit, only to be stung by the update.
“Intuit has caused every computer user’s worst nightmare,” stated Mr. Loredo. “My company lost its invoicing, sales reports, inventories, day to day working files, pictures, and other files containing financial information. The files lost represent hundreds of hours of work.”
“As we’ve described in the Complaint, just as many QuickBooks users were trying to close their books for the year, they lost key financial and business information,” said plaintiffs’ co-counsel Jim Quadra, a partner at Moscone, Emblidge & Quadra, LLP. “Through its negligence in transmitting destructive software code and failure to take immediate corrective action, Intuit took what is typically the busiest and most profitable time of year for small businesses, and turned it into a logistical mess.”
This is certainly not the first time an automatic update has landed users in hot water this year, with several high-profile cases including one from Microsoft itself.
Even the VoIP telephony provider Skype became an inadvertent auto-update victim earlier this year when a Microsoft update triggered a synchronised restart of many thousands of computers around the world – overwhelming Skype’s servers when they all logged back in at around the same time.
Intuit claims to have resolved the flaw that has seen some of its user’s data disappear and has offered free data recovery software to those who have lost their files.
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