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QuickBooks Fees Class Action Lawsuit Overview:
- Who: Intuit, Inc, the maker of the popular accounting software Quickbooks, is being sued by a New York law firm.
- What: Intuit is accused of suddenly ramping up fees on ACH payments in QuickBooks without clearly communicating it to its customers, many of whom are small business owners.
- Where: The lawsuit seeks to represent business owners nationwide.
Small businesses struggling to survive during the pandemic have been delivered a further insult from accounting software provider QuickBooks, which allegedly ramped up fees on certain transactions seemingly overnight, a new class action lawsuit alleges.
The lead plaintiff, New York law firm Shankar Ninan & Co., LLP, filed the class action lawsuit against QuickBooks owner Intuit, Inc in a California federal court.
The firm says QuickBooks—a software offering bookkeeping and payment functions—used to allow small businesses to receive automated clearing house (ACH) payments within two-to-seven days without any fee.
If a business needed the money soon, it could opt to get the funds overnight, for a fee of one percent of the transfer amount.
However, on March 11, QuickBooks users received an email informing them that all future ACH payments would be processed in one business day “with no extra fees.”
QuickBooks users now know that this “confusing” email actually meant QuickBooks was removing the option to make an ACH transfer without a fee.
“QuickBooks provided no option for users to opt-out of the automatic one-day transfers and maintain the free two-to-seven-day option,” the class action says.
As a result, QuickBooks users, many of whom are small business owners, have been hit with thousands of dollars worth of fees since the change, the class action says. Shankar Ninan says the firm has been charged $4,327.45 by QuickBooks for ACH transaction fees under the new policy since Aug. 31.
Business Owners Complain About New QuickBooks Fee
The lawsuit provides screenshots of other small businesses complaining online.
“This is a huge expense for me as I have 600 customers,” one business owner wrote. “This seems ridiculous. What if I don’t care about the speed of deposit?,” another said.
Shankar Ninan says Intuit’s QuickBooks has millions of users in the United States, and in fiscal year 2020 reported revenues of $7.7 billion.
It says QuickBooks fee switch is particularly egregious given the timing: amid a global pandemic.
“The timing of QuickBooks’s misleading switch to one-day transfers with a 1% transaction fee was especially insulting to users given the financial implications of the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated impact on individual contractors and small business owners, who comprise a majority of QuickBooks’s user base,” the class action states.
It says a QuickBooks representative acknowledged to Shankar Nina that the change to ACH transfers was “confusing,” but rather than refunding the money in full, only offered a $7 refund per transaction.
The plaintiff is looking to represent all residents of the United States who used QuickBooks to process ACH payments and were automatically switched from free two-to-seven-day transfers to one-day transfers with a one percent transaction fee.
It is suing for breach of contract, fraud, conversion, and under California consumer law. It seeks certification of the class action, a finding that the alleged conduct is unlawful, damages, penalties, fees, costs, interest and a jury trial.
Meanwhile, Intuit is working through another class action lawsuit and potential $40 million settlement with TurboTax consumers who are suing the company for allegedly directing them away from the TurboTax free edition even though they were eligible to use it.
Are you affected by the QuickBooks fee change? Let us know your experience in the comments!
The plaintiff is represented by James A. Morris, Esq. and Shane E. Greenberg, Esq. of Morris Law Firm.
The QuickBooks Fees Class Action Lawsuit is Shankar Nina & Co., LLP, et al. v. Intuit, Inc., et al., Case No. 5:21-cv-07339, in the U.S. District Court Northern District of California.
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42 thoughts onQuickbooks Slipped New Fees To Struggling Small Businesses Amid Pandemic, Class Action Alleges
I have been incurring fees outside of the 2.99% with no explanation. Please add me to this lawsuit.
My company had to pay $600 Jan 2023 for absolutely no service from Qiuckbooks! We have no support, no payroll! They blocked us from signing into quickbooks until we provided them with a $600 dollar check! We quit their payroll several years ago, they informed us that in order to keep payroll we would have to purchase new version of quickbooks every 3 years! We have never had more than 3 full time employees. The last time we purchased new quickbooks, it was such a large program, it destroyed our 2 office computers. We have complained with no hellp!!We are being told by quickbooks that we will have to pay $600 every year for absolutely nothing!!!! Please help us!!
I just discovered yesterday that they changed our ACH rate without notifying us. Also, I have been struggling to set up QBO and have discovered that although they advertise on their website that mileage and time tracking are included in the Plus plan, you have to click into another window to discover that *additional fees may apply and actually you have to buy a different product. this week I have spent over 10hrs (many phone calls being recorded) trying to get my Merchant Services acct moved from QB Desktop to QBO. Before I committed to make the move, I opened a support ticket to verify it could move. Now I am finding out that it cannot be moved, the other support reps supposedly lied to me. There are no managers willing to call other departments to figure out what the actual answer is, just a lot of finger pointing and transferring to other departments and the “manager” i spoke with yesterday refused to let me speak to her (Tessa) manager and claimed there are no higher managers. It’s all lies and finger pointing and nobody is willing to make the product work that I am paying for. Just outsourced incompetence and we need a good lawsuit to wake this company up. I’m all in for doing whatever i can
I’d join for other reasons. Whereas, yes, we were affected by their, “Intuit’s QuickBook” sudden increase in fees.. We also fell victim to some of their other services.. We hired their “live bookkeeping” clean up at the end of 2021. It was March before they finished, but they only finished to Nov. 2021 saying that’s when I signed up for the service. A service they claimed would take one month. Then they had moved everything around so crazily and over inflated our sales by logging it in double entries, Our taxes were totally screw because we had to have all our books, P&L and Balance sheets turned in, with the over inflated sales, I had tried to resolve this by buying more time and doing a late return file…. I couldn’t;t seem to un-do the screw ups. Then had to hire someone else to re-do our books, pay extra to refile, thousands of $$$ later, we are still paying back taxes for a year that we didn’t actually need to pay taxes for. Going broke waiting on the iRS to update us in their system, which we are told could take over 20 weeks. Intuit’s QuickBook also changed the live book keeper serval times during this process, from Nov. 2021 to March 2022, I never knew who was working on our books, random people’s names would appear in the bookkeeper section, with no one getting back to our questions. Communication was completely laking, no replies for days to weeks at a time, no one I could call over the phone. Simply just ass. We had used them to clean up the books in 2020, no real issues. 2021- nightmare. The most expensive mistake of my life.
This company has cost me so much time/money, it is ridiculous. I have had countless hours on the phone with them about categorizing and taking payments. The app almost triples my Income which then affects my taxes(no one has an answer for 2 years), now I’m trying to change phone number and bank info and for some reason there are 7 cases opened in the last 6 months and I did not receive any correspondence which would direct me on how to proceed. It has been an on going problem since February. There’s not many companies that can get away with this but they seem to not have a problem dragging small businesses without solutions or explanations. Unless of course you want to have their “experts” help, and every time I get in contact with them they tell me it’s resolved and bam, here’s an email saying that they want a selfie and my ID (not in a mirror) just to change my business phone number
I only had it for a year, stuck transactions, faulse fees, ach outs not depositing, etc. They are the worst business software on the planet. I switched to Clover which is better but service still sucks……….paypal isnt much better……..they all need a new company to arrise and take over these customers…