TurboTax price games just get better....

After my last post, I decided to look further to see if I could find a better offer on the TurboTax State edition. I thought I was on to something, when I found a link to a 35% discount on TurboTax available through Bank of America. (see below).

Turns out when you arrive at the TurboTax - Bank of America Portal, the prices are marked up so much, that even with BOA's discount, the end cost of TurboTax Deluxe is 41% higher than what I paid through Amazon. Just in case you can't read the prices on the 2nd picture below. TurboTax Deluxe is shown for $69.95 marked down to $52.46. Now, if you do the arithmetic, taking $17.49 off of a $69.95 price is a 25% reduction, not 35%. If you took 35% off the inflated $69.95 price, it would still be 22% more than I paid at Amazon. Go figure.... Not a way to instill confidence or customer loyalty in either Bank of America or Intuit.

TurboTax state -pricing funny business is not funny

I've been working on software pricing for over 5 years, and was very disappointed with the pricing to add an additional state return to TurboTax Deluxe. I shopped around for the best price I could find on TurboTax. I bought a downloadable distribution of TurboTax Deluxe which includes 1 state and efile from Amazon for $37.17. Because VJ, my wife, works in neighboring Massachusetts, I need to file two states. We've always done the MA non-resident return by hand, which is kind of a pain, so I thought I would splurge and do the extra state in TurboTax this year. However, Turbotax is asking more to add a second state to my return than I paid for the TurboTax Deluxe package, which includes the Federal, one state, plus efile. Not only that. If I order the extra state through the application, the price is $44.95, and if I download it from TurboTax.com, the price is $39.95, 11% less than downloading it from the application. Just to add the icing on the cake, the feds tell me that my tax preparation software is not deductible, because my miscellaneous expenses are less than 2% of my adjusted gross income.

Now granted, Intuit tells me I can file as many state returns as I like with the "extra" MA copy. I only need to do one. Yes, they can charge whatever the market will bear, but it doesn't seem reasonable to me to charge more to add one state than they charge for the complete bundle. And it seem even more unreasonable to charge 11% more if I order the extra state through the application vs. from their website.

Supporting details:

From TurboTax 2009 when adding another state:

From http://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/cd-download/state.jsp

From my Amazon download confirmation

	TurboTax Deluxe Federal + State 2009 + efile [DOWNLOAD] [Software Download] , Price: $37.17 Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.

MS Excel 2007 Pivot Table Quick Reference

PivotTable I: Get started with PivotTable reports in Excel 2007

Overview of PivotTable reports and PivotChart reports
Design the layout and format of a PivotTable report
Select different source data for a PivotTable report
Group items in a PivotTable report
Connect to (import) external data
Connect to (import) an OLAP database
PivotTable II: Filter PivotTable report data in Excel 2007

Elicitation in Competitive Intelligence

Many research professionals invest a lot of of time sifting through electronic resources in search of meaningful information. Search engines fall short when it comes to efficiently delivering deep insight. The information primary researchers seek often doesn't exist in databases or accessible online repositories. It exists in the gray matter between the ears of other human beings.

Skilled primary researchers can glean tremendous insight through conversations with key industry participants, information that might otherwise never be found or is not available through secondary research. This is the main reason why primary researchers prefer to go to the source, and recognize the need for a deep dive into the watery recesses of other minds.

For skilled researchers seeking specific data or opinions, there is no faster path to current information than direct communication with a well-informed source.

Professionals within corporate Competitive intelligence departments are often constrained by the nature of their own employment arrangements. It is considered improper for a corporate employee to pick up the phone and elicit sensitive information from an employee of a competitor. This can raise contentious legal issues.

Read the full article by David Carpe from his drinking from the fire hose column in Competitive Intelligence Magazine here.

Amazon EC2 pricing, billing, use cases

Here is an overview of Amazon Elastic Computing EC2 pricing, billing and use case info.


Annual Cost Comparison (100% utilization)
35 m1.small & 10 m1.large instances Linux/UNIX instances at steady state for 1 year.

__________Do-It-Yourself___EC2 On-Demand___EC2 Reserved___EC2 Reserved
________________________________________(1 Year Term)___(3 Year Term)

TOTAL COST ____$ 81,305________$ 57,951________$ 38,878.50_____$ 30,566

m1.small = 1.7 GB of memory, 1 EC2 Compute Unit (1 virtual core with 1 EC2 Compute Unit), 160 GB of local instance storage, 32-bit platform.
m1.large = 7.5 GB of memory, 4 EC2 Compute Units (2 virtual cores with 2 EC2 Compute Units each), 850 GB of local instance storage, 64-bit platform

Conjoint Analysis (Pricing) - Introduction

Conjoint Analysis is a market research technique that looks at how people make buying decisions and what they really value in products and services. Conjoint analysis helps answer questions like "Which should we do, build in more features, or bring our prices down?" or "Which of these changes will hurt our competitors most?"

The approach breaks a product or service down into it's constituent parts then tests combinations of the parts to determine what customers prefer.

more details at dobney.com a marketing research consultancy

Critical Thinking Resources

The Headscratcher model is a working framework for Critical Thinking consisting of 3 components - Clarity, Conclusions and Decisions, surrounded by Discovery, Information and Ideas.


FastCompany article: A Plea for More Critical Thinking in Design, Please BY John Barratt Aug 2009