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I’m annoyed at Intuit’s purchase of Credit Karma last year. Even with the obligatory sale of its tax division to Square, Intuit eliminated a competitor. Square

I’m annoyed at Intuit’s purchase of Credit Karma last year. Even with the obligatory sale of its tax division to Square, Intuit eliminated a competitor. Square will have to build up the customer base and visibility of the tax product, provided they intend to do anything with it similar to what CreditKarma was. Intuit should simply not have been allowed to buy them.

paulpan 6y ago
Absolutely this. The purchase of Credit Karma is textbook "buying out a competitor", especially since Credit Karma's tax solution was offered for "free" to customers. Why did the government not intervene? There's hardly better evidence of political capture by the corporate America as that one.
- airstrike 6y ago
  Generally, the DOJ won't block "buying out a competitor" unless you're approaching monopoly levels of consolidation. It's fine by the DOJ to have the number of players reduced from even 4 to just 3 and they are only really forced to act when it comes down to an attempt to reduce from 3 to 2
dataflow 6y ago
If anyone here has Credit Karma: get off it. Use free monitoring services from Discover/Chase/Experian/etc.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  if you're a chase/amex/discover customer, by all means use their free service. I particularly like the amex one that lets you do hypothetical projections. I can't recommend experian though. I just made an account with them out of curiosity, and since then I have received emails from them pretty much every day trying to upsell me on their (worthless, as far as I can tell) "premium" features. the website itself is full of dark patterns trying to make the same upsell.
  - dataflow 6y ago
    You should be able to at least opt out of daily emails from Experian. Try going into your profile's communication preferences and opting out?
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      the emails aren't such a big deal. they just go into my "promotions" folder that I rarely look at. I still find their web UX pretty bad. all kinds of buttons and tabs that just send you to a paywall. the credit card companies also use their websites to try to get me to sign up for more of their credit cards, but they're a little more respectful about it. I personally just hate the style of web design where some UI elements lead to a paywall and others don't, with no clear signal before you click through.

paulpan 6y ago

Absolutely this. The purchase of Credit Karma is textbook "buying out a competitor", especially since Credit Karma's tax solution was offered for "free" to customers. Why did the government not intervene? There's hardly better evidence of political capture by the corporate America as that one.

airstrike 6y ago
Generally, the DOJ won't block "buying out a competitor" unless you're approaching monopoly levels of consolidation. It's fine by the DOJ to have the number of players reduced from even 4 to just 3 and they are only really forced to act when it comes down to an attempt to reduce from 3 to 2

dataflow 6y ago

If anyone here has Credit Karma: get off it. Use free monitoring services from Discover/Chase/Experian/etc.

leetcrew 6y ago
if you're a chase/amex/discover customer, by all means use their free service. I particularly like the amex one that lets you do hypothetical projections. I can't recommend experian though. I just made an account with them out of curiosity, and since then I have received emails from them pretty much every day trying to upsell me on their (worthless, as far as I can tell) "premium" features. the website itself is full of dark patterns trying to make the same upsell.
- dataflow 6y ago
  You should be able to at least opt out of daily emails from Experian. Try going into your profile's communication preferences and opting out?
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    the emails aren't such a big deal. they just go into my "promotions" folder that I rarely look at. I still find their web UX pretty bad. all kinds of buttons and tabs that just send you to a paywall. the credit card companies also use their websites to try to get me to sign up for more of their credit cards, but they're a little more respectful about it. I personally just hate the style of web design where some UI elements lead to a paywall and others don't, with no clear signal before you click through.