Please offer plans and pricing options that do not include the new AI features
Earlier this week, I received an email notifying me of a 70% price increase beginning next month due to new AI features that I do not need nor want. From the little bit of experience I have had in Quickbooks with incorrect autofilling of vendor names when setting up new vendors that requires me to go back in and delete out duplicate entries to avoid double printing names on checks, I do not trust that the new AI will be helpful; in fact, I expect that it will increase my workload by requiring me to audit and double check everything that it is doing. If it cannot do a simple name extraction, why would I trust it to allocate expenses or pull information from invoices correctly?
Since I do not feel that the AI is actually ready for general use, I feel that this should be an optional feature that can be added to plans for those who feel that it would bring them value without forcing it on all plans and those of us that do not want it.
I tried contacting customer service through chat, starting with the AI bot that was entirely unhelpful, before getting to actual customer service reps that were equally unhelpful and did not answer my question. Then I called in and, again, had to deal with automation that was not easy to navigate; enforcing my belief that the AI and automated features are unhelpful. Finally, I got to a real representative that took another forty-five minutes telling me that the AI features were going to be great but that to save money I could downgrade my plan. This is not a solution as it would cause me to lose features that I need and would still include the new AI features that I do not want since all plans have AI features.
The only thing worse than having additional work added by these features is to be charged for them, especially at a 70% increase. I would like my pricing to remain the same and not to have the new features added to my account but that doesn't seem to be an option. Why can't there be plans without the AI features that are priced separately from plans with the AI features? That way, those who think it would be helpful could use it while those who think it will be worse do not have to deal with the issues it will create for us in our day to day routines.