I received a mailing as a new resident to come in and get my taxes done and being a first time homeowner I figured it was a good idea. I have friends and family who use the big name places like H&R Block but decided to give a local business a shot. It was March 22nd, so not as early as I could have gone but I'd attempted to file myself and was not confident with my knowledge to do so.
The first meeting was great. Had a sit down where we covered everything and was told they likely wouldn't be able to get to my taxes for at least week. No big deal. It's only March right.
Two and a half weeks later I had still heard nothing and was a bit anxious, so I sent an email to the business manager I had sat with just checking on the status. Just a simple "How's it going, just wanted to make sure everything was cool" type email.
Five days passed and I received no response. I decided to call at this point to see if I could find out a status. I was put on hold for a bit and then told that they were in fact "just starting" on my return that very afternoon (how convenient). Three more days passed and I heard nothing. I called again and was told "they're still working on them, someone will call you when they are done".
I'm no one special, aside from the house I don't have any complicated deductions. I have people around me with stocks, annuities, charities, kids, medicare and all kinds of additional info to deal with that would go into other places and have their taxes done while they sat there within an hour. I get that such businesses are crazy busy during this time of year and I wasn't looking for anything special. But I was beginning to feel more like an inconvenience than I customer.
Fast forward to the next week, it is tax day and I have still heard nothing. Contemplating my next move I happened upon the business's Facebook page, where there seemed to be no shortage of effort to post daily about their desire to help their customers as I sit there, frustrated on tax day, with no clue what the status of my return is and seemingly no one concerned enough to call me and let me know.
By 1:30 I've heard nothing, so I call. I'm put on hold for a few minutes and talked to a very nice woman who was equally dumbfounded as to why my taxes had not yet been filed, saying that I had dropped them off weeks ago and they should be done. But, the manager I originally met with was in a meeting and she would need to talk to him. I'm at least feeling at this point that I am not the insane, a-hole customer now that an employee there is agreeing with me that this timetable has been ludicrous.
I get a call back and I am told they are not done and they they will need to file an extension. An extension?!? This is ridiculous. I ask if she could just find out for me what the cost of doing business with them is, because I am ready to come pickup my paperwork and go somewhere else. She needs to check and call me back.
When I get the next call around 2:30 I am being told that they are NOW working on finishing the return and they will be done by 5:30 if I am available to come pick them up. Then, barely 40 minutes later I get another call that they are done. ??????
So we went from weeks of nothing, to needing an extension and now in 40 minutes they're done?!?!
I don't fault anyone in this industry for being overwhelmed this time of year. But, I wouldn't consider myself a high-strung individual. The woman on the phone said I was more than patient. I don't think my initial expectation of a response to an email was outlandish. Certainly not after discovering that so much effort was put forth to post so often on their social media page asking for folks to reach out to them about any concerns or making glib posts about people who wait till the last minute to do their taxes.
I don't think the customer is always right. I work in I.T. Sometimes the customer can be a real jerk. But, when the customer contacts me, I get back to them. When the customer has an issue, it is my job to resolve it. And when the customer asks me for the status on something that's been out there for three weeks and my response is "Oh, just starting on that this afternoon as a matter of fact" what that really means is that I've been blowing off their task or forgot and have been called out on it. I don't then make them wait another week and a half to resolve after that and then leave it up to the customer to force me to do my job by having them have to call me repeatedly.
The entire experience was a stressful nightmare. Next year I'm going to H&R Block. read more
