I came to Mr. Dwek's professional accountancy on an acquaintance's recommendation. The task was to prepare and file my self-employment annual tax return. My situation had moderate complexity for an individual tax return, but was nowhere as bad as a corporate tax return.
Things started off on the wrong foot when I spoke to the secretary on the phone - she talked in an abrupt, rude way, had trouble listening to the spelling of my name, and misunderstood what kind of appointment I was requesting. Later on, the same sort of abrupt communication happened between Mr. Dwek and I. Throughout the process of preparing my tax return, Mr. Dwek was impatiently asking me for the next item, the next set of numbers, next, and criticizing my lack of organization and not having added up totals for all the precise categories ahead of time. At the moments when I was dictating things, I caught the occasional mistakes he made while keying in numbers (such as 14000 instead of 1400) and misspelling words like "computor" - this did not inspire my confidence in the quality of his work. He also scolded my itemized income and expense entries for being too precise and time-consuming. Financial manipulations are already stressful in general; the way he treated me only added to the stress.
The service performed for me on this day came out to a $450 professional fee for 1.0 hour of work. Now if I had learned something new from his expertise (such as how to use expenses and deductions more effectively), this consultation might have been worth the money. But I had prepared my own tax return in previous years and was familiar with most of the forms (except 1 or 2 new ones due to recently changed situation), and unfortunately his expertise added no value compared based on the knowledge I came in with. In retrospect, I was better off reading, calculating, and filling out the CRA forms directly by myself.
To top it off, his accounting office only takes cheques as payment, not debit or credit. I don't normally carry a chequebook - c'mon, you charge me all this money and provide no easy way to pay you?
In the end, I am the one who made the mistake in choosing to come here. I let my guard down, and got my just desserts. Caveat emptor read more
