Today we have the tale of two chats with Intuit support for their ProConnect tax software (think of it as a much less user-friendly version of TurboTax on *STEROIDS*…there are definitely no training wheels on this software whatsoever!).
The first chat was lovely and honestly if I could just deal with her rather than the people I had for the first two support tickets that I filed a while ago (when their system duplicated an order and then the followup ticket when it didn’t appear completely sorted out), I’d be a relatively happy camper.
Mind you, unfortunately the system is *STILL* displaying two “user access” fees being pre-ordered despite all of our efforts to try to debug it as browser issue including clearing the cache. Long story short…it’s supposedly only showing one of those hated “user access” fees to be billed in January on the back-end billing system but FireFox and Chrome are still stubbornly showing two fees on the pre-order screen on my end.
That means it’s either a server issue on their end or I’m going to have to go through the refund ticket process yet again even though it’s never properly communicated any status whatsoever via EMAIL as it’s supposed to when the ticket is created and again when it’s processed by their support team.
And that lack of EMAIL was after I’d practically begged them to send me one in the body of the second ticket.
Do keep in mind that Intuit bought out MailChimp so you’d presume they’d have at least some clue how EMAIL is supposed to work and should be expected to actually be able to send them successfully once in a while.
I’d understand if it were sending EMAIL to my domain-hosted EMAIL accounts as those spam filters are *VERY* aggressive. But I’m having them send EMAIL to my GMAIL account (which curiously enough always seems to work for the marketing EMAILs including the one that really pissed me off about that new “user access” fee in the first place) and that GMAIL account has the most lenient spam filter I employ.
So even though it wasn’t a happy answer to the question…the representative was absolutely *OUTSTANDING* and a pleasure to work with.
That’s much more than I can say about the one I reached out to four hours later to make sure I understood the process for e-Filing a superseding Federal/amended North Carolina set of corporate returns which I’ve never done in all the years I’ve done taxes.
The client found some additional transactions during an audit of the fiscal year financials that were relevant to the tax returns after I’d already e-Filed their taxes which is not necessarily unusual. It happens and fortunately the taxing agencies allow us a mechanism to fix it.
In the case of the Federal 1120, if you’re updating a return you’ve already filed and you’re still before the filing deadline…they allow you to supersede the original return with the updated filing so that it is as if the original filing never happened. Sadly, North Carolina Dept of Revenue doesn’t support this so it has to be amended which even though it’s filed electronically ends up being manually processed by a human which can take quite a while given their backlog.
But as you might imagine after I’d been caught out once, I’d rather not go for a second helping if I can avoid it.
I follow the instructions to create a copy of the original return and edit the copy with the updated numbers from the client’s spreadsheet. The client’s happy that these are the final version of the numbers and the with updated tax filings reflecting the bits of those updated numbers that actually affected the returns.
In order to e-File a Federal Form 1120 return, I need a signed version of Form 8879 (there’s an individual and corporate version of it) which acts as an electronic signature page for the return. The 8879 is not filed with the IRS and I have to keep it for three years in case they ever ask for it but it’s also handy (along with the e-Filing confirmation timestamps) when a tax authority questions why there’s not a wet signature on the tax return itself.
Okie, dokie. Let me go print an updated version of it so I can have the client sign off and I can re-submit the returns.
So imagine my surprise when the software demanded that I pay up for another tax return “credit”!
Take it away, Gary Coleman… 🙂
I was under the impression that amended returns were *FREE* as part of the purchase of the return editing/printing/filing credit.
It says so right on the purchase screen:
Now you know the main reason why I initiated the second chat with Intuit support for the day.
I was able to dispose of the other procedural questions fairly quickly to get ProConnect to properly recognise that the Federal return would be a superseded one but that North Carolina would be amended which wasn’t the most obvious with the MANDATORY label for a checkbox adding unnecessary confusion when it turned out that the checkbox wasn’t mandatory for what I was trying to do..
Their support agent was OK up until the point I asked about why the programme was dunning me for another tax return fee when the system had to know that the returns I was updating were already paid in full and I shouldn’t be charged for the updated filing.
Here’s her suggested process:
- Purchase the additional return credit as the tax return is a copy of the original.
- e-File the updated returns.
- Create a refund request ticket (just like the two I’d already done that had just worked just *PEACHY*…NOT!).
- Intuit has 5-7 business days in order to process the refund.
Let me see if I’ve got this straight: I’ve got to fork over a rather sizeable wad of cash just to get this thing re-filed, file another ticket that I guarantee you will not see one EMAIL come my way even though I begged for one in the last ticket, and then wait 5-7 “working days” and pray that whoever is doing the ticket doesn’t screw things up further. Meanwhile, I’m out that money waiting for these miracles to occur. Do I have this right?!?
I wish I could say I was surprised by the answer but I wasn’t:
Yes that is the process everyone must go through
So, essentially Intuit is hitting me up for a 5-7 day interest-free loan and pocketing the interest they make on money I shouldn’t be forking over in the first place and can ill-afford to do so thanks to how cash flow usually works here at The Nerdery.
That’s one of the things that aggravates the living bejeebers out of me about Intuit.
I genuinely *WANT* to like them.
The software generally works even though I found three bugs in this one day without even trying or relying on my skills as a beta tester and once you get used to their quirks, it does work rather better than the training wheels version you get in TurboTax.
ProConnect is generally much cheaper for my low volume of returns per year than comparable professional tax preparation software by orders of magnitude.
But dear Lord…the near constant price-increases and unnecessary cash grabs imposed upon my wallet really piss me off.
A $170 billion market cap company should not be permitted to joyride on their customer’s bank accounts for interest-free loans when they’ve implemented the superseding/amending return process in about as *EVIL* a way as you can possibly do and they really didn’t have to!
How flipping hard would it be to bury the e-File confirmation number or some other identifier in the the document object model (DOM) used to render the page and put a simple *IF* statement round the bit that demands you buy another token just to have it refunded a week later!
I understand the reason they have you make a copy of the return because when you do the amendment, you can really screw up the change tracking and eliminate any possibility of abandoning the amendment process and reverting back to the original filing…especially when you consider the numbers from this year’s return are sucked into the next year’s return to start the data entry.
But it’d truly be trivial to not force the buying of a return credit when it’s not needed. The information is available to them…all it’d take is an intern with a basic understanding of programming to conditionally execute the “we’re sucking more money from you” code only when it’s necessary.
The piss-poor attitude of the second agent is also something we could do without. Funny, that’s not listed as one of the included features of the first bullet item for features for purchased returns but somehow I don’t see marketing being honest about what we can expect on that front…random agents who are awesome but a majority who are somewhere less than that. 🙁