I have never been more disappointed in using Turbo Tax and I intend to share my experience with anyone that will listen to my story. I have used Turbo Tax for many years and had no issues with Turbo Tax until this year. I work odd hours and usually work on doing my taxes at 2 or 3 am due to this. I started to do my taxes a little over a week ago because it never took long to do my taxes. Turbo Tax states that there is 7/24 support to help if I needed it. I use our car 80% of the time to get my wife and I to and from work around 7200 to 8000 miles a year. I keep a home office and spend a lot of time to hone my skills to keep getting better and the job I do at work. I spoke to one of you tax experts and confirmed that I could deduct this on my Federal and State taxes. I have taken this deduction every year with no issues. Last year our return was $191.00 from Federal taxes and $626 from State taxes. This year something had changed on the Turbo Tax format and I needed help to navigate these changes and no one was there for me despite the fact that you say you will be there to do so. The Turbo tax program would not let me enter these items and asked me for info I did not understand unlike the years before. The fact that Turbo Tax offices are only open certain hour on the east coast an there was no "Chat with a live agent option available for me" as I needed I became very frustrated and stressed out. I called and spoke with a rep named Jlisa who seemed very friendly. I was running short on time to meet the filing deadline after something very strange occurred. Being short on time I decided to File for an extension for our Federal Taxes for more time and go to the FREE Cal file tax site for State Taxes. The Turbo Tax program prompted me telling me that it could file our extension for Federal for free for us. It then asked how we would be paying for Turbo Tax, so I entered the payment information. I then went to the FREE State e-file site and I was blocked from filing because Turbo Tax had a filing for us pending? I was not able to stop Turbo Tax for doing this and just use Turbo Tax for our Federal tax filing? Then I went to our bank account the following morning and Turbo Tax had charged us $99.98 and it was pending? How could Turbo Tax be billing us before I had even completed our taxes? I was at this point I spoke to "Jlisa". She seemed kind and understanding, she promised me that the hold on our account would be removed and we would not be billed. She told us that she was sorry for the issues that had prevented me for filing as we had done so easily in the past. She told us that this was happening because we had chosen not to upgrade to the most expensive Turbo Tax available. Jlisa went on to say, not to worry, she would make the fully upgraded Turbo Tax version available to us for free and assured me that we would not be billed to our bank account. Jlisa told us, that when I got off work that night, this would already be set up, and I would be able to easily fill in the information for mileage and home office as I had in years before. When I got home from work early in the morning, I logged into Turbo Tax and we had not been upgraded to the full version at all, as promised. In addition to this, rather than the hold for $99.98 from Turbo Tax on our bank account being removed, as promised, we were billed and the money was taken from our account. After the rep Jlisa had lied to us and not followed through on her promise, knowing the tax deadline was less than 24 hours away, and there was no one available at Turbo Tax to help us, I had to skip the mileage and home office deductions on our tax filing due to this. Since I had not received any confirmation for our Federal extension, I went ahead with the tax filing with Turbo Tax, rather than face penalties, knowing that Turbo Tax had the ability to amend these issues. I called Turbo Tax support later that day and spoke to the representative, Ariel, and everything was messed up. I had updated our email and new phone number, yet Ariel told me that it was not correct in the system. Everything Ariel was telling me was wrong. Ariel told me that she did not know why Jlisa did not follow through, and that we would receive a refund to our bank account in 7-10 days? Ariel went on to tell me that there was nothing that Turbo Tax could or would do, that now we would have to contact the IRS if we wanted to make any amendments. Our tax returns for 2016 were Federal Taxes + $191 and State Taxes + $626, however, this year, 2017, we ended up owing Federal Taxes - $461 and State Taxes + $485, due to the folly of the Turbo Tax support team that failed us. If anything, in the year 2017, we had more mileage, and I spent more time working in our home office. This cost us around $793 in money that should have come back to us on our combined taxes. In addition to this, the Turbo Tax program, would not allow us to complete our tax return unless we submitted to allow Intuit / Turbo Tax to be allowed to use our personal information and then proceeded to bomb us with credit card offers. The day before I had been talking to Jlisa on our landline and had to leave to take my wife to work, I asked her to call me back on my cell phone to deal with the issues and she did. However, when I was speaking with Ariel, on my cell phone, while taking my wife to work, and asked her to call me back on my landline, at first, she told me she did not have the ability to, and then said she would, and never called back. Ariel told me, while I was talking to her, that my current email and phone number were not even in the system. Now we are out nearly $800 and have been totally let down and misled by Turbo Tax and their representatives. Shame on you Turbo Tax for not being there as you promised. Your very disappointed long-time customers,
The Kepplers
