TurboTax's website falsely claims, "No matter how you file, TurboTax backs your taxes for the full 7-year life of your tax return, guaranteed"
I received a notice from IRS about a continuing issue with my parents' 2019 return. I went to TT Desktop to fire up the program but it was not active - and I could not locate the paper insert that came with the CD to re-enter the activation code.
I phoned TT support with my sad story and we established that I did indeed have legitimate access to the program. But the call center rep said that they could not re-activate the program, and told me that if I wanted to access my parents' *.tax file I had to buy another copy of the program. When I asked him where he expected me to find a retail copy of TT 2019, he actually said, "Try Best Buy." But he also said that since I was now unable to use the program, I could apply for a refund of the purchase price and gave me a link to the refund page.
The refund page said, sure, you can have a refund: Just as soon as you produce the original paper receipt from Costco from the spring of 2020. Because, after all, doesn't EVERYBODY keep receipts for nonbusiness expenses for five solid years?
I took the call center rep's advice and found an unopened copy of 2019 on Ebay. But when I attempted to activate it, it wouldn't work. Another call to TT Support filled me in on the actual truth: You weren't going to activate it because it was too old, fresh activation code or not. What that also means, of course, is that if I had changed computers and reinstalled the program, you wouldn't have let me use it whether I had the original code or not. You told me to buy something I couldn't use. Then I got the same "You can have a refund story."
So I applied for a refund - and of course it was denied because I hadn't purchased the program from one of your preferred vendors. So I'm without access to the information and out the purchase price of the replacement.
I was once a QuickBooks Pro Advisor until the fees got too ridiculous; I've migrated my business and two businesses I help away from QB. I stopped bothering to renew Quicken, a program I'd used since 1990, several years ago. TT will be the last Intuit product I give up on.
