Used TurboTax since 2008. No More.

[evergreenvt]

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.

[mesquitebean]

You've outlined the problems with 2019 TurboTax well in regards to not activating at this point in time.  I realize this is anecdotal, but I still have my 2019 TurboTax installed on my PC using Win 10, and it opens and launches OK with no request to re-enter the license code.  So I don't know why yours asked for it again, or were you reinstalling or tried to update the software?  [EDIT:  Or maybe you had a configuration change in your system as I explained in a second comment below.]

      In any case, if you wish, you can fairly easily let Intuit/TurboTax know your experience and opinion at the highest level; i.e, the Office of the President of Intuit.   Here's how:

You can contact the Office of the President of Intuit at the page linked below, and they claim they will report back to you within 1 business day.    In the contact form there, you can enter your narrative that explains your problem and product dissatisfaction, including the bad advice you got from Customer Support to purchase a new copy of the 2019 software.   I don't know how they will respond, but they need to hear from dissatisfied customers concerning their products.

https://www.intuit.com/company/contact/office-of-the-president/

[mesquitebean]

ADDENDUM

         Oh, I will add this:

If you made any changes to your computer system after originally installing 2019 software a few years ago, it might ask for the activation code again, such as if you installed a new drive, and in some cases, even the presence or absence in regards to a thumb drive.  For example, for some users in the past we saw that if they installed while a thumb or ext. drive was present, then later tried to reinstall when a thumb drive or ext. drive was not present, the program thought it was a "different" computer system.  It also happened for some the other way around.  In other words, if there was a configuration change after the time of original installation.   So if you made any changes, that might be what caused it to ask you again for the activation code, although it is not possible to activate the 2019 product at this point in time.