Complaints

• Initial Complaint

  02/23/2024

  Complaint Type:

  Customer Service Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  Paid $200 deposit for tax filing appointment on 2/8. Was warned with reminder emails if I were late to the appointment it would have to be rescheduled. On the day of my appointment, preparer was 15+ minutes late. I had to call to start my appointment. The appointment began with an unprepared tax preparer who explained the tax codes incorrectly to me. My trust in the services was compromised. Appointment was about 10 minutes and not completed. Asked for my $200 back and was met with an a response from the operations manager that blamed me for not understanding the tax preparers mistakes.

  

  Business response

  03/14/2024

  This client was upset that her preparer called 15 minutes late due to her previous appointment running late.  Then apparently, she did not like the preparer - if she was as negative to the preparer on the phone as she was with me on the phone, I can understand why the conversation was short (one of her complaints).When I called her, I apologized again that the preparer was late in calling, then listened to her dislike of the preparer - claiming she did not know her job.  Her preparer is an Enrolled Agent in the tax field and is very qualified.  However, I offered to have one of our senior preparers call her and finish her tax return.  This still did not seem to satisfy her. She said she just wasn't happy and wanted a refund. When I reiterated what I was willing to do - have one of our senior preparers finish her returns, she demanded that the customer should always have their way - good customer service.  I tried to relate Traveltax's relationship to our clients to her relationship to her patients - if a patient did not like a nurse, the patient wouldn't just leave the hospital without paying for services - one would expect giving her a new nurse would be the solution.  Chloe became very upset saying how dare I compare her patient relationship to our situation - claiming I had no customer service skills and demanding a full refund. Then she threatened that she would put in a complaint with BBB and seek legal action.  After an hour on the phone with her, I re-iterated my position and told her she was free to do what you felt she needed to.  Our whole team worked on her file before it even got to her appointment with the tax preparer who then had to verify everything in her file.  She used one of our valuable tax appointment slots which kept another client from getting an appointment before the deadline and was ungracious when we tried to accommodate a solution.  I have attached the Engagement of Services Agreement she signed prior to TravelTax beginning to work on her file. We are invoicing her for the full appointment.  She still has the option for us to finish her return or going somewhere else and paying for the service again.

  Donna R*******

  Operations Manager

  Customer response

  03/15/2024

  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and have determined that this does not resolve my complaint. 
  

  Once again Donna R*******, the operations manager is lying about our conversation. First detail to note, the preparer did not call me late, the preparer did not call me at all. I, the client, called and was transferred to the preparer because I had been waiting more than their 15 minutes cut off to receive the call to start my appointment as the business communicated would have happened. Donna is apologizing for a late call that was never made. I never stated I did not like the preparer, assumptions and putting words in my mouth is completely unprofessional.  I told Donna that I did not feel comfortable that the preparer was unprepared and relayed to me incorrect information. Information that was confirmed to be incorrect by my travel agency, my employer. I deserve to want something as important as my taxes to be done correctly, especially if I am paying for it to be done correctly. After Donna offered for me to work with a senior tax preparer, at that point my trust was already compromised (which I told her) and I just wanted to move on to do my taxes elsewhere since I had already been told incorrect information about my taxes from one of TravelTax's preparers. I did not demand the customer should always have their way, which is another lie from Donna. I told her customer service was poor because instead of instilling confidence in me to trust the senior preparer she turned my concerns on me and brought up my profession and how I "should expect new nurses to make mistakes and not know how to do their job immediately." I tried to make it clear to Donna multiple times that has nothing to do with my taxes. To my dismay, I had to say plenty of times the analogy was irrelevant to my taxes, but regardless if a patient wanted a new nurse, I would allow that patient to have a new nurse no contestation and I definitely would not turn a patient's complaint back on them and ask them what they do for work and tell them that they should expect a new person at their job to make mistakes and not know how to do their job immediately. Donna expecting me to understand that I should be okay with a new tax preparer making mistakes while filing my taxes to me, is not appropriate. As a paying customer, I am expecting my taxes to be done correctly. Again I did not say, customers should always have their way, I told her customers, patients, clients, etc are almost never satisfied at the first presentation of a solution, so the response is not to turn complaints on them, the proper response is to instill trust. Donna is describing me  as negative, not surprising being that she told me during our phone call that I was defensive, and easily offended. Her customer service approach isn't reflective of a business trying to solve a customer's problems. She did not hesitate to make me feel that I was the problem. However, it is clear those attributes are deflections as proven by the lies and assumptions that are being made. I never threatened legal action, those words did not leave my mouth and quite frankly taking legal action would be a waste of my time, so that is another lie. I said I would be filing a complaint with BBB (which I obviously did) and would try to dispute the charge with my bank. Donna's response was telling me that "your file will be shredded." That is proof that TravelTax will not provide me with the option to complete my taxes. 

  
  Regards,
  
  ***** *******

• Initial Complaint

  04/10/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  Date of Transaction 04/04/23 Amount $75 Business committed to provide Tax consult Refund Business is not answering to my calls/emails order # *****

  

  Business response

  04/15/2023

  We have a scheduling system for clients to use on our website.  They first pay and then are automatically moved to the scheduler to schedule their day and time for an consultation.  We have between 15 and 20 consults scheduled each day in the system and have not had any other issues of a client not being able to schedule after they had paid.  Mr. **** says he was not given the chance to schedule.  I have checked and the system is working correctly.  I talked to Mr. **** and apologized that he had not been able to talk to anyone - explaining that we are extremely busy and are trying our very best to answer the high volume of calls before the April 18th deadline.  I scheduled consult for Friday 14th, and he seemed pleased with the information provided.  No refund, service provided.

  Operations Manager

• Initial Complaint

  01/18/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Order Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  I filed my taxes with this company and they mailed my return to the wrong state and left out forms. They never alerted me to their mistake until the IRS mailed me a letter asking for the forms. Then I receive another letter stating they needed my signature. I had to take time off work and mail them the request certified. I received a third letter now stating one of my forms amounts was filled out incorrectly. We are now coming into 2023 and my taxes from last year are still not filed. The now claim the new letter I received will be addressed in the order it was received. I already left them a review which they were not happy about. I paid close to 600.00 for them to fill out my taxes properly and I have had to do a majority of the work.

  

  Business response

  01/20/2023

  This client worked in the US Virgin Islands during 2021.  We needed to mail a copy of the Federal 1040 along with supporting documents to both the IRS and to US Virgin Islands.  After we mailed the IRS packet, we realized that we missed a form needed in the IRS packet.  In the process of correcting this, we realized that the IRS has a separate mailing address for 1040 returns to document USVI returns so we mailed the corrected packet to the corrected address with a note to the IRS for the delay.  We did not inform the client of the missed form or corrected mailing address because we caught it and corrected it before it became an issue. When the client called the IRS to see what the holdup was [We informed the client that we had responded to the original letter but had to wait until it was processed by the IRS. We had proof of the mailings (both original and the corrected mailing). Client did not want to wait so we told her she could call the IRS and wait on hold for hours, but we could not.] When she finally got through to the IRS, they told her what they had in her file (informing her of our note with the second mailing explaining the fact that we had mistakenly mailed the package to the IRS address dictated by the client's home address and not the IRS address for USVI return documentation). Instead of the client acknowledging that we had corrected the original error, she was upset that we did not call her and tell her that we had to resend the package even though it was done in a timely manner. She assumed that we were "hiding" the fact from her.  Then the new IRS agent said they needed a "wet" signature on the 1040 form instead of a copy of her signature page.  We mail in hundreds of returns each year and the IRS does not require an original "wet" signature! If she had called and asked us, we would have told her this.  She did not.  She took time off from work and went to the post office and expedited the signature page again to the IRS (spent almost $30 to do this).  Even though we would have told her not to do that, we re-imbursed her the mailing cost to help correct her perception of this whole situation.  She informed us that she would correct her review once she received the check.  We sent it certified. We have closed this file in our office.

  Sincerely, 

  Donna * R*******

  Operations Manager

  TravelTax, LLC

• Initial Complaint

  09/30/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Customer Service Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  I contacted this business in April of 2021 to get an appointment to do my taxes. They got back to me at a much later date and informed me the earliest appointment was in September. I told them I wouldn’t even know my work schedule for the month of September until a much later date, and they said no worries if I needed to cancel it I could. I finally found someone else to do my taxes at an earlier date and cancelled my appointment with travel tax a month in advance. They came back at me with a $150 cancellation fee, saying if I had cancelled a few days prior, I wouldn’t have a fee, but that they had already started inputting my data (which they didn’t even half a good portion of my tax papers and I had not spoken to anyone or been updated by anyone at all). I was never contacted and told they would be starting on my stuff a month before my appointment and before I had ever spoken with a tax professional, so I tried to reason with them that the fee is not right and I should not have to pay it. They are now threatening me with adding a late fee if I do not pay it by October 4th. I feel that these are incredibly shady business practices. How did they have no time to get me an earlier appointment, but they had time to start inputting my data, without telling me, a month early? And then charge me 150? I realize I signed for the late fee once my data was entered, but I had no idea that meant that they would enter my data at some random date a month before my appointment and without my knowledge.

  

  Business response

  01/26/2023

  I understand the client's frustration. Looking at the situation, I decided to refund the $150 because the scheduling phone call cannot be verified regarding what was said. This was refunded today.  The client says that the scheduler said she could just cancel if the appointment conflicted with her schedule. Our schedulers expect the client to complete their taxes with us if we are giving them one of our valuable tax appointment slots, so I question whether they would say "you can just cancel", but rather "you can just reschedule if you need to.  However, since I do not know which scheduler, she spoke to, I will give the client the benefit of the doubt. The courteous action would have been for the client to contact us when she decided to have someone else do her taxes instead of keeping the appointment slot with us. As to the lack of communication: We do not have an unlimited number of tax preparers so we must delegate the prep work to many departments. If we only did a few hundred returns each year, this situation may not have arisen.  However, with over 4500 clients, we constantly try to improve our communication and available appointment slots each year.  We communicate a tentative time frame of when the file will leave our documents department and go to scheduling.  Then at scheduling, we give them the date of their tax appointment.  The file then goes to Data Entry department in the order it was received to be data entered into our system - this could be completed anytime between scheduling and their appointment. When data entry is finished, the Preparer Assistant then reaches out to introduce themselves as the contact from that point forward.  This is when we were notified that the client had completed her tax return somewhere else without the curtesy of letting us know.  The engagement contract that the client signed and uploaded with her complaint shows she was aware of the cancellation fee for not notifying us. We are a highly specialized tax office which deals with the complexities of multi-state tax returns in addition to tax compliance for tax home maintenance.  There are only a handful of tax offices who do taxes for all 50 states, Canadian returns, and US territories correctly.  When one of our appointment slots are wasted when a simple phone call could have opened the slot for another client, it is extremely frustrating - especially when we know another medical multi-state traveler could have had their taxes completed with us, but instead we had to turn them away. I know Jennifer was only looking at her own situation but wish she could have tried to see our point of view. Again, because I cannot verify the exact words of the phone conversation during scheduling, I have refunded the $150 today (1/26/2023) on the same card she paid on.  Donna * R*******, Operations Manager, TravelTax, LLC

*Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business. ↩