TaxWorks is continuing to draw user complaints about the problems plaguing the rewrite of the company's tax preparation software. And in one post on a Facebook page, on employee acknowledge that TaxWorks has had "a tough start" to this filing season.
The comment came from long-time employee Alan Haacke, who has responded to many blog and Facebook comments for his company. Haacke posted his comments on the Facebook page of Red Gear Technologies, TaxWorks' parent on January 5. However, complaints about the program continue to be posted. These include reported problems with registering the program, an inability to print organizers in anything but an extremely long time and long waits for response from technical support
After Red Gear commented that that wait times are 26 to 30 minutes, a post by Rick Brown on January 21 said that the time quoted "is just the amount of time that it takes to be able to put in your number for a call back. Average time for me to speak to someone from RedGear is about two hours." One long-time user said he was on hold on the support line for 1 hour 55 minutes. When he got through, the support person informed him that a planned update had been pulled because it was not ready.
Many complaints were posted on the TaxWorks blog at the end of December and beginning of January. But for about a week, users were not being allowed to post. In his January 5 Facebook posted, Haacke explained that "The problem is that the blogs were turning extremely vicious. It was a company decision to turn them off for commenting, at least for the time being." However, blog comments were made public again, sometime during the last week. TaxWorks has not responded to requests for comments, although sales VP John Wall said early this month that someone would be made available.
On another January 21 post on the Facebook page, Amanda Pearson complained that "Nothing is working with this program. We can't get through to technical support. New clients are disappearing."
