Homer's Travels: I Usually Don't Complain ... Too Much ... But ...

Monday, April 14, 2014

I Usually Don't Complain ... Too Much ... But ...

Every year since I don't know when I have used TurboTax to do my taxes.  I never had any problem until this year.

I bought it on Amazon.com (downloaded it) and proceeded to install it in early February which is fairly late for me. I usually jump at doing my taxes in early January. There were no errors during the install but when I fired it up and tried to start a new return - ERROR #19649282137. It would not load. I went to the Intuit site (Intuit makes TurboTax) and went to their forums and looked for my error. I was not the only one having the problem. I put myself on a list stating I was experiencing the error and waited. A few days later, still early February, someone posted a potential solution on the forum. It suggested that a specific Windows update be uninstalled. I tried it and it fixed the problem. Actually, it fixed several problems and annoyances I'd been having with Windows and Quicken (another Intuit product).

Over the next few weeks I received emails from TurboTax saying they still didn't have a fix and gave me a coupon code to use TurboTax online for free (I actually received three codes - I guess I must of signed up for the problem status updates three times). This was nice of them but, since I'd already gotten it to work, I ignored the coupons and filed my taxes sometime in mid March without anymore problems.

Well, today I received another email from TurboTax. The email is dated today, April 14, 12:44 PM. This is the day before taxes are due. The email listed a solution to the Error #19649282137. You just had to uninstall a specific Windows update.

Makes you wonder. I consider myself to be a bit more tech savvy than most. I knew where to look for potential solutions and I knew how to implement the solution. It was relatively easy to do. What about all those users out there who aren't tech savvy? Did they wait two months for a solution? Did they wait for a solution they could have had two months earlier? It's not their fault for being tech naive. It's TurboTax's fault for not getting this solution out at least a month earlier than it did.

I still like TurboTax. I will very likely continue to use it, but their tech support ... it leaves something to be desired.

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