TurboTax and its vanishing negative reviews

January 2, 11:31 AMGadgets ExaminerDan Appleman

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Customers are not enthusiastic about their tax software
options this year.

Recently TurboTax backtracked on fees for printing and filing multiple returns after widespread complaints about this policy.

A reader recently complained to me about the removal of over 250 negative reviews about TurboTax from Amazon.com. I had very mixed feelings about this. On one hand, it does seem somewhat dishonest for Amazon.com to remove negative reviews as long as they are accurate. At the same time, it seems unfair to Intuit to leave up negative reviews if, due to changes in their pricing policy, those reviews are no longer accurate. At the same time, it also seems unfair to just delete the reviews without, perhaps, a courtesy explanation to the reviewers (whose Email addresses Amazon has). It’s an interesting dilemma.

Given that the primary purpose of reviews is to give guidance to potential users of a product, removal of the negative reviews that focused on the earlier pricing policy would tend to improve the accuracy of guidance that they provide. So removing those reviews is reasonable.

However, not everyone agrees with this, nor it seems was the pay to print policy the only thing annoying customers. Recent negative posts still outnumber positive posts by a good amount leaving TurboTax with about a two star rating on Amazon.com. Some of the negative posts are valid – TurboTax is indeed generally more expensive than the comparable TaxCut software. Some are not completely accurate, or are still based on earlier pricing.

Not that H&R Block’s TaxCut is doing so much better – it only gets 2.5 or 3 stars. Many of the complaints there are that they are now charging for state E-files (which according to complaints were previously free – note, TurboTax also charges for state e-files).

And let us not this time forget TaxAct, that is less expensive than both.

Keep in mind that for simple returns, free filing is available from TurboTax, TaxAct and other providers.