The demise of Lacerte support

So we like to think of "community" as a place to help resolve issues. So what is the problem, maybe your peers could help if support couldn't?

Additionally, sometimes you can e-mail Support within the program -- complete with an attached file,if necessary -- and Support gets back to you within a week, even if not right away. Sometimes their answer isn't very helpful, but sometimes it is.

You know, I'd like to comment on this. We've been with Lacerte since 1990. I do the computer support in our office and up until two years ago, I felt a real rapport working with Lacerte's tech support people. They were sincerely helpful and interested in problem resolution and if Person A couldn't help, they'd grab Person B for assistance and work with me until things were resolved. The only time I had to wait for a call was when we needed an actual programmer to work with us (that was a doozy of a problem!). Now, if I come up with an issue that goes beyond the knowledge of the Tier 1 phone people (which is about 90% of the time because I can handle all the basic stuff easily), I am told that it will be 4 - 5 business days before Tier 2 people will contact me by phone to help me. 4 -5 days???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In 4 - 5 days, the clients will be at another tax service or the preparers will have lynched me!

Seriously, this is a real issue. A I stated, we have used Lacerte since 1990, and because of this support and the haphazard implementation of DMS they have provided, we are considering switching programs. If Lacerte actually cares about improving its support services, I have a few suggestions.

I would suggest that if the Tier 1 support people are not capable of resolving a caller's issues, then there should be a process in place to IMMEDIATELY transfer us to a Tier 2 support person who can resolve more complicated issues. There should be a Tier 3 level also that handles the really bizarre problems - and that would fairly be a level requiring a 4 - 5 day callback wait. But I do not appreciate having to call Lacerte's tech support, being forced to spend an hour on the phone with someone who knows less about networking and computers than I do (I even ran into one who didn't understand that motherboards have limited memory expandability!), and then being told it will be another week before we can get help with the problem. That is not Customer Service, it is CUSTOMER AVOIDANCE.

As for this Lacerte Community, it is certainly a good resource for people looking for help with understanding changes in the tax programs or looking for answers to across the board software glitches Lacerte hasn't fixed yet. I can see how that will reduce your Tech Support call overhead. And it is good to be able to exchange ideas and thoughts on the program with other users.

But I want to also comment on LacerteGuru's response in this thread and I quote, ---"So we like to think of 'community' as a place to help resolve issues. So what is the problem, maybe your peers could help if support couldn't?"--- Sir, I am hoping that you somehow misspoke yourself and that your words do not reflect Intuit's attitude towards technical support of its products. Tech Support EXISTS to resolve issues. Your peers should be the FIRST resource you turn to, not the LAST - that would be Tech Support. There simply shouldn't be any issues that tech support can't resolve. Any good business these days that offers computer-based products supplies a tier-based technical support system whose goal is to ensure the end-user's needs are met. This attitude strongly suggests to me that Intuit is attempting to reduce their technical support costs by limiting the actual support they intent to provide. And, frankly, it reflects much of the attitude I've heard when calling tech support in the last few years - a "I don't know ... I guess you're going to have to just live with it" attitude. Tax preparers work in a service-based industry and we put our customers first; if Intuit wants to continue to sell to us, I suggest it consider adopting a similar policy.

After 5 phone calls and over 5 hours on the phone my issue was resolved in what has to be one of the most frustrating experiences I have ever encountered with a vendor.

I had purchased Tax Planner in early November and could never get the correct prep file to download. It turns out whoever processed the sales order placed the Tax Planner on our QuickBooks account instead of our Lacerte account. Over the course of those 5 hours I spoke to probably close to 25 people and it is amazing that none understood their system well enough to identify a problem that should have been very obvious.

A couple of lessons for the "community" 1- You have NO chance of getting a question answered by anyone in base customer service or sales, immidiately ask for a supervisor 2- Technical support people are good but have their hands tied as to what the can do to fix a problem 3 - Ask for a senior customer support person when all else fails.

As to the e-mail support - IT DOES NOT WORK - I attempted to e-mail my problem at least a dozen times and every time it came back with a system error.

I stand by my original statement and second the comments of Tesseract, the course that this company is on should make all users concerned and reconsidering their tax software vendor.

My apologies. I was simply trying to understand the actual problem. Sounds like it was a prep file issue and that you have it figured out. Very sorry to hear that it was a bad experience. I will forward accordingly.

Bill

I agree that LaCerte support has deteriorated over the past few years. The problem is simply not being able to talk to a support person who can help with our problems. After many years of using the program we DO know the program well. When we call support its because we have a monumental problem we cannot work through. Waiting upwards of 30 to 45 minutes or more cannot be tolerated.