Customer Reviews

TurboTax Deluxe 2003 [Old Version]

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(15)
1 star:		(97)

 

 

I have been using TurboTax and TurboTax Deluxe for 7 years very happily until today. I just installed TurboTax Deluxe for 2003 and aside from the plethora of advertisements I discovered that it does not walk me through Schedule D for capital gains anymore. In order to have that feature, I should have bought TurboTax Premiere at a higher price. Their products for the most part are very good, once the bugs are worked out of them. BUT, their marketing policies are very bad. First the rebate stuff, which I detest, and now having to upgrade to a more expensive version for features which were always included. No more Intuit products for me, sadly. I am now forced into using other vendors' products. This product would be fine for users who don't have entries on Schedule D.

I live in one state and work in another. I used TurboTax Deluxe for tax year 2002. TurboTax is supposed to be able to perform multi-state tax returns. Unfortunately, the calculations that put a value in the "Credit for taxes paid to other states" didn't work properly and overstated the credits. One state audited the return, which resulted in a penalty + interest. Repeated contacts via voice and email to Intuit have not been returned. A bug report was submitted to Intuit which detailed the incorrect calculation formula and a calculation that should have been used, again with no response from Intuit. I will be looking for another source of tax software for my 2003 returns.

Been a loyal Quicken/Turbotax users for ten years. Very disappointed in the import with Turbotax 2004 (Tax Year 2003).

Main reason for sticking with the two products is the nice compatibility they've always had in the past.

Attempting to import Quicken 2004 data into Turbotax gives a "No information exists for Quicken." error.

No free support via phone. Phone support is $14.95 per incident if you can get through and only 8-5 on M-F. Also offer online chat for support also only 8-5 and M-F. Not very convenient for the home user. Got disconnected on the chat on the first try. Second attempt just received links on how to import txf files. Those files are supposed to be for importing from non-Intuit products. Msg'd this to the very junior tech support and his answer was "this is a new version for both TurboTax and Quicken, maybe this will be fixed in the January release." New version? It's a new version every year for both products.

After the poor quality of the Quicken 2004 product, I'm very concerned with the quality of the Turbotax 2004 product.

I used TurboTax Premier successfully in 2001 and 2002. The software is exceptional. However, I had the same problem as was already described, when trying to install Turbotax Premier 2003 into my PC. The "unable to install necessary version files" dialog box was repeadedly displayed and so I spent $20 buying the priviledge of a single phone call to Intuit's tech support. I was told that since my hard drive was not the C-Drive, which the program needed to read as the boot drive, the software could not be installed. And that it should be returned. Well, I'll gladly return the software for a refund, but wonder why previous editions didn't have the same hangup. Perhaps Intuit should spend a little more time developing their software before sending it to those of us who previously relied on it.

Both Turbotax and Quicken get worse every year. Then last year they piled the DRM C-Dilla Spyware on us, and I fortunately moved to Taxcut. Now, Taxcut has a number of quirks, and Turbotax has an edge on a few things, like calculating employee stock purchase plan sales, etc. If you sold ESPP shares in 03, Turbotax is probably better for you...

For almost anything else, Taxcut can handle it quite as well, although they could take a bit better guidance of the user, TT is still ahead of these. But, TT is working more on DRM and service tie-ins than quality of actual product, and their customer service, so Taxcut is a promising alternative...

As with many of the reviews, I have also used Turbotax since its inception. Todate, (FEB 01 04), I have been clicking on updates to get the software to work. I am in full agreement with other reviewers, Tech support is very poor. After attempting to send my taxes online, I chose to print, only to find it had font problems and requested loading them from Turbotax........That was a failure...only to find I had to manually transfer them from disk.... and to date the package is not complete... I have to wait for another update to actually complete my taxes.... I used to love turbotax and years ago it took 30 minutes to complete my taxes. I have put 2 weeks into this package and still am not done. I think the reason people use software taxes is for guidance and assistance through the tax filing process. When there is more fighting with the software than the taxes, its time to rethink paying for software that is totally flawed. TurboTax is sure driving me to another software package next year!....I have used software and programed from the inception of DOS and have used freeware and shareware that is put together better than the 2003 (Deluxe) package.

I live in one state and work in another. As you go through the interview process in TurboTax, it will ask you what your home state was on the last day of the year, and I selected my state accordingly.

Later in the process, it asks you to fill in your W-2 information. Box 15 of the W-2 indicates the state your employer is in. So I entered the state from my W-2 as prompted by TurboTax. After leaving/saving the information, I came back to it to review it and noticed that the box 15 state was now set to the state in which I live, which I selected earlier in the process. So I tried to change it back, but to no avail. TurboTax continues overwriting whatever you enter in Box 15 with your home state. So if you work in one state and live in another, you're out of luck. Your tax forms will show incorrect information.

I tried several times to get help from tech support via live chat. No disrespect intended, but the support reps on the chat were in New Dehli, India and seemed to have trouble understanding the problem. They referred me to the online help, which didn't help me at all. I tried to tell them that I found what I thought was a bug in their software. Then they referred me to an 800 number, where I could pay $20 for the privilege of speaking to a human about a bug in their software. I saved the chat session because it got to be so outrageously funny. At one point I described all of the steps to reproduce the problem, and their next response was (I'm not kidding here) "So have we solved your problem for you today?". Huh??? Oh by the way, the live chat wait times are meaningless, too. 5 minutes turned out to be 40 minutes in reality. God help you if you need support from Intuit. You can pay $20 or have yourself a load of fun trying the live chat--you won't get any help whatsoever but it's amusing if you have extra time on your hands.

I'm going to take this horrid piece of software back to the store and get my money back. If your tax preparation situation is straightforward, and you're sure you won't need support, this might work for you. Otherwise, avoid it. It's got bugs and the tech support is abysmal.

Few days ago I bought TT deluxe. When I ran into a problem, I thought I would email them about the it. To my surprise I discovered that Intuit has very meticulously closed all possible ways of emailing them about any problem with turbotax -- they dont have a customer service email address, and they dont want you to reply to their emails. I decided to call their customer service. After waiting for a long time (much longer than their estimate) I gave up and decided to contact them through online chat. Their chat interface turned out to have bugs. After trying for an hour to bring up the chat window, and a further wait of 25 minutes, a rep came online. He promptly told me that because of a technical glitch he cannot address my issue, and I must contact them the next day. I said that I was very unhappy with the wait and the non-resolution. He said that he also feels "depressed" about it!

I didn't give TT a poor rating because it made a serious error on my taxes last year - it was on a very obscure point, and I don't imagine any tax software is free of error. Tne reasons are:
1) When I told them about the error, in full detail, the only response I got was a form suggestion to check the FAQ.
2) After I overrode the error, it kept using the wrong value in many places; for example, I paid a small penalty on state tax because I didn't notice in time that it imported its original incorrect value into the state form.
They appear to be putting more energy into selling addons than making sure the basic product works. I'm off to a different program this year.

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You have been connected to D. Twain.
D. Twain: Hello Dan, how may I help you today?

dan : I am trying to download W2 and investment income. It starts updating partner information but can not complete

dan : It does the same thing whether I try for W2 or investments

D. Twain: The download will be available by hte end of this week.
D. Twain: I apologise for the inconvenience.

dan : Does that mean on friday it will work or when?

D. Twain: Yes.

D. Twain: Dan, Is there anything else I can assist you with today?