I usually do my own taxes, but with the sale of pokerchiptricks.com and all of the other miscellaneous income from web sites this year, I was more than a little confused. I started with the free TaxCut federal version from H&R Block. Once I got to the part for State taxes, I went ahead and purchased the Michigan version for $24.95. My credit card ended up being charged twice for some reason.

After completing my taxes to the best of my ability I figured it was probably a smart idea to have a tax professional do them. I called H&R Block on Wednesday of last week and made an appointment for Thursday after work. I stopped in with my stack of receipts and records. An hour and a half later I was walking out the door with some homework. I forgot about some of the home business use deductions/expenses I could take. I called back the next day, giving the amounts I came up with. She said everything would be done and I could stop in after work.

So I stopped back in and spent nearly another hour having her explain everything to me. She said it was one of the larger piles of paper she had seen for a tax return. If I had gone with my TaxCut run through I would have had quite a few mistakes, so I’m glad I had a pro take care of it. After a $40 coupon, it cost me $625 which I think is a bit high, but H&R Block has their Guarantee thing which is part of that total price, so if they made a mistake, they pay for it, not me. They charge according to the number of forms and everything too, so with a complicated return, the cost goes way up.

The tax professional I worked with and the woman working the front desk were both very courteous to me each time I came in or talked to them on the phone. Overall I had a very good experience at their office and was surprised how friendly they were considering it was the last couple of days of tax season.

This weekend I jumped online and sent an email to customer support explaining my position with the double charge for the state version of their software and also asking if I could get refunded for both charges since I went in to one of their offices and paid a pretty penny to get my taxes prepared. A day later I received a message explaining I would be refunded for both charges and they didn’t ask me anything. Not a single question about what office I visited (they may have looked it up on their own) or anything. I don’t know how many other times I’ve had bad customer service experiences where the company didn’t realize the value of a customer and word of mouth. I’ll highly recommend using H&R Block to anyone in the future.