The tax service seems OK - but the way they run their company is kind of bush league. They don't send real invoices, it takes numerous emails to straighten out simple billing questions. Their sales seems to be US-based, but their billing and service clearly seems off-shore, and they clearly haven't figured out how to make that work. I wouldn't normally Yelp about something like this, I know don't look at Yelp when selecting a service like this, but it would be pointless to voice my concern to the minions I've been dealing with that don't understand service, or even the basics of good communication. So, I'm hoping some clever reputation management person will see this and get my message through to the correct people. read more

If I could give this 0 stars I would! Still have this "service" because despite trying to cancel it and ask for a refund we are ignored and still being charged. It's more like a SCAM at this point. Nothing but problems from day one. Can't log in, terrible/slow customer support, website is basically useless and broken. The integrations were calculating things wrong. We are now using TaxJar and have gotten everything we needed done quick, easy and less expensive. Please everyone who is having trouble with them contact the BBB read more

Absolutely Horrendous service. They will tell you "not in the contract" and will ignore any issue you have. Stay away.

Sent to Avalara on 9/14/21 What do you mean you haven't heard from us? We have been in contact with Avalara for 5 months or more letting people there know ( in the rare cases we were actually able to talk to someone that had little or no knowledge of your service) that we were completely miss led on your service and sales men or representatives. We told you that there was no way your business could provide a service to EC Products Design. We have posted our experience on the Better Business Bureau and it would seem we are not alone. Several businesses were deceived or miss led by Avalara. Now I must call the states and explain to them what you have done and how EC Products is not required to be listed in the 36 states. Avalara is in the business of deceiving businesses that your service is needed. And now you want $17,000.00 after we told you months ago that your service is of no use to EC Products. We are requesting the return of the $3000.00 we sent you at the beginning of the year. I will do a quick list of your business plan. (1) Salesman calls repeatedly to attempt to get the business. (2) Send by mail cookies and candy of high quality get the get the attention of someone in the business. (3) Make more repeated calls to sell the software even if the business does not need it. Make as many calls as necessary and talk to as many people in the business as possible to make the sale. (4) Tell someone or any one the business we must have your service to survive in the new world of taxes. (5) No matter what get the contract and get as much money up from as possible. Tell the business whatever lies for the sign up. (6) At his point there is no more help as the sale has been made. No one to answer the phone on your end and if you need a live person book an appointment on the phone. Then get people that don't know what they are talking about. (7) File the notices with all the states that should not have been contacted as they do not apply to the business. (8) When I called Avalara to say we did not need to be registered in all those states then you say it will be $11,000.00 do de registered from the states we did not need to be registered in. (9) April, we started to realize we were sold a bill of goods. We talked to more than one person at Avalara to try and determine what the real story was and then we realized we had been taken advantage of by another software company selling us a miss represented bill of goods. (10) The words started coming like contract and monthly charges. Then a letter was sent saying we did not want your business by a certain date and now we need to pay for the next year that we also did not want. (11) I have started to contact the states and personally talked to the tax people in 4 states so far and I know that firsthand that there was no reason to have registered and in fact the states did remove us from their systems. (12) We told you early on that we did not have an IT person nor a computer programmer. How would be implement a complicated system with no help [ on our end and no help on your end. In reading the BBB comments other businesses stated that even when they had qualified in house help, they could not get help from Avalara. We have contacted the BBB in your area and have read all the negative reviews about the Avalara company. If necessary, we will contact the governing body in your state about what you are doing to us and other companies in the US. Once again if your company had been as interested in honestly finding out if we needed your service and you were in taking our money this would have never happened. We look forward to getting our $3000.00 deposit back as your service was miss represented. read more

Crappy customer service. 50 hours plus to sent up. They can't answer questions on how the software works because they are "accounting questions". We should be working with software or accounting people on this software not sales people. read more

They've been somewhat more responsive lately. I'm upgrading review to 3 stars. They are inexpensive also which is great.

This company is obviously not set up to handle e-commerce the way the sales rep would have you believe. My complaint and concerns with Avalara extend now to Shopify as they should not recommend a partner that cannot handle the requirements of something as important and time dependent as sales tax. I have been ignored by our alleged "account manager" for a week. We have also been told more than once a compliance team has checked our account and yet I know everything is not fully correct. We should have went with another firm. read more

Customer service is horrific. Instead of solving your issue, It feels like they'd rather send numerous emails/responses/questions hoping you let your case rest in the end. I have had multiple cases where my contact just failed to read through my message and did not address the request at all. It is concerning when the topic at hand is your international VAT and ECL filings. If you have a choice, stay away from this company. Its attitude, style and response times date from back in the 80's. read more

i would give this company a zero rating if I could. I would not recommend this company! save your money. my husband and I started a LLC through Legal Zoom and Avalara is in partnership with legal zoom. we were referred to avalara for our state license and state tax registration. we paid them $399 for nothing. they sent us a form to fill out and we couldn't find some of the information they were asking for. we called them and the woman I talked to on the phone said we couldn't talk to anyone we had to email them. we then emailed them asking for clarification and they just emailed back the same instruction. I tried calling again and this time another woman would not let me speak, she kept talking over me. I asked to speck to a supervisor and she told me no and hung up. legal zoom is no help either. I asked for a refund and was told I needed to email avalara. all they want is your money and will do nothing for you! read more

This is my second review. I've been through 4 service people since my last review and not one will/can explain how my documents tie to the API calls. They sent me a report, but it doesn't tie to the document summary report in their software. They sent me a youtube video, explaining their two methods of charging, either by API pings or documents, but when I asked why I'm charged as a large call center. I received the first answer below. "Typically not because the cost per transaction is double the amount included in a transaction package. For example, if you have 1500 tier package you are paying .99 per transaction. The overage charge is $1.98. If you have a 2500 tier package the per transaction cost is .858. But as in all things sales tax, it depends. It's up to you. so i asked depends on what? see answer Another response: From: Tony Duffy Tony.Duffy@avalara.com Sent: Monday, November 2, 2020 9:46 AM To: Subject: RE: JoyLux Avalara upgrade We have listened and explained several times. - No, Tony, Terry, Phillip - you've sent me an excel schedule, that has several columns but shows no direct correlation to my invoices. Perhaps you don't understand. My renewal for my 3500 transactions, which remember i only had 1,942 - is almost $5,000. this is what my former CFO says to do after he got a quote at his new company for "Push back hard. I'm negotiating with them right now and was quoted $2,156 for 5,000 transactions but $3465 for 10,000. Try to get them to waive the upgrade charges - that's a nuisance charge" this 1/2 what they've quoted me - remember I have 1900 transactions I am a small business in Washington state with Nexus in CA & MI. During my contract period, I have per their report, 1711 nexus documents, but my document summary reports 1,942 total documents compared to their report with 3,122 documents. What is the difference? read more

I am a new customer and believe me I am regretting my decision of considering Avalara to automate our sale tax returns.., they got worst customer service. read more

I would under no circumstance recommend transacting with this company. I found their customer service horrible and the agent exceedingly rude and my issue was not resolved. I would recommend either obtaining business license requirements yourself from your state/local government or go with a different firm. read more

I wish we had any other option but Avalara. I have worked with many software companies and they are easily the most greedy, non-flexible, overpriced software provider I have ever worked with. Non transparent terms for billing, overage and upgrade fees every few months costing you thousands of dollars, and total unwillingness to help make your account more affordable. Go look at TaxJar if your software supports it. read more

Charge a lot of money and then nothing but connection issue. They charged for full service set up, set up my account with the wrong registration number, and then when I got delinquincy letters from the tax office, Avalara inform me it will take six weeks to look into and in the meantime they will kep paying my tax to the wrong account. Awful customer service. read more

I would give them zero stars if that was at all possible. They are dealing with much to serious of a topic to 1.) Only be open Pacific time and 2.) To have such sub-par customer service. Our sales rep may be the least helpful person on the planet. The entire point of using them is to assist in filing your sales tax. They pulled our info and had an obvious software glitch on their side. Our data showed thousands of dollars collected in tax and despite all the invoices showing up in Avalara the tax due showed zero. That didn't stop them from pulling $17,455.48 from our checking account. They filed zero dollar tax returns and wanted us to pay $500 to fix them. When I requested a refund I was told they would "do our best to refund the money back to the client in the next day or two, but our current focus is our primary funding and remittance activity". Save yourself the headache, folks. read more

I used them for 4 years and have tried to cancel. Nope. They keep deducting from my bank account. NO BUENO Avalara

This could be the last straw with Avalara. I'm ready to pull the plug and look elsewhere for a sales tax service. Tech support is an auto-responder and instructions on how to fix it yourself. Need help? "Here's the weblink. Fix it yourself" Been a customer since 2014. Nearly 30 months since we can email in Quickbooks with Avatax, multi-user mode. Spent hours with engineers and no fix. Avalara pointed the finger to Quickbooks software; yet it was clear there was no issue but only if using the Avatax calculation. We've had this issue since November 2017. The Quickbooks engineered confirmed it was an Avatax problem. I gave up getting it fixed. No one cares. BTW I did upgrade to QB 2020 Premier hoping it help. Now, I find out Avalara paid over $1500 in excess taxes to Illinois and they're telling me I have the wrong sales tax type. It was working until Oct 2017 and the settings page (that the auto-responder tech help recommended), says it has been setup since 2014. For the past 4 weeks, all I get is the same auto-responder and check your settings. I've asked for a phone call, 3 times. That's not happening either. We pay nearly $5k a year for this service and frankly, that's too much money for this type of service. read more

The platform does work pretty good but their service level is almost non existent. They promise you things and never deliver. They find way to nickel and dime you after the sale. I would stay away from them. I am currently looking for an alternative. read more

This has to be the absolute worst company I have ever dealt with in my life. I cannot believe the lack of communication and lack of follow up they have. Dealing with peoples taxes is a very serious business and they are one of the most unprofessional companies I have ever dealt with. I would never use this company ever again. read more

If I could give zero stars I would. My company has been with Avalara for over 7 years. I just finally switched to a new tax service. Everything was pretty easy for several years because I only had 1 WI return filed annually. Then we met nexus in Illinois in 2021 and now I had 1 annual return for WI and monthly returns for Illinois (IL always starts you at monthly and then adjusts this later based on volume). Avalara gets you with their subscriptions. They charge you in advance for however many returns they think you will need. So they charged me for 12 returns (even though I was pretty certain IL was going to eventually switch my filing to annual). Beginning of 2022, IL did change me to annual filing. In March I get a notice from Avalara with renewal for 12 returns. I contact them by creating a support case - this is really their only way to contact someone. In my experience the CS reps are not very helpful. I complain that because of the filing frequency change with IL that I have now been overcharged for 3 returns. I ask for a refund. They do send that to me- Yay! So now I assumed that since they know that I only have 2 annual returns that they would change my renewal subscription to 2 returns and charge me accordingly. But no, on my renewal date in April, they sent me an invoice by email saying they were charging me for 12 returns - that day. So now I'm going back and forth with them trying to get a refund for 10 returns that I'm not going to use. They finally issue the refund after I sign an agreement for 2 annual returns for period 4/2022 - 4/2023. This year IL notifies me that they are switching me to quarterly filings. I change this in my Avalara account. I get a renewal notice in March saying that they will charge me for 2 annual returns for April 2023- April 2024. I open a support case letting them know that this needs to change, they confirm they are aware of this change. Come April they charge me for the 2annual returns (BTW - you get an invoice to "review" the day they charge your bank/CC. No warning.) A couple days later I get a call from a "Customer Account Manager" who says, hey you only paid for 2 annual returns but we need to change that to 5 returns. I get quotes. They seem pretty high. I tell them I want to shop around and see how this compares to other services. Within a week I have decided to switch as of May 1. This will save me hundreds. I immediately open a support case asking for my money back for the 2 annual returns I was charged for that will not be used, and with questions regarding cancellation (When you put in a cancellation, before you can do so, you have to click on a box of "terms". This is the only place I've seen these "terms" and and you have to agree to them at cancellation) I had questions about my rights to a refund. I get no response. I call a month later, after they apologize they open a new "escalated" case, no response again. I open another case a couple weeks later, still no response. Called and was told a Jared was handling my cases and that I should put in my cancellation, which I then did, because then he would probably respond. And yes he did. He said that because they had issued me refunds on the previous service periods as a "courtesy" that they were not going to issue a refund for the renewal of 2 filings (which they will never file) and basically don't contact them again about this. (And in case you were actually following this, I was also charged separately at the end of April for the 1st quarter filing for IL, which I have no problem with because they actually did the filing for me.) But if you are small business and do not file in many states, look at other options because Avalara will not be worth the cost or headache. read more

Our company contracted with Avalara to enhance our sales tax compliance and improve the efficiency and accuracy of our sales tax returns. Avalara desired to enhance their capability with the ERP system we were utilizing. Due dates for development and go-live were substantially delayed. Customer service was and continues to be substantially less than expectations. Response time to important issues have been more than a month. Avalara refuses to complete the development of their software in order to complete our sales tax return. Be very cautious before proceeding with Avalara. I would not recommend their products or services. read more

I have had to call and send numerous emails to both set up the accounts and also to cancel the accounts. They did not know how to log in through proxy to begin the payments to the state, and several phone calls to do that. On top of multiple emails on cancelling one of the properties I had set up. But the topper was even after multiple emails and phone calls they continued to bill me even after I canceled service even sending confirmation they had done so. Very poor experience. read more

Support is absolutely terrible. Will not call back and barely even respond via email. I've had empty online chats where the session shows as connected but nobody responds. I paid extra for setup support which was recommended but have received little to no support at all. The only support I received was an email that pointed me to the support site! read more

The worst support of all time. It takes days just to get a simple issue resolved. I would rather go through child birth again, than submit another support ticket anytime soon. read more

Poor customer service. They don't seem to know about local reporting requirements, seems like you have to do a lot of work yourself, and they seem to be the last to know. Seems like when you are paying for a service like this they should be helping you. Response time is very long when you email them. I think I am working towards just doing this myself, they are supposed to be leading, not following. read more

Avatax is an absolutely awful product. No one in customer service knows how the product works. They never let you talk to the same person twice. You explain the same issue to a new person (bot?) each time, who gives you a non-answer and closes your support case. It took me weeks to find a rep willing to admit the Woocommerce integration simply does not work correctly. If you can use any other solution for your tax compliance, do it. The only thing they will do reliably is take your money. If I could give it 0 stars, I would. read more

Customer Service is absolutely terrible. They do not respond to emails, phone calls, etc. I have had multiple cases where my contact just failed to reach out and did not address the request at all. Have been trying for months to get the process started. Escalated this up to managers who also ignore emails and calls. As others have said - regretting the decision to work with Avalara. You should explore other companies because this one is a total nightmare to to work with. read more

HORRENDOUS CUSTOMER SERVICE!!!! I have to agree Avalara is one of the worst companies I have ever dealt with. The account managers know nothing at all, they are just sales people. The technical customer service reps don't know much more. They are usually very difficult to reach, and all they are taught to do is pass the buck to tell you to read all their articles and FAQs or watch training videos, anything to avoid actually answering your question (and if you send it in writing, it's very apparent they haven't even read or understood your question, so days are lost going back and forth). Typically I have already done this research (or I don't have all day to sit around watching videos just to answer one question). If I'm calling, it's because my issue is not addressed in any of their materials. Usually the reps don't know the answer, and multiple times I have received conflicting and incorrect advice from different reps that caused major issues and incorrect payment of tax across every state! In some cases I have requested special services such as back filings, and had to request this SEVEN times across multiple before they actually opened a case. Meanwhile we are incurring interest and penalties, getting sent to collections and receiving letters threatening to revoke our sales tax licenses because our returns are now so late (we don't have the resources to do them in house or we wouldn't need Avalara). Also, cases I have opened just disappear without being resolved, and they are not maintained long in history once resolved in case I want to refer back to them later (particularly when they gave me wrong advice or did not actually fix the problem). There are all these strange nuances by state that you are just supposed to know (for example Colorado requires you to individually select each jurisdiction but no other states do and they don't tell you that). They won't answer the simplest of tax questions because they "are not allowed to give tax advice". And most infuriating of all, I have numerous times discovered returns that suddenly stopped filing or had the settings changed to something incorrect with no explanation. I am the only administrator and I know I did not make these changes, but there is no audit/change log or confirmation sent for any changes so there is no way to prove this. Every time I have to deal with them, I end up in a full blown rage. AVOID THIS COMPANY LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!!! read more

Maybe Yelp is a better place to vet companies in the future. Truly wish we did our research on this company before signing up at such a huge expense. In 47 years of business, this is the most repulsive company we have dealt with. The implementation contacts were rude, guided us to set everything up completely incorrectly and literally ghosted us from the day we went live. Our project manager scheduled our go live date and went on vacation that day, haven't heard a word from him since, that was two months ago. If you are able to pin someone down, they will make a bunch of promises and then disappear, acting confused when you try to chase them down for follow up. If you go above the abomination of a customer support person you are currently dealing with, you will get to see where they get it from. It's a complete disaster of a company from the bottom to the top. Sadly, once WE got the service functional it actually works well. Problem with that is we are paying an exorbinant amount of money to a company made up of people that all need a life lesson in how to treat your customers. If this was our company, everyone would be looking for a new gig today. Proceed with caution, and make sure you are able to set up and support the stuff yourself. We're lucky enough to have those smarts in house now. Not everyone will. read more

Absolute worst technical support and customer service of any company I have ever come across. When their system works it works seamlessly, when it doesn't they have absolutely no idea how to fix it, how to support their customers, and there is no escalation to somebody smarter who can figure it out. Account managers have absolutely no idea what they're doing. I've paid for them to handle my quarterly sales tax filings and it's a complete cluster. I have had to pay late fees and penalties because they file the wrong tax locations. When I call in to get that fixed, again their support has no idea how to do it and it gets escalated into a void. There any sales tax service that knows what the hell they're doing? I would gladly pay double in order to drop Avalara... read more

Do NOT use this company for your taxes. They mislead you to the amount they are prepaying and when you call them out for it (because you receive delinquent notices from the state), they will do nothing but attempt to terminate your service. Without question, the worst service provider we have ever experienced in our time as a company. read more

What a mess! Our company has been with Avalara since 2009. All was well at the beginning, but to be honest, we trusted them and didn't really pay much attention to this. We were just a start up at that time, so we were really clueless when it came to this stuff. We put it in their hands and focused on other areas of the business. However, over the last few years we've been paying much more attention to these details and we started noticing more than a few snags. Whenever we had/have an issue or receive a notice, I seriously DREAD calling them. Every time you try to get a simple question answered you have to go through your (clueless and inadequate) sales person who doesn't answer your questions but continues to up-sell you. You can't get a simple sales tax question answered, but they'll gladly do a "study" for you for thousands of dollars instead. If there's been a missed filing they don't take responsibility but recommend that you go back and amend numerous filings all while wanting to charge you thousands (yes, I said thousands) of dollars to do so. We recently had an issue with the state of Hawaii and Avalara recommended (after we gave them POA to talk to the state on our behalf) that we back file 10 returns for a "project fee" of $1000 and $250 per return! That's insane! Why didn't they file the returns in the first place??? Our actual tax liability for the period in question (2011-2016) is only $106 and they want our company to pay $3500 to back file returns they should have filed in the first place??? So I decided to call HI myself and they said to just file one annual return for 2011 and one for 2016 and the matter is resolved. We recently discovered that they jacked up our per-filing rate at the beginning of 2017 without notifying us and then the sales rep gave us some run-around about how they offered another plan, blah, blah, blah. Who increases rates without notifying the customer that a rate increase is about to go into effect??? It went from $26 per return to a whopping $48 per return! That's just crazy! I don't understand what this company's mission is, but I can tell you that it is absolutely NOT about helping their customers. I'd give 0 stars if that was an option. read more

This software and the integration with QuickBooks Desktop Pro has been an unmitigated disaster since the day it was purchased. But what makes it even more awful is that I cannot get a single Avalara person on the phone or by email to get this software working properly. We paid a tidy sum for both the support (this amounts to nothing more than emails from some kind of bot that will NOT reply to the latest emails and keeps insisting I send them stuff I have sent over at least 3 times before), integration and tax returns (not one single return has been filed by them) plus a third party, (Business Licenses) that was supposed to do the registrations with the state taxing authorities (Not completed, no emails answered by them, no voice mails returned). Do yourself a favor, NOT AVALARA read more

I wish there was an option for 0 stars. I used them for a couple of months and all I wanted from them was to set up my state return...they didn't. When I would inquire how to set up the license for the state, they would tell me to contact the Department of Revenue and figure it out instead of just telling me what form I would need. They then messed up my city taxes by changing how often I filed (the day after the quarterly deadline) making my return occur a late fee. I can't express how deeply frustrating this company is. read more

I'm a few weeks into getting this set up and already getting frustrated, which led me here to read reviews and see if other people were having similar issues. Lo and behold - slow, useless customer service. They're full of buzzwords and buzz-phrasing but low on results. They straight up ask for passwords and log-in info for state tax dept websites to be sent over e-mail, which should never be done. I'm not sure what the company I work for is paying - but I'm positive it's not cheap. I'm dreading going through the rest of the setup and foreseeing the struggles I'm reading about getting a refund. read more

I totally agree with the other bad reviews here. I was interested in their automated tax calculator/Nexus tax program/landed cost programs for Woocommerce. I contacted them and had a phone meeting within like 24 hours. The phone meeting rep was not able to answer many of my questions about the landed cost feautre since apparently that is another "team" that oversees that program. What followed was over a month of emails between a flaky rep who perpetually didn't get back to me for weeks at a time, had incomplete answers when he did, and was perpetually still waiting on the other "team" to give him answers. I asked at one point to talk to the other team and they would not allow it. I told them repeatedly that I was ready to give them my business if they answered my simple questions that were quite relevant. They hardly explained their mystery landed cost plugin anywhere online which made for a mystery of the whole ordeal. After reading their horrible reviews all over the internet, I am sooooo glad that I didn't sign up with them. The whole ordeal was just really strange. Even the worst of companies that I have dealt with usually still manage to have a sales team that will take your calls and get you signed up in seconds. It's like Alavara doesn't even want to try to succeed as a company. If they can't even treat a potential customer with any level of basic respect, then how much worse would they treat me as an already-paid-in customer. I surely dodged a bullet with this one. read more

No spot for Zero stars, so they get one. We find them to be a fraudulent organization, and our experience mirrors that of what I've seen listed here. Price changes without authorization, and then getting a run around when trying to get it addressed. THEY ARE FLAT OUR REFUSING TO REIMBURSE US THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS ILLEGALLY CHARGED. I cannot recommend enough using someone else. At the time we signed up, they seemed to be the only option that worked with our CRM. There are now many other options like TaxJar that are a fraction of the price and have good reviews. NO REASON to put up with their crap any longer. read more

My pricing was changed in February 2018. I was not given notice or contacted. I only realized this because I received an invoice for $1,500. I have called and emailed several times for a copy of my contract or at least the pricing, both have gone ignored. I called another sales guy who quoted me a price of $50 per return. Pick another software! read more

words cannot explain how bad and what damage this company avalara have done to me. 1 star is 2 too many, posting from uk as cannot get any help in uk, after suffering a stroke i paid £5000 gbp ($6000) to avalara for vat numbers and filing, was promised the earth 19 months later i have received nothing ,, £250,000 out of pocket amazon completely collapsed due to lack of euro vat numbers, as a small business we relied heavily on the £150,000 per annum sales from europe, now business shut, refunded in an instance my £5000 when they realeased they had f'#;&"d up completely... looking for other companies in same position who want to work with me to recoup losses glenhood@btinternet.com.. for contact. i will not let this go away avalara ! contacting working with uk tv and radio as we speak, i have lost everything. led to believe looking at staff comments everything handled by the us, the directors should be held to account, we should not filled with rubbish from thier legal team we have paid for. read more

They will not quit contacting people throughout my company. We have repeatedly told them we are not interested, but they are relentless. They're now sending random people "Welcome to Avalara" emails with login credentials, even though we've never signed up. At this point, they seem so disreputable, I wouldn't trust them to balance a checkbook let alone sales tax compliance. Shady, shady, shady........ read more