Company spams email even though I have never asked for information nor signed up for anything. I requested to be removed several times and keep getting them. My next inquiry will be to the BBB. read more

We used Avalara's Sales and Use tax services for our company for a year and had nothing but problems. The staff was friendly, but completely oblivious of local tax laws and incapable of adapting their software to each state's needs.They also had difficulty submitting our returns on time and we got numerous late notices. Avalara would ignore our late notices for months until our sales tax accounts would get canceled and our credit report marred. I was never able to get them to resolve these problems for me and had to pay the late fees and penalties myself. They also will not give you copies of your sales tax returns unless you ask for them one by one. I was promised improvement many times, however they continued to fail over and over. I would not recommend Avalara at all, and would suggest KPMG instead. read more

This company continually calls and spams our company. This is a constant thing. I think I received three emails in the last 5 days from this clown: Scott McFarlane Founder and CEO Avalara I would never consider dealing with a company who acts like a greasy telemarketer. They are a mail or two away from a report to the BBB. read more

DO NOT TRUST THIS COMPANY! They will swindle you if you are not paying attention.

Avalara keeps calling us. Despite me telling them to stop calling, to remove our numbers from their system, despite our email history detailing all of the issues. They are a software company that cannot figure out how to remove phone numbers from their databases, or take notes when someone calls, so there is a history, so they have an idea who they're calling and what's happened before when they call. This is how bad of a software company they are. read more

I loved the childbirth comment! I would also rather go through childbirth again than contact Avalara Support. Everything in this company is 'at their convenience' -- NOT your convenience. Hold times horrific. If you put in a call back number, there is no where to put an extension. If you miss the call, get back in line again! I've submitted cases online -- no answer at all! Now the tax preparers, who are obviously in another country, contact me in the middle of the night, needing things the next day. They don't answer my questions about what they need until during the night, though. I actually have nightmares about the support hold music! read more

negative stars if I could. Horrible customer service. Did not want to work with me at all to fix my problem. Horrible Horrible! If you want to have a crappy customer service experience this is the company you should use.! read more

Lol the worst experience I think I have ever had with a company. They started me on Trustfile (and billed me in full for a year). A few months later after I had hit countless snags and dreadful customer service with Trustfile, they made me aware that the program was going away. I would have to migrate to a new (more expensive platform) called AvaTax. AvaTax did not have integrations to my channels so I would have to manually pull these cumbersome reports and upload. Failed probably 50 uploads and my rep just pushed me to tech support. Finally got it uploaded and first filling was 10x what the cost should have been. Literally makes sales tax impossible when you have companies like this in the middle. read more

Avalara is connected to our ERP system (FinancialForce) for 2 years now. We use Avalara to calculate and track our US, Canada, and UK sales taxes. Avalara Tax provides effective and efficient process support to help our company stay in compliance with all the evolving and different regulatory requirements. Due to the new Sales Tax reforms, I know we will utilize Avalara Tax even more. read more

I have been doing taxes since 1997 and have used several other tax software providers throughout the years. Avalara has far surpassed the capabilities of other tax providers with their Avatax and CertCapture products. The tools are so user friendly and easy to use! You can drill down into your transactions to see detail, do tax calculations easily, set up obligations easily, and have all the tax categories you may need. Their customer service team promptly respond to questions and issues to help you resolve them. The only 2 things I would like them to improve on would be, not refer to their FAQ's so much, as sometimes they will not specifically apply and be the solution to your question, and I would like to have the ability to do some ad hoc reporting on occasion. However, overall, I LOVE LOVE LOVE this product and the Avalara team! I am very happy we have converted! I recommend them to anyone looking for a good tax and exemption system. read more

Avalara has a great new interface that is much more intuitive than before. Their customer service and support has done a 180 and I am very pleased with the rapid response. In addition to a great interface, I am very pleased with the decreased transaction import speed. It used to take quite a while to upload several thousand entries and now it takes just minutes. Great job! read more

Avalara Europe is slow to reply to emails. First contact was in February and I still don't have the VAT number in July. Seems like they don't work as hard anymore when they got their money. I can't recommend them. read more

They bought Hotspot Tax. They raised the pricing 300% and cut the service down to nothing. They just dont care about service.

Avalara has a terrible service. Event thru the implementation, everything is thru the website, so If you have questions, it takes a while to finally find someone who can help you. The sales man was great while selling the product, then after we signed up and questions started to come up, he would say he didnt handle it and sent us someplace else only to hear the same thing from someone else. They subcontract everything to third parties, so when you have a question or an issue, you are connected to a third party and they are not in synch. You also have to created log ins for these other third parties. Getting customer service on the phone is close to impossible. They want you to do it all yourself watching videos or submitting cases; so if you need something fast you are in for a lot of disappointment. If you have questions about sales tax, they tell you they are not tax experts and tell you to talk to an accountant. Our CPA firm tells us Avalara should know since they are in the sales tax business in the whole country; so we have no where to get tax information about other states. ex: It has been 10 business days since I submitted an order for sales tax registration for 2 states on the Avalara website. Today I am dealing with business licenses, the 3rd party who handles registrations, its been 3 days dealing with them trying to get in their website so I can add information for them to finish the registrations. I cant get access to their website, when I call, the customer service woman cant get me connected to technical support, I keep getting disconnected. I have sent emails to our avalara rep and she doesnt answer; so frustrating. read more

I concur with the other comments. This company lacks human contact and decent support, especially when customers are navigating a complex state tax system. An issue arose that was time critical but we were unable to get a timely reply and had to go back to our local bookkeeping service that is a real person and available. Upon cancelling due to the lack of support we were hit with a service bill for the remaining year, When we challenged the cancellation charge is was surprising (or not so surprising) how many people at Avalara suddenly became engaged. read more

I cannot fully describe here how truly horrible their customer support is. I worked with them for four years and in the third year, when the state of Colorado created a sales tax filing requirement that their Trustfile product could not handle, I was told to open a second account with them in Managed Returns, essentially doubling my cost just to handle those CO monthly returns. I did so and immediately conflicts arose between my two accounts. I had very little insight into these conflicts other than the money being pulled from my checking account and sent as duplicate payments to various states. It took three months to get anyone to even try and remedy the situation because they are always too busy filing to fix problems they created in the past. And this quick fix created even more filing problems. I ended up with two dozen filing errors that it took another 6 months for them to even begin to fix. And they did not fix them all - they just don't care because they are not the ones getting notices from the state saying you are going to be taken to collections for their duplicate filing errors. I have recently changed to TaxJar and have to say the account set up was simple and I have run into only one limitation with their filing process thus far. I advise you to get out of Avalara BEFORE they screw something up because once they do, the time, expense and stress they will cause you are truly painful. read more

The free API that they use as a "lead generation tool" has two problems. First of all, it is not updated on any reasonable schedule. We made a mistake of relying on it and the CA tax rate was off for over 1 month now. The support reps tell you that this product is not really supported or guaranteed and I should just move to a paid version. Which I am fine with except there is no upgrade path from free API to a paid service. So now we need to re-invest into the development of a different API integration and abandon everything that was built originally. read more

I was charged the wrong amount on my bill. I emailed my account rep and waited over a week for him to acknowledge my email. He did eventually respond & agreed I was owed a credit. It has been 3 months, and I am still waiting for that credit. I was excited to work with Avalara at the beginning, but now I can't wait for our contract to be over. read more

I positively hate dealing with the hassle of not being able to get anyone competent to answer questions, resolve issues or even pick up the phone. The automated answering machine is a joke. Robo-reply email you once asking to confirm your email address, phone number and verify your work hours. If anyone does give you a personal reply, they are 1) Clueless as to the original question 2) don't provide an extension so you can call them back 3) if you try to go through the reception and spell their freakish names its never recognized. I tried for my account manager and got yet another chance to leave a message, read more

This company is a scam. It appears their business model is to take advantage of the changing laws regarding collection of state sales taxes to trick small businesses into contracts for services they may not need or even be able to use. In our case we signed a contract with them which is the only way to try out their services. The contact provided a 60 day trial period to test the services, so we decided to give them a shot. The trick lies in the fact that they would not schedule a meeting with our set up specialist until just after the 60 day time frame. We should have just canceled before that, but we really needed to get the tax compliance working. We trusted that they would help us or at least cancel the contract if not. Unfortunately that was not the case. Our "set up specialist" did not even call us for the meeting. She did not respond to emails or return voice mails. Leaving us to try and reschedule 2-3 weeks later. At that point we had had enough and asked to cancel. Avalara refused and sent us a bill for the entire year of service "as per their policies", saying we did not cancel within the 60 days. We were about 1-2 weeks late. So they tell you you have "60 days" to try out the service, but in reality they will not set you up until the trial is over. To me, this is fraud. They hide behind their contracts as if that give them the legal right to defraud customers. What ever you do do not do business with this company, you will regret it. read more

We signed up with Avalara back on September 2018 to help file the sales/use taxes and to keep Exemption Certificates up to date. We received an email from Avalara on 3/26/2020, offering us a service for COVID-19 to set up returns to be filed on a later date. However, getting Avalara to file the returns now has been very difficult. I called on 4/24/2020 and spoke with Avalara's support team, who explained and helped me set up my returns to be filed when I needed them to go out. This took over an hour. I then got an email from Avalara Support team stating they could only help me with 3 out of 6 states because we wanted to pay later. We agreed to have Avalara submit returns for WA, CT, and LA. I called back on 7/1/2020 because I received a call from WA state about the March return. The representative stated that the request was never sent to the back-filing team and my case # 19548879 was now closed. I asked the representative if he could start a new case for me because Avalara never completed the task. My new case #19828213. On 7/16/2020 I received another call from WA state about the March return. I called Avalara back and they informed me that my case was closed by our account manager and that I needed to speak with him. I called our account manager who was not informed about filing and remittance extensions in response to COVID-19. He informed me that I needed to start another new case and that charges will occur. This was supposed to be a free service provided by Avalara. So, I sat on the phone with him for 30 mins setting up another case #20022681. On July 22, I called Avalara and they said that I needed to fill out the 7-question form for the back-filing team. I did that and emailed it back to the representative. Angie said that she would send the information to the back-filing team and they would need to get approval from our account manager. On July 29, 2020 I received an email from Avalara letting me know that I needed to fill out the 7-questions. I had to resend the answers to him. I have not heard back yet. I tried calling our account manager and still waiting for a call back. I sent an email to the President/COO, no email or phone call back. My returns are still open, and Avalara does not seem to care about their customers. Not even the President..... We have now received penalties and interest fees for the very month the March returns are not completed. This is something that Avalara should take care of because they keep closing my cases and not completing the work. We are very unhappy with Avalara and the way they communicate with their customers. read more

They were the third party information collection service hire to obtain "Sales & Use exemption certifications" on behalf of the vendor, Transunion Risk & Alternative Data Solution. I was contacted by Avalara on behalf of a vendor that we did business with to request "tax exemption information". I replied to the email stating that we were a county government & political subdivision of the state of Texas & submitted our W-9. The representative then stated that she needed the "Sales and Use Tax Exemption certification." So I then sent her both a letter that stated that we were exempt that we submit as our certification and the specific form issued by the state of Texas for "sales & use tax exemption certification" with all of our information completed, thinking surely this will meet their requirements, but NO, she emailed that I did not write "Transunion Risk & Alternative Data Solution" & put "information services" on the description line. This company chose to waste my time when they could have easily filled that in themselves (since they will have to enter the address anyway). This might be easier to outsource the collection of the information to a third party, but that third party should not be difficult. If your third party representative is difficult and causes you to lose customers, it's not a very good third party representative. read more

Avalara has no really customer service or support. Once you realize this and find a better alternative they make it extremely difficult to cancel services. I was recently billed for a service I had not used in 18 months and when I informed them the charge was not valid, Avalara disagreed and told me they would discontinue service. I found this amusing because I had not used the service in a year and half. When I stated that the charge was not valid and I still was not going to pay for something I did not authorize or use Avalara pulled an electronic authorization from 1/2016 and provided a link to posted terms and conditions. Apparently even though I had not been contacted by a company representative or received any email stating that my service would renewed under the terms and conditions I still was obligated to pay. These terms conditions are not on the electronic authorization but are referenced as a link. After questioning charged I was informed the charge was valid and if I did not pay they would send me to collections. This is no way to treat a customer and in my opinion not an upfront way to do business. I strongly recommend that anyone considering Avalara find another company to partner with for sales tax calculations. My company has used them for various services since 2013 but we will no longer work with Avalara. read more

Avalara is great to work with as long as you use their entire service. If you decide you just want to do your own filings as most of ours are zero as we are seasonal, they treat you very poorly. They don't answer emails or phone calls and don't work well with you unless you are a full services customer. I am very expensive and don't treat very well. I am extremely disappointed in the way they do business and have treated us the last few months. read more

If I could to a zero star I would. I just tried to speak with Jessica Davis who is their Operations Manager (manager, as in a person with higher people and leadership skills) and she was the most unprofessional, disrespectful person, didn't even let me finish asking one question and she promptly and rudely hung up on me. So much for trying to do good business. I guess they also don't respect other professionals either. What a sour taste!!!! read more

I've been using Avalara for about two years. The first year there was an issue with getting my annual sales tax withdrawn in the correct month. Fortunately I had a great account rep who understood the problem and worked to quickly resolve my issue. He moved on and I was assigned a new account rep. My new rep was unable to answer basic questions i.e. : "I'd like to confirm that my annual tax is set up to be withdrawn in June." She referred me to the customer service 800 number or to a temp (His name literally had "accountemps" in the email extension.) Avalara advertises that it has account managers whose "job is to answer questions about your account or help you evaluate new solutions" so I called Alex DeBlois, the customer loyalty manager. He could have helped to resolved the issue by assigning me a new rep (my first one was fine!) which is what I asked for. Instead he was super defensive, and said it was not my account rep's job to know details about my account. Really?? Not sure why I have an account rep then (and don't advertise account reps on your site!) Changing tax software for my eCommerce store is a hassle and wish I would have known what my experience with Avalara would be like before signing up with with them. Their slogan is "making sales tax less taxing" --this certainly hasn't been my experience. read more

Scumbag telemarking, this is one of those companies that can't rely on google or regular advertising, they cold call you and try to "speak to the owner" , just a waste of time. I will never buy your product. If I needed it I would google and research it. Stop annoying people with your garbage. read more

The most unprofessional and poorly run company my business has ever worked with. They are completely unresponsive to queries and have double billed our account on several occasions and refuse to credit the charges and continue to bill more. They only care about getting your money for an extremely sub-par service. Their website is not user friendly and there is no assistance to help you navigate. The few times I attempted to call to get help with a tax return question they simply just said they didn't know and ended the conversation. We are paying them to handle sales tax matters, it baffles me how this company is still in business. read more

This is an affordable solution for businesses to figure out sales tax and get their returns filed. Other kinds of business taxes, too. You pay for what your business needs and it grows with you as your business grows. It's a good company with really helpful software solutions. read more

Software seems to work to a point but their company doesn't. Sales people are commissioned, pushy bastards that push you to jump to make a "good deal" when they know fine well you aren't ready for implementation. Then you get whacked big money for some unknown charge that was hidden in the fine print that if you don't use the service in x time they get to hit you $xxxx per month. You contact customer service and they're happy to point you to the fine print. Lousy losers. read more

Avalara promised us a lot and delivered nothing. Just like the other review mentioned, they were completedly oblivious of local/state laws and compliance. In the end, they sucked up our time, took our money, ripped us off, and left us with NOTHING! read more

Some companies are clearly in the wrong business. Avalara is one of them. You would think that a sales tax software firm would understand two critical aspects of the business: (1) accuracy, and (2) timeliness. Avalara was an epic fail on both components and damn near cost me my job. Never again. read more

This company is horrible we used them for about a year and it was issue after issue with no resolution. They just bought a new product but seems that no one knows how to use it properly or make it work properly. This company will forever remain in my do no use list. read more

We are coming up on our 1 year renewal with Avalara. They only thing they have going for them is they are calculating the tax correctly. Other than that we have had problems with just about everything for setup to implementation to filing, including overages on our usage limits do to non compatability with Netsuite and having to resend already sent invoices. They didn't realize that CA has a 6 week prepayment in may and june. So we had to do our own monthly prepayments. They were filing our quarterly reports wrong to the point that the State Board of Equalization had to get involved. And now we need to amend one of our returns and they can't help us do that. We have no access to our quarterly returns online because they aren't there. Our account manager knows nothing about CA sales tax, is slow (if at all) to return emails and continues to 'forget' that we are not in the same time zone so calls at 9pm at night. So currently we are no going to have to file our own quarterly reports as well. For those of you who think they are doing a wonderful job. I hope you are not in for a terrible audit surprise. They clearly don't like the idea that we are on top things and ask questions. read more