Please beware. Like most reviews, I will submit that Avalara AvaTax features a buggy web interface, unacceptable customer service, poor business practices, and support staff issues. I realize this is a vague review, but the details surrounding this brief description would involve more time to describe than the 6 weeks we've waited on a resolution for our AvaTax account. read more

I use less that a dozen transactions a year. They were charging me $118 a year for three years. This year the fee jumped to $1100, auto billed. I tried to correct the issue, but there was no discussion. they recommended I cancel. I did, but they will not refund the money. Do NOT use Avalara. Their service is fine, but the terms will get you badly in the end. read more

If I could give them a -5 I would. They were on the ball and were very responsive when they wanted to onboard our business. Since the summer it has been nothing but one thing after the other. Whoever does their accounts receivable is awful. I paid my invoice as soon as I got it, they claimed they never got it. Sent proof, tehy say they did not get it. The same thing happened with the last invoice they sent. I paid it, I have an image of the cancelled check and they have the gall to send me a pay link because the payment "failed". Really?? I have a copy of the cancelled check. Last straw came this Monday. I asked when the sales tax amount was going to be withdrawn from my account so that I could make sure and move $ to the account on file. Response was between the 22nd and 30th of the month and guess what?? It was taken TODAY. Their customer service is awful and communication is even worse. I cannot wait for my contract to expire. read more

This company is terrible. There prices are 4x those of others and their customer service is awful.

Awful service. I am having sales in other states and my CPA referred me to Avalara. They spoke a bunch of bullshit and none of them really answered my question. In short, either use the service for almost $3000 per state or leave it. Shit platform. read more

What an absolute nightmare. I don't know what is going on with their customer service but it is the most unreliable assistance I have ever gotten. I had an account review set up for prior to my renewal, my account rep didn't show up... I even got an email reminding me of my appointment. I emailed to try and get my transactions lowered (very expensive) and no one got back to me until after I was charged over $3,000. That was in JULY... I have since been in contact with them and virtually said you are locked in one you pay with no refunds. I am livid and they were supposed to get back to me after speaking to a manager 3 weeks ago. Still have not resolved this in any way whatsoever, I'm pissed and I want my money back immediately. What a terrible experience. read more

Fellow Business Owners... do yourself a favor and avoid @avalara - use a competitor! @avalara rips you off at every turn!!! Our software integration caused double entry. After we got it resolved, Avalara charged us $30,000 for the duplicate transactions! Stay away from Avalara. Use a competitor! read more

The integration was difficult with the technician being ignorant of the product configuration we needed for eComm and the required state filings. I had to do it myself which was frustrating. Once it was set up it ran well until the extractor was disconnected during to some integration issue with Shopify. That's when things got bad. I had to reconnect the app and I was told that the data was flowing properly. The reconnection created new connections to shopify stores that did not connect to the existing reporting. Avalara was no help with the reconnection nor the backfiling. I call it a disaster. I canceled and they immediately charged me for future services that have not been rendered. Not an experience I recommend. Now I'll try and get refunded from Avalara and pay late filing fees and penalties. read more

Terrible company--beware and stay away. While the software may be functional, they charge an outrageous amount for their poor service. Everything takes far too long to resolve, and the service is vastly overpriced for what you receive. If you enjoy paying luxury prices for low-quality service and occasionally incorrect advice, then this is the company for you. read more

Horrible Customer Service Negligent Tax Advise This company markets themselves as a service to make paying sales tax in multiple jurisdictions as "easy" "Avalara Returns Simplify returns preparation and filing while following requirements for each jurisdiction Submit returns to the right places at the right times with an automated filing calendar" AFTER 3 years of using them, we are finding out from multiple jurisdictions that AVALARA has been filing our taxes incorrectly - wrong tax amounts, incorrect rate, even to the wrong tax entities. It is a complete nightmare that we have been paying exorbitant rates to AVALARA with the promise that they would be the experts so we did not have to be. When brought to Avalara's attention, they informed us that is it our duty to make sure we have enrolled with the correct tax entities, etc. They take no responsibility for any of their errors and just try to upsale you to handle any issues, despite charging you 2500 a year for "professional services." The account manager they assign you is just a sales person and offers no assistance with resolution of issues. Utterly shameful behavior. read more

I've been using Avalara for two years paying more than $300/month for 4 monthly and 4 annual returns and to track nexus for states I might need to add to the list. This year, they alerted me I got nexus in Florida... *months* after the filing deadline. They will not cover the $50 penalty for a late filing. Also last Month, the software just stopped syncing to QB. Took multiple emails to get tech support scheduled and they couldn't find an issue. I had to manually enter all invoices to meet the filing deadline. Again, no refund was considered. Customer service is terrible and it is really expensive for the service provided. I will NOT be renewing. read more

I wish there was something less then 1 star. We have paid these people thousands of dollars every year. The worst customer service I have every experienced with any company. They will hang up on you and kick around your issues, and then when you finally get someone they will make you repeat information you have already given them many times. Then they will charge you outrageous amounts on top of what you are already paying to help solve an issue. Complete corruption with what happened with the Wayfair bs South Dakota Decision. The states with local jurisdictions are impossible to file with manually and they know it. States keep changing their filing frequency to smaller intervals. They expect us to file 50 returns per a month? Doing our corporate taxes is easier then filing with one state with local jurisdictions. Makes you wonder how connected the people that came up with this are with keeping the sales taxes complicated. I bet their hanging out together on some yacht as I write this review. If people are wondering what's behind inflation its companies like this, all the extra time and cost of things like this passes down to the consumer, not just the sales tax they are paying upfront. Horrible Corrupt Supreme Court. Horrible Company. No one looking out for small businesses. Supreme Court needs Reform, companies like this shouldn't even exist honestly, just simplify the sales tax, make it uniform, etc. any idiot could come up with a better plan than this. read more

They didn't set up my account properly. they made an early payment to the CA Tax for no reason, and didn't file anything while doing so. then, they didn't file my tax on time, and I received a notice of delinquency. the worst is I gave them 3 weeks to fix the issue, and they didn't do anything except finding excuses, and telling me about "' backfiring" . I fixed the issue myself in 5 mins calling the CA Tax department. in the meantime, they were never answering any email, they didn't seem to care about my issue, or lose me as a client. Horrible- DO NOT USE !!! read more

We used it to file Sales Tax quarterly reports. It was good while it was working, but if you have a glitch and need to speak with a human being, forget it. I'm talking months to resolve an issue (which was never resolved). They just keep responding to you with a pre-formed generic email. You can't even dispute your invoice. They just ignore you or send you another generic email. No human interaction to explain or get answers. The only time I had a human being to discuss is when they were first onboarding me and trying to get my business. I will not use anymore. Looking for other options. They need to fix it or get out of the business. And they are now partnered up with Shopify - it's a joke.. read more

This is the worst customer service i have ever dealt with. Similar to many reviews, the customer service is very poor. The portal is terrible and I am unable to pay my bill due to processing errors. The software was sold to me as automating my sales tax collection process and every day I learn more and more that is nothing to do with automation and all inputting on my end. It is automatic for them because i am doing it, but not for the customer who is spending a ton of money on your software. I find it subpar at best. I was also told that I need to go into each of my 200+ items and add a tax code. I don't get why in the year 2024 I cannot connect your plug-in and have automatic solution pop-up - I have been filing my Florida State sales tax for six years and now from my perspective, it is costing me $300 a month to file it. I do not need to spend that money. It could be used elsewhere for my very small business. I asked to cancel and was sent a very unclear form. Yet another barrier. I want out of this nightmare of a contract. Small Business in Orlando, FL I would stay clear of this company read more

Have not been able to get through the onboarding process and the "onboarding specialist" and account manager won't respond to emails. Has anyone heard of a class action lawsuit we can possibly join? They have been collecting our money and providing nothing in return for some time. They are really good at billing. Delivering service? Well, we are still at zero for over a year, so, no. read more

Hands down the worst company I have ever worked with. As soon as you sign the contract and start paying you will never hear from your contacts again. They will ignore any email you send them that isn't about adding a service. Their support does not read your questions/issues. I swear they have a team of maybe 4 people who barely understand English as their support team. They say you will get a response within 24 hours yet I have never gotten a response faster than 3-4 days. I messaged them about an issue with an annual filing, very clearly stating the issue is annual and even attached the state correspondence, they reply after 3 days with "We can't do monthly filing for that state." Every single issue I have opened takes weeks to resolve because I have to send at least 4 messages repeating myself because they never actually respond to the issue I bring up. Its shocking how terrible the support is for this company. Even the product itself will randomly add sales tax to states where it is not supposed to and when you ask what happened they will just keep repeating "it will not happen again" until it does and then again "o no this will not happen again!" If you have literally any other option go with that, they have been an absolute nightmare to work with. read more

Avalara took over Track1099, a company I'd used for a long time with great results. This year, the program intermittently stops working and says it's overloaded b/c too many people are using it and I should try back later. WTH? You didn't know January was a prime month for 1099s?!! This really slows my work flow and makes me less efficient, the opposite of why I originally signed up for Track1099. I contacted customer service and got some canned response about how they're working to correct the issue "as soon as possible". But it's been happening for over a week now! Thanks for making a previously great product completely unreliable, dunces. We're a busy bookkeeping office and based on this experience, I'll NEVER use other Avalara products. read more

It looks like most of the recent reviews echo our businesses experience with this company. "Fradulent" upgrade due to a "mistake" which they admitted in writing resulted in charges in excess of $13,000 when our yearly service is about $2,000. Signed a contract term extension at that rate because it also promised the ~$10,000 refund, despite desperately wanting to get away from them. That was obviously a mistake as now like others have reported, if we even get an answer its just the run around. No way to contact anyone with any authority, no answer from support tickets or supposed "account reps" bounced our account between multiple reps. I would avoid this vendor if at all possible. read more

Avalara customer service is operated by third world country representatives and impossible to deal with. After a few years of continuous frustrations, we ended services with them and they refused to refund $1000. Nothing like arguing with representatives that dont speak English and they laughed how we wouldn't be getting our money back. Months of service prepaid and they are crooks keeping it and have now stolen our money. DO NOT EVER SIGN UP FOR ANY SERVICES WITH AVALARA. Eventually you will be scammed by them. read more

I have been trying to get ahold of my account manager since 11/25. I have emailed numerous times, called and spoke with support and have yet to get a response from him. I requested to cancel our service before our renewal and responded to the email you sent reminding us of our renewal. Our account automatically renewed and I have been trying to get a refund of over $6k for the last 4 weeks with no response. This company is a complete SCAM. Do not do business with them! read more

THIS IS THE WORST COMPANY I'VE EVER USED! I closed my business down at the beginning of the year - I used avatax on my bigcommerce store and it was FREE when I installed it. Come to find out they got rid of that and auto upgraded my account to an $897 plan despite my business being closed. I never authorized being upgraded. and now i've been trying to get a refund as I reached out within 3 days of the charge going through and they are telling me they can't give me a refund. So they're keeping $897 of my money and providing 0 service to me. Oh not to mention, it took 10+ days to get a reply from the customer service team, sorry if you have to deal with Karan P. read more

If I could give Avalara negative stars, I would. This is hands-down the worst company I've ever dealt with. Their customer service is nonexistent unless you're contacting sales. Once you're a customer, expect silence--nothing but crickets.We signed up for their QuickBooks Online integration, promised seamless tax filing for our two companies. Instead, the integration is accurate maybe 80% of the time, which is unacceptable for tax reporting. States demand 100% accuracy, and Avalara's errors don't cut it. When I reviewed our first filing, the return was nowhere near correct. I contacted Avalara and explicitly asked them not to file, but they claimed it was too late and the return would be filed anyway, forcing us to amend it later.Three months into this nightmare, Avalara has filed 12 incorrect returns across two states for our two companies. The fines and penalties from the states are piling up, and Avalara is still charging us for a full year of service due to a contract, despite their system's failures. These costs pale in comparison to the mounting penalties we'll face from the states over the next year.I've sent countless emails and left voicemails begging Avalara to stop filing returns to limit our losses, but they've ignored every attempt. I've spoken with state sales tax departments, and they confirmed this is a recurring issue with Avalara.Do yourself a favor: steer clear of Avalara unless you want to pay for inaccurate tax filings, unresponsive support, and a cascade of fines and penalties. read more

I wish there was a an option to rate it below one star even. This company is good for nothing. The customer support center is useless and it should be named as customer torture center. read more

Wish I had seen these reviews before we signed up...1 star rating is just not low enough. The disorganization is catastrophic, unlike anything I've every heard of let alone experienced - every step that's supposed to take a week takes multiple months. Almost no one there responds to your first email, it takes 3-4 emails over 2-3 weeks to get a response. They make you pay all of it up front and then refuse to discount when they put your small business in tax jeopardy and will refuse to cancel contracts that they've breached. AVOID AT ALL COSTS people, there are many other options out there and literally, there is no way the alternates could be worse. read more

Truly horrible customer service. I am paying over $3,000 a year for support and still cant get the most basic of questions answered. I cant speak about how it actually works because I haven't gotten that far. Not sure what anyone's job is because no ones job is to actually help you. I have emails with a few people at this point but no one seems to actually do anything or provide an answer to my question. I wish i would've read the reviews prior to signing up because it would have saved me a bunch of time and money. If for some reason you do decide to go with Avalara after reading all these horror stories do NOT let them sell you the support plan. You are better off taking that money and burning it. All the company responses saying to contact customer care are laughable. I guarantee everyone leaving a review already went through that process. If it was that simple we wouldn't be here. read more

Do not use AVALARA. They are horrible. The customer service is horrible and not responsive. My account manager did not review my account and they auto renewed a tax service that I didn't need (or use) they charged me $10,450 -automatacally to my cc. When I realized this and tried to get my fee refunded because I do not use or need this service , I was given the song and dance and run around from my account manager, Derek Barker and from the Customer Excellence team. My sales rep, actually told be to ask for a refund because I don't use this service. So I've just flushed 10,450 for NOTHING. I will leave a this review every where I can. Not to mention the implementation process was PAINFUL!!!!! Took about 8 months to get my tax filing figured out. NO NOT USE - WORST EXPERIENCE EVER!!!!!!!!!! read more

Started off ok and has significantly gone downhill. We've integrated Avatax with Quickbooks online. The ava app has dragged down the speed of qbo, it recalcs the tax after every line item on invoices and estimates making the process take 5-10 times longer than it should. On top of that exceptionally mediocre performance, in the last three months the ava app has begun recalculating the tax rate on estimates and invoices after they have been sent out and in some cases have already been paid. This has created overpayments and underpayments across all of the accounts. My CPA has been reaching out for 3 weeks and usually without a response. This software and the customer care is absolute garbage. Ava in a nutshell, it doesn't work and they don't care. read more

Do not use Avalara! They will auto renew and lock you into high rates. The integration was not done correctly resulting with multiple calls to their server. In return they will charge you extra for each call to their tax server and bill you without notice. You are then obligated to increase the monthly rate or pay the overage. If you decide to cancel they will send you a bill for the remaining term of your contract. They are a horrible company. Please do not sign up with them. You will regret it 10000%. I'm so glad I'm finally done with them. Ended up paying till the end of the contract and now we're finally free!! They have the nerve to contact me after all the payments have been made to try to win back the business. Are you kidding me??? Stay away!! read more

I would not recommend Avalara to any business owner. This company is not responsive. I open a case with no response for over 1 month. If this is the type of customer service expected I suggest to look for another organization. read more

Scam business. We canceled our subscription and even after we canceled they charged us $9827.96. We have repeatedly have tried to get them to refund it. They promised it would be refunded by June 28th. It wasn't. They are now giving us a run around. They claim they will contact accounting, but won't give us any contact info. I cannot dispute the charge because we signed a contract with them saying disputes cannot be done through chargebacks. This is a fraud company out to scam people out of their money. Stay away. UPDATE 7/10/24: They now claim they already issued a refund to our credit card. I said I have not received it and asked what date they did it and for proof they issued it. It has been 24 hours and no response. They do not provide direct number or even person's last name to call and used a service email address. I think they are committing fraud here. 7/12/24 - They finally emailed again saying they are still trying to find proof they paid me. How is this something hard to find for an accounting software firm? 7/22/24 - Was told by them on the 16th that they didn't give me my credit as they claimed and they were issuing our credit and it would hit our account in a few days. Still no credit. 7/23/24 What Courtney is saying is a lie. We have sent multiple requests to give us an update for a refund and no one is replying to us. They are stealing our money. read more

They are gouging customer by increasing pricing by, in my case, 2,000% without notification of that price increase. The only customer service appears to be in India and nobody is calling me to discuss this situation. Everything is by email... I have asked for a call numerous times. I continue to fight the $1245 charge via email. I have also had to dispute the charge as fraud with my cc company. read more

Absolutely horrific support, nobody ever replies to your emails for help or support. If you show up a few minutes late to a meeting, they email you to tell you they are waiting and then leave the call and tell you they only wait 5 minutes! if you have trouble with Zoom, they don't care, and their entire support team is in India, so they are in a different time zone with lack of organization and lack of understanding to troubleshoot the problems. read more

Their customer service is extremely horrible. We bought the managed tax filing package because we need to file Chicago. Two months before the package renewal date (renewal date in Nov), we requested to downgrade the package to standard package. Emailed to our account manager several times. No response. Then signed up his calendar to meet with him. He told me he never got my requests. During the call he instructed me to remove Chicago and informed him when it's done. I did and email him. However the renewal invoice is still no change. Met with him again. He said he told me the new proposal was sent to me but no response. Checked all junk folder but I can't locate it. Then I asked him to send again. To be safe I also signed up his calendar to make sure he sent it. Meeting was either cancelled ( he stated he was still working on the proposal??) or no show. I have also filed tickets but either the help desk told me to contact my account manager or closed the ticket without making sure my issue is resolved. I have reopened the ticket three times. Two weeks after the new year a new account manager was assigned. At first he told me I can't make change during the contract term. I have showed him all the tickets and records of conversations with the previous AM. Then he said he would help me. This time the new account manager can get my emails but still need me to chase update. Last week I was told my package can be changed to standard BUT only applied to all returns I haven't used. Any filing between the renewal date and our meeting cannot be adjusted. Today I got the notification my account will be suspended as no payment for the managed package invoice. I have sent notification of downgraded two months before renewal (I have confirmed with my ex account manager that I can make change anytime before renewal.) The entire issue is all on Avalara side. They don't process my request on time, then disappearance of the AM, then threaten me to pay even the issue is not resolved. I am disappointed and strongly NOT recommend buying their software due to extremely poor customer service. read more

Conceptually this is a great product. The attention and level of service provided to get onboarded is great. However, once you are onboarded, the service level falls off a cliff. The response time from customer service leaves a lot to be desired. Avalara "decides" when your issue has been resolved - even if you still have questions. This may even result in having to open another ticket for the same event case. Would NOT recommend - there are less headaches continuing to file the returns independent of this "service". read more

The worst customer service! They change account managers like gloves. Noone knows what is happening with the account, impossible to get in touch with anyone in customer service. We have a case open for a month! Still not resolved! Frustrating! Waste of time and money! read more

terrible company. terrible service. raised prices by 4-8k a year. I never ask for help and when I do have 1 issue company is impossible to get in touch with and get the help you need. steer clear of this company out to get your money as much as possible. read more

DO NOT USE THIS SERVICE! This would have to be the most painful company I have ever worked with. Being sold a done-for-you service, paying for state registration fees and then being told I need to set them up myself. I've been through 3 or 4 account managers now in less than a year and all they try do it sell you more products. You ask them questions or for help they just CC you in with someone else who either sends you back to the account manager, doesn't reply or doesn't help. I wish I had read the reviews before signing up, this is the kind of company that drags profitable business backwards. AVOID AVOID AVOID read more

We haven't been able to get through the initial onboarding process as it seems others haven't either. After 4 months of trying with little to no support, I have canceled the service which I never got to even use. Now they are deciding if they will give me a refund, even though they have provided no services at all. I'm not holding my breath. Really disappointing!!! read more

This was the worst customer service experience I have ever had. They took 6 weeks to file my business license and then we found out they used the incorrect mailing address! There was no way to reach a person directly and it takes 2 weeks for someone to finally call you back. read more