I was thoroughly underwhelmed. After being with a very bright, super-quick, superstar CPA for over…read more10 years in NYC, we moved to DC and were looking for a replacement. The good reviews led us to Jim Alley, but I must say they did not equal our experience.
He MISSED our first teleconference appointment (great first impression), just literally did not show up. When I called him, it was clear he was out and he had forgotten, he said he'd reschedule. I've never had a business miss a call, especially without it being an emergency, and I've never seen such nonchalance for a paying customer. Unfortunately, the trend continued, with Jim taking days to respond to email, forgetting to send a Zoom link for our next appointment, sending an email to all customers the week before April 15 to say he has a family obligation and he might need to ask for tax prep extensions, etc. Good businesses have contingency plans. Also, lovely message to send paying customers - "hey, you're not my first priority". Had I known this was his philosophy, I wouldn't have picked him. No one contests the importance of family, but professionals (ourselves included) don't hide behind their personal commitments if they can't fulfill professional ones. Also decided to have an out-of-office during the holidays very late in the game (e.g. after we had already emailed him with questions) - if you know you're going to be unavailable, signal that promptly.
Messages were often written with mistakes and lack of clarity, obviously put together in a very hurried manner or written on a phone, and required extra clarification, meetings were not efficient, he often forgot to answer questions we had sent, and quotes cited sometimes didn't make sense (e.g. he said it would take a few hours and cost $500 - $700 to research the tax obligations for green card holders for a specific country - I declined, and did that myself in a matter of minutes, and our previous CPA was able to answer such questions without any additional research).
We had to mail checks with our tax payments ourselves, which we have NEVER had to do - our previous accountant would have the payments directly drawn from our bank account. Another nice touch of "here's the instructions, go pay your taxes". Thanks, but I'm paying you so that I don't have to do anything. By early July, we were still not done with taxes, and we had to message him repeatedly to check if we still needed to sign anything or if all necessary paperwork had been filed. The returns were finalized in mid-July (albeit with updates he kept making to them), and in December, we were still emailing him about our state tax refund, as we had not yet received it.
We do not intend to use him again and will seek better options in the area (there are plenty). If a small operation run by someone who clearly has other priorities, takes his time and is not a very efficient communicator are not things that bother you, then go ahead, but just know what you're getting.
