Well, it looks like my problems yesterday weren’t special at all. Everyone was having trouble according to the Mercury News story this morning:
For Intuit’s customers, Tax Day turned out to be even more stressful than they’d feared - and the company faced quite a challenge, too.
The Mountain View financial software company’s servers couldn’t cope with the massive Web traffic from last-minute electronic filers. So when some Intuit TurboTax customers logged on to e-file their taxes, they saw error messages and weren’t able to file.
Being one of the “last possible minute” crowd myself, I have no problem believing that this mob scene overwhelmed their servers. But, the company’s response is what amazes me here in this quote:
Intuit blamed the problems on what was record site traffic leading up to Tuesday’s midnight tax deadline … Twice as many people e-filed with TurboTax Monday as during the comparable day last year, well beyond the company’s optimistic expectations.
There it is: rather than admitting they were overwhelmed, they’re practically saying it was users fault! Not their fault, but our fault. Intuit spokesperson Julie Miller brings it home, just to make sure we all know who’s fault it was:
The marketplace has essentially trained a generation of taxpayers to wait until the last minute.
For more on this, check out CNET News in which I learned that the IRS is giving TurboTax customers another 48 hours to submit their returns electronically. Amazing!
Note to Self: Next year, please don’t be an idiot and wait until the last minute!