H&R Block sucks bricks. They suckle upon cinder blocks so hard that even though we’ve never actually transacted there, but after hearing story upon story of their ineptitude, we just had to give their store the finger as we drove by this weekend.

We feel bad for the 70 out of 800 people who responded to our tax poll saying they were going to do their taxes this year at the big green block. Obviously you don’t read The Consumerist closely enough.

D. should really be thanking H&R Block. Because of their incompetence, he’s learned how to do his taxes himself.

Another gas can on the fire, after the jump…

D. writes:

“Two years ago I signed up for H&R Block’s online tax prep form, since I am totally useless with numbers (I once thought I had a $2000 tax rebate coming, and was about to file until I saw the second set of forms). I only had one job that year (generally rare). They charged me 25 bucks for the priveledge, which even in Canadian funds is not small change for an impoverished techie.

Clicking through a few pages and putting in the appropriate numbers (actually pretty straighforward and not at all tedious) I was informed that I could expect a $40 rebate, minus $25 for the return. Still, better than doing my returns repeatedly until I came up with the same number twice.

The fee (plus taxes, natch) was deducted from my credit card and I waited for my cheque.

What I got (in mid-May) was a friendly letter from the Fed informing me that I had failed to file my taxes correctly, and that I actually owed them about a buck-fifty. Under Canadian tax law, if you owe the government less than two
dollars, or vice-versa, no one pays anything (cost of postage, etc).

So I’m out twenty-five bucks when I was expecting at least a few bones to be tossed in my direction. No such luck. I sent an email to H&R Block, who blamed it on a “computer error” which I know is tech-speak for “we don’t know what the fuck is going on and can’t be bothered to check.” The actual reasoning was that since the error didn’t result in me owing the government money, it shouldn’t be a problem. Like a CSR has better things to do. It probably came down to the fact that I’m small potatoes compared to the big fish (spuds? I hate to mix my metaphors) they deal with on a regular basis.

In terms of total time wasted, I may as well have done the damn taxes myself, which is what I’ve done every year since.

Keep up the good work,

D.”

[photo cred]

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