TurboTax Outage 2013 Causes Temporary Panic For Many Users At Tax Deadline
It's every procrastinator's worst nightmare. You spend the better part of four months ignoring a task you know needs to be done, and on the eve of the deadline, the tool you need to use to finish the job stops working. Well for many TurboTax users, that is exactly what happened.
From about 6:40p.m. to 7:50p.m. PT on Sunday, the TurboTax website stopped working for many people filling out last minute tax returns. For those still procrastinating, the deadline to file taxes is today at 11:59p.m.
The TurboTax website was able to return to almost full functionality after an hour, but was not fully fixed for all users until Monday afternoon. The delay caused quite a scare for those who were scrambling to get their finances accounted for.
"They can't get into the website. If they do get in, they get bumped out," said Catherine Cochrane, an enrolled agent in San Jose. "There are so many people who have to do this and the state just isn't prepared."
Cochrane was referring to a new California state law that requires those making over $80,000 a year to file their tax returns electronically. Customers affected by the glitch in TurboTax's system may have to foot the cost for a late fee.
To make matters even worse for their already strung-out customers, TurboTax had a list of pre-programmed tweets that it began to send out right as their systems began to crash. The tweets were none too helpful for those starting to panic.
"Dependence isn't always great, but it is at #tax time! Aren't you curious to find out why? #TaxBreaks #TurboTaxTip" read one tweet."You guys should probably stop promoting your service on Twitter right now, since, you know, it's not working... #TurboTax #Fail," quipped one frustrated user almost immediately.
TurboTax quickly stopped their messages and began addressing the issue at hand, but not before quite a few customers nearly suffered a heart attack. TurboTax tried their best to smooth over the situation:
"[W]e did have some last minute tips scheduled on Twitter to help filers complete their returns," a spokesperson told NBC News. "As soon as we realized this, we immediately canceled them and focused on helping our customers."