Intuit Service Can't Handle The Hordes Of Tax Procrastinators
from the bad-timing dept
Talk about a bad time for your network to fail. Last night, just as millions of Americans were scrambling to get their taxes filed before the deadline, Intuit's online tax filing system
buckled under the strain of so much activity. Technically, the system just got really, really slow, but it may result in penalties for people whose filings came in after midnight. For a company that's positioned itself as the leader in electronic filing, this is a pretty bad glitch, and if customers do end up owing penalties, you can be sure that the company's reputation will take a pretty big hit. What's not clear is if Intuit simply misjudged how much volume it would get, and thus failed to plan accordingly, or if there was some other mistake. Of course, the company is in a difficult position because most of the year, this service will get virtually no activity, but then is swamped in a day or two. As Nick Carr is fond of pointing out, incidents such as this one (or the annual tradition of online retailers failing around Christmas) point to the growing need for
readily available on-demand computing power, such as that which Amazon is trying to sell. Then again, Amazon suffered
an outage of its own last year during a spike in business, so it's not clear that its infrastructure is fully reliable either.
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Turbo Tax
"We have worked with the IRS this morning to ensure that returns will be considered as timely filed. Intuit customers using TurboTax software to electronically file their U.S. federal income taxes won't be penalized so long as they file their returns by midnight, April 19th."
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
??
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Do it right.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Lacking basic forms
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Lacking basic forms
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
HAHA
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: HAHA
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: HAHA
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: AC8
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Spreading it out
I think the IRS should switch to a similar schedule.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Lack of Sales
And i've worked at this store for six years now, this is the first year tax software has basically sat there unused. Not sure if this is any kind of pattern though, so take it for what it's worth.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]