My first attempt at completing taxes has been a dismal, discouraging, extremely stressful experience, but I do appreciate the attempts on this forum to address my issue. I tried contacting turbotax by phone, thinking it would be helpful to speak to someone directly. Instead, I found myself in the position of trying to explain my issue to a recorded voice whose goal it was to defer my call and send "help" via text or email. Trying to explain details and particulars to a recorded voice is akin to mental torture. It was only after repeatedly insisting that I needed to speak to a human being on my third call that I was connected to a turbotax representative in physical form.
I explained my problem. She said she was emailing the answers I needed. Her email did not address my questions, let alone answer them. Sheer desperation prompted me to call turbotax one more time. Life experience has taught me that CS reps are not cut from the same cloth. The next turbotax rep was simply phenomenal. I felt like I'd found a vein of gold while digging in the garden. He was knowledgeable, professional, and actually shadowed me and walked me through the entire free product, and knew how to account for my modest online sales. The form was e-filed. I wanted to adopt him!
It was subsequently rejected by the IRS due to an AGI issue, and I paper filed. Still, I could not have completed my taxes without this help. My strong sense is that the help I did finally receive, which took over an hour, is not typical for their free products. I've no idea how I got so lucky. One rather telling observation was that while he said he was emailing a form so I could rate his assistance, the first representative I spoke to did not mention rating her assistance or emailing such a form.
In the end, it was not necessary to upgrade. But I found the turbotax free product to be woefully lacking in clarity re my specific situation, and met a good deal of resistance from turbotax to giving me the clarity needed to proceed on my own, either by phone or online. I won't speculate as to why that might be. I am too happy to see an end to a nightmare to dwell on it beyond this post! 🙂
