Severe break down in Ultratax service and reliability

The hold times for phone support now even exceed the ones at the IRS. It's often more than 45 minutes and sometimes hours. A request by email for support was replied to by Ultratax who said that it could take up to 96 hours to receive a response. I have been using electronic signatures in the past but now clients are not receiving the e-signature emails any longer. What is going on? The airline model where every representative is never waiting but the customer is the one who is waiting? I'm seriously considering leaving Ultratax. Please chime in. Curious what others experiences are with the e-signatures which doesn't work anymore. Am I the only one?

Breakdown in support is another reason I left UT (besides being overpriced for what you get). I cannot necessarily say my new software is any better, but I do get responses rather quickly when I have questions. Have not yet encountered technical issues to know about support.

Ultratax says electronic signatures don't work when client uses g-mail. They blame it on gmail using some new security protocol. Well, 80% of people use gmail. Ultratax won't fix it this tax season so goodbye to electronic signatures. If you've heard a different explanation, please let us know.

Cornerstone, what are you using now?

Ultratax says electronic signatures don't work when client uses g-mail. They blame it on gmail using some new security protocol. Well, 80% of people use gmail. Ultratax won't fix it this tax season so goodbye to electronic signatures. If you've heard a different explanation, please let us know.

Cornerstone, what are you using now?

Funny...I had issues with encrypted e-mails and gmail users, and my email encryption provider confirmed it was actually a Microsoft issue. That was patched, but now I am having issues with Yahoo and Hotmail, for example. DocuSign does not have issue sending to gmail recipients, so why would UT's esig service?

I am now using Lacerte. I prefer it more often than I regret switching, so I guess that is good news.

No problems with CCH ATX (single use is $1,700 a year - all forms - all states - 10-years back) Customer Support answers their phones - haven't had to call this season - knock on wood. Docu Sign works well "fingernail scratch signature"Ok, clients can figure it out with ease.

Use the chat feature. I have done 3 times this year and I was chatting with someone each time in under 2 minutes.

I am hearing about problems with most vendors. I jumped from UT to Lacerte a few years ago and it was awful so I came back to UT.

Agree about the long wait times for UT telephone support. They really should improve this.

Also agree about the UT chat feature - it tends to be very fast and helpful.
I rarely call for support questions, as most can be answered in a chat.

Drake - no hold at all. It goes through. I would think that the more expensive software would have better service. I guess not

Thank you all. Wel, I used the chat and it was faster than phone support.

They answer chat quickly, they don’t correspond quickly. I was waiting 5 minutes between every respsonse.

Agree, the timer said 45 minutes once it was all chatted about and done. The problem with Ultratax, and maybe your tax program as well, is called "technical debt" in the programmer's jargon. Every time, which is very often, the tax law changes, Thomson Reuters and others have to program in the changes. They don't start from scratch but try to program the changes into the already existing software, which is the cheaper solution, creates problems for users. On Glassdoor it says, TR pays Sales Executive, 6 salaries reported, $200,000 per year. FROM SOME NEWS OUTLET: The news and information provider posted a 4% rise in revenues to $1.58 billion and showed higher sales in each of its three largest divisions: Legal Professionals, Corporates and Tax & Accounting Professionals. TR does something right.