After seeing a commercial for this company on Fox News in August 2010, I called Associated Tax Relief (ATR) for an initial consultation. Previously I worked with a better known competitor JK Harris and was not certain Harris had given me accurate information, so I called ATR for a second opinion. Their consultant (aka salesman) Bob Larsen asked me to provide basic documentation. After several phone calls and e-mail exchanges Larsen informed me JK Harris was wrong, that I did qualify for an IRS Offer in Compromise (OIC) and provided a summary in writing. Larsen did a great job selling himself and ATR as a company that is above the criticism and complaints common to this industry. Larsen presented me with their agreement, took my $4,900 payment and immediately became unavailable. After convincing me he was someone important ("I have access to every e-mail account in the company), I realized he didn't even have an e-mail account and had to rely on receiving e-mails from someone named Sophie Davis. In fact, once they collected my money Larsen was not permitted to have further contact with any client!
Long story, but worth reading . . .
ATR has only ONE enrolled agent and a client NEVER gets to speak with him. You do however get to speak with people who don't know the answers to much, always need to place you on hold to speak to the enrolled agent, and then return to give you conflicting or outright incorrect information. Their technology infrastructure is poor at best. More often than not incoming calls go into a general voice mail box, and frequently that mailbox is full and cannot accept messages. On occasion the phone is answered by an automated system that prompts you to dial a person's extension, but none of the employee's extensions are published anywhere. When given the option to dial by the person's name you are informed that no such person exists.
Incoming client e-mails seemingly don't get read, and the excuse is that your transmission probably exceeded their incoming message size quota. Ironically I never received one single rejection message. On one occasion I e-mailed requested documentation and when I received no response I followed up a week later, only to be told the office manage (Michelle Silver) was on personal family leave. The girl I spoke with (Monica Alvarez) supposedly gained access to Silver's inbox, forwarded the e-mails to the enrolled agent (BichNgyuen), but three weeks later when I still received zero response I had to speak with Silver, who insisted I had to have misunderstood Alvarez because she checked and no such e-mails were ever received. Despite being notified I would be on vacation the last two weeks of 2010 and specifically requested that any communication be by e-mail, on 12/21 ATR mailed me a letter stating I WAS NOT ELIGIBLE FOR AN OIC! What a frigging joke this company is! But shame on me. The fault is mine and mine alone. I did not know about Ripoff Report at the time, and I neglected to check the BBB. I realized very quickly I was dealing with not only incompetence, but a disingenuous company. Not only is ATR not a member of the BBB, their rating is "F". Of 145 complaints filed against them ATR failed to even respond to 122 complaints. The BBB also addresses their concerns about false advertising, again to which ATR has not responded. View the full report at: http://www.la.bbb.org/Business-Report/Associated-Tax-Relief-Inc-100038643 Their website is now listed as "under construction". Go figure. Destruction would be a far better idea.
LET THE BUYER BEWARE!
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