Mainetaxguy

Cbslee, at this point, I just don't see ATX spending a lot of money to do a major rewrite of the program. The only way they may do that is that they lay off x-number of sales people and administrative staff, and hire better programmers. It's clear based on these posts that ATX was trying to push three years of improvements and one year in an effort to "save money" and looked where that got them. From CCH's point of view, we are the "little" guy that represents firms no larger than 4 people. CCH has many large clients that are willing to spend more money on software. It's clear base on CCH's mismanagement of ATX throughout the years, they simply are not committed to spending to big bucks necessary to get things properly done. From a business point of view, I can understand where they are coming from. Which begs the question '' why buy out ATX and Kleinrock in the first place if CCH was never committed to making the services better?"

Cathy, A loyal ATX customer is like a slave in an S&M film -- The more you try to please your master (CCH), the more he beats you (the customer). Loyalty is a sign of weakness to CCH. When you leave CCH and go elsewhere, you show strength and courage. CCH respects strength and courage, and will reward you with large discounts. Loyal customers are treated like slaves. Returning customers are treated like heroes. Leave CCH and then return - only then will you be treated differently.

Deep down, we are all submissive women in an S&M film and CCH is our master. Sometimes you love the ones you hate the most. "Yes, CCH, please, more pain, give me more pain, I love it when you screw up my software," we say. "Please don't stop, please whip me, beat me, let me spend hours trying to use your software." "I love when you hate me CCH," we say. "I can't get enough of your whip, your lame excuses, your useless promises, your long holds on the technical support line, beat me, beat me some more so that each year I will pay the early renewal discount for the short-term pleasure of knowing that by tax season my job will turn into real pain." "Don't stop, CCH, don't stop," we say. "We love to complain but deep down we are your slave and you are our master because we don't have enough common sense to go elsewhere." As I said before "you love the ones you hate the most."

ATXaholics Anonymous, where have you been? That's old news. Of course, Jeff is done...you didn't hear the cheers of all the frustrated ATX customers (and some employees) has he hit the road back to Chicago...where I'm sure CCH will have him reserve when they buy out another company to screw up. As for Mr. Marx's e-mail, guys....its just the same old CCH we screwed up, stay with us another year, and we will screw you over again, blah, blah. Sometimes I think we are all characters in one of those Bondage & Dungeon (B&D) movies, where the master wearing a black mask, keeps whipping a submissive women, as she screams “more pain, CCH, please....give me more pain...I love it...I love when you screw up my software program...please don’t stop...give me more pain.” How much more pain do we all want?

Joelgilb, to answer your question, yes, I think CCH would walk away from $50 million in sales if those sales are going to DROP dramatically after tax season because of a bad product. CCH may want to cut loose any ties with ATX, and just get out of the whole business since they have repeatedly failed their customers over the years (especially this year). They may decide, "forget the little guy, all the little guy wants to do is complain and ask for refunds, let's stick with the big guys since they are spending more money, and we, CCH, want to invest more in helping the big guys because they generate more revenue than the little guys." Its like if you bought a house before the Great Recession at $300 K and the value drops to $100 K after the Great Recession, would you want to continue owning the house or claim foreclosure and buy some other company to screw up. See my point?

Florida Tax Man-- Trying to stay on the "good" side of CCH is like trying to stay on the good side of the devil - you never know when the pitch fork is going to stab you in the rear! As the old saying goes "better to deal with the devil you know than the devil you don't know." How true. Can you say "burn, baby, burn."

Randall, I feel the same way. I'm definitely not going to renew early this year. I have a feeling that ATXs' competitors are aware of the mess created by ATX, and they are more than willing to offer us discounts or special deals to lock us in. It will be interesting to see what ATX has to offer after tax season beyond the regular early renewal discount. Maybe they can offer us a pound of flesh from Jeff or the programmers who screwed up the software...on the other hand, what am I going to do with a pound of flesh? Answer - give it to the IRS. They are already skinning our hides!

With all the high level executives resigning, it will be interesting to see if any ATX mid-level managers will keep their jobs after tax season. I suspect internal reviews are quietly going on behind the scenes to find out who messed up. The sad thing is that CCH as a whole actually does put out some good products. But there is something about the company's culture that allows good people to constantly shoot themselves in the foot. I once knew a manager who worked in Riverwoods (HQ at CCH) who told me there was something about the culture that didn't seem right to him. When he mentioned this in passing to his supervisor, she immediately began to turn on him, criticizing him constantly for his work, and just giving him a hard time. It was almost like he was working in a movie version of the "Stepford wives" where everyone had to conform. Eventually, he quit and found a better job. People at the bottom are always seeing the train wreck coming...but they don't want to warn top management for fear of losing their jobs. There this sense of discontent between top executives and low level employees that overwhelms everybody's sense of good judgment.

SFA, Gil isn't going to respond to your e-mails. Neither is his supervisor. With all the talk about a class action suit after tax season, I suspect all the ATX employees have been told to keep their mouths shut about refunds. Frankly, I will be surprise if Gil or his supervisor are going to be around after tax season. If you were working in sales for ATX, would you stick around after this mess? I doubt it. In order to survive after this debacle, CCH is going to have to lay off about 50% of their sales staff after season, and use that money to upgrade their software for next year (if they are still around by that time). The goal for them after tax season is retention - forget trying to get new customers. Not going to happen this year. I still think CCH may just sell ATX and get completely out of the small firms service business - they have demonstrated that they are not interested in investing serious dollars to help the little guy. For CCH, the major focus is on larger firms and corporations. As mentioned on other posts from others, its clear now ATX was trying to cram three (3) years worth of software upgrades into one (1) year, and then lay off a lot of the programmers after tax season - they failed. Now they are going to have to cut the sales staff after tax season, and encourage the programmers to stay on board one more year. It's how about money, guys. Follow the money.

I kept this press release that was issued by ATX/CCH in August 28th of last year. The press release announces the ATX2012 version of the program we are using now. In the press release, Jeff Gramlich is quoted as saying : "The enhancements we've added to ATX 2012 make tax preparation as simple and stress-free as possible, and that's a testament to a lot of hard work by a lot of dedicated people who took the time to listen to what tax professionals said they needed and then turned those comments into the software enhancements in ATX 2012." Stress free? Does anyone disagree?

Jason Marx has a good resume. Unfortunately, he’s another CCH clone. What CCH really needs to do is hire an outsider to come in and shake things up. Or better yet, they should hire Glynn and Steve Willet to return and run ATX again. As for CCH taking down his official picture, hell, I would have done the same thing given the number of angry ATX customers right now. As for another CCH executive resigning, it's now clear that CCH is in a major upheaval. Part of the problem is the company's culture. They just don't know how to adapt to new changes. Wolters Kluwer, which owns CCH, just wants to squeeze every ounce of money out of the company. But the more they squeeze, the more they lose money. Introduce IntelliConnect a year early, and you end up losing $12 million in canceled subscriptions. You introduce the new ATX program a couple years early, you end up losing tons of customers and sales. It never stops. It never ends. It's always the same cycle - CCH buys out a good company, they screw things up, they lose money, and then they go out and do the same thing over and over again. It's like watching a car accident in slow motion.

I heard that some of the ATX people from Caribou did transfer to Georgia shortly after the lay off of the entire sales and tech. team in Maine. I don't know if they are still working for ATX or not. However, after this tax season, if they are still working at ATX they probably are going to start looking for other jobs - unless CCH lays them off too!

It's clear that the entire ATX sales and support team is overwhelmed by this mess. Also, they may be trying to decide what type of refund policy they are going to establish for this year, and how to handle sales and renewals after tax season. With Jeff now gone and new leadership arriving, it will take weeks before they come up with a firm policy. My gut tells me it is total chaos in ATX. If I were in sales at ATX, I would be sending out my resume and packing my bags for another job.

Jklcpa, first your old sales person is no longer working at ATX - that is a bad sign right there. (And frankly, if I were in sales, I wouldn't be working at ATX right now either). Second, the new sales rep is giving you a hard time about the refund and wants you to wait until the problem is fixed. When? After tax season?!? This kind of CCH/ATX "blame the customer and not us" attitude is going to kick CCH/ATX in the pants after tax season when it comes time for early renewals. What were they thinking? Don't they ever learn? It's like that situation a few years ago when CCH laid off the entire sales and technical support team in Caribou, ME a week before tax season, and the phone lines were jammed for nearly two weeks because they laid off the only person in Caribou, ME who could transfer the phone calls from Caribou, Me to Georgia! While we were all struggling with technical issues (not as bad as now), all the sales and technical support people we had come to depend on all these years were standing in the unemployment line in Maine, while we were struggling to do taxes. Again, I ask you, don't they ever learn? If you are going to buy a company to cater to the small accounting market, then treat your customer right - or just sell it to someone who will treat the customers right!

I don't think the purpose of a class action suit is to make money in this case. Instead, I think it would be design to send CCH and ATX a message that they better not mistreat their customers by giving them a lousy program. Plus it would be bad PR for both CCH and ATX to have to deal with a class action suit, and it might discourage potential customers from ordering their products. I'm not a lawyer, but I suspect that in order to bury this whole bad matter, CCH would quickly settle the suit, and move on from this crisis. And by the way, don't think for a minute that Jeff is the only person who had to resign because of this mess. I'm sure an internal review is going on right now at CCH and ATX - more heads will roll. I'm sure there is a lot of finger pointing going on right now.

While I now believe there was no conspiracy on part of the programmers to screw things up, I don't think ATX will completely recover from this. While Congress is partly to blame for the IRS late start, there clearly are some major fundamental problems with CCH that go beyond the normal ATX software problems that occur every year. After all, when was the last time an ATX president had to apologize about so many errors and then later was forced to resign? No, this is a serious problem. This reminds me of what happened a few years ago when CCH introduced IntelliConnect. I know for a fact that some CCH programmers wanted to wait another year before releasing the program, but Wolters Kluwer forced their hand. The result? Massive cancellations of CCH research subscriptions. I heard CCH lost more than $12 million in orders, and to this day, has not fully recovered from the IntelliConnect debacle. Most CCH research customers went to RIA, and later, others went to Parker Tax Publishing. CCH has so little interest in renewing small research customers who spend $5,000 or less on research, that they have assigned the retention/renewal task to a Florida customer call center rather than the more professional group in Chicago (CCH HQs). No, this is different. The blood is in the water, and Drake and others are circling in for the kill.

Given all the problems this year, and given all the bad publicity to boot, would CCH sell ATX after tax season? Sure, Jason Marx. has been appointed the new CCH SFS president, but is he may be an interim president. Even accounting trade journals are reporting this mess, and they normally turn a blind eye to this controversy and write PR pieces so that they can get ad revenue from CCH, RIA, BNA, etc. If you were a prospect and an ATX salesman called you after tax season to purchase the service, what would your reaction be? Heck, what is your reaction as a customer right now when they call you about doing an early renewal after tax season? No, I have a feeling this ship is sinking and CCH is suffering from buyer's remorse from even purchasing ATX and Kleinrock in the first place. With the introduction of IntelliConnect a few years ago, and the mess that followed after that, I think CCH is wondering whether it's worth it to stay in the "small firms" market or just get out while the getting is good. They may be saying that it would be better to focus all their time, money and energy on the larger accounting and law firms, which has always been their bread and butter anyway. Maybe because they think we are "small" that we don't deserve all the attention and resources they give to the big boys. It's time for them to put up, or shut up. Either respect us, or just sell ATX to someone who will respect us.

I'm sure that Jason Marx. the new CCH SFS president may be a good guy, but I wonder what he deserved to get this job. I mean, with the things are with ATX these days, I would rather be working at McDonald's at 1:00 a.m. than take this job!

Think about it. Does anyone really feel that the ATX programers are so stupid to come out with a bad software program? I find it hard to believe that no one did any quality control or checks. I suspect something else is going on here. I suspect that ATX programers may have deliberately sabotage ATX by coming out with a lousy program. Why? Because based on what we have read here, many programers felt they were overworked and underpaid for their efforts. Under those circumstances, what else did they have to lose but give us a bad program. By sabotaging the ATX, maybe the programers hoped they would get the attention of upper management. Or maybe they had a more sinister motivation - come out with a bad program that would force some upper management staff (e.g., Jeff) to resign. This is just a theory, but it could explain what is going on right now.

What ATX doesn't understand is that in the Internet Age, there are many avenues for people to express their opinion about companies and services. Banning someone from a company's message board isn't going to solve the problems that ATX is now encountering. Rather than be upset about customer's complaints, they should focus their time and attention on creating a good software program that doesn't have a lot of bugs and errors. I'm beginning to suspect - and I could be wrong about this - that many of the problems were based on sabotage by ATX's own programmers. Think about it - some have complained on this message board about long hours and little pay, and one person on this message board speculated that ATX was in a rush to get the new program out so that they could lay off some programmers once the task was done - that's like telling someone on death row to hurry up and build the gallows so executioner can hang him! I can't believe that the ATX programmers are stupid. I believe they were under a lot of pressure to put this program out, and felt that if the s**t hits the fan, it would hit top management rather than them. As it turns out, they were right. Lesson - treat your employees with respect, pay them well, and take your time putting out a good program. End of story.

Cbslee, I agree with you. Most companies feel that all you have to do is rebrand the company, and come out with a great slogan, or some other marketing campaign, and all will be good. What CCH (and other companies) don't realize is that what makes a good company is the product it produces. If you create a good product, the marketing will take care of itself - because word of mouth (WOM), referrals, and social media will take care of all your marketing. It's like reading a good book - if you like it - you tell your friends, and their friends tell their friends, etc. If you have a good tax prep program, people will sing your praises. If you have a lousy program - beware, you can kiss your profits goodbye.

Hi, I read the Kleinrock TaxTalk message board. Some of the old Kleinrock customers and current ATX customers use the board to discuss tax work. Below is a posting from a current ATX customer who is jumping ship because of problems with her 1120 forms. This is sad, so sad...... Hi All - I lost confidence in ATX yesterday and jumped ship. I am a small one woman shop, so my volume is less than most of you. I had 10 or so returns that were signed and ready to efile before I jumped ship. I decided to re-input those returns into ProSeries and get them e-filed this weekend. While re-inputting an 1120, I noticed some very odd mistakes... Other deductions were changed. The dollar amounts are fine, but the categories (accounts) had been changed to things that don't apply to my client. Professional fees is now Janitorial. Supplies is now Security....etc. I wanted to alert you to this as this is NOT the return I prepared. (I know this as I print out these forms and review with a highlighter before I print the client return). It was a return that was ready to e-file though, and I never would have caught it. I know that this is not a big deal as it is a corp and if it did get looked at I could explain the problem and show the correct info. What I do think is a big deal is that it is not the return that I prepared. Just wanted to warn those that are hanging tough... you may want to spend the time to take another look at each return before sending. Good luck! And Happy Friday!! ) Lori Thompson, EA [email protected] ktjtax.com

Why did CCH buy both ATX and Kleinrock? They have destroyed two very good companies. It seems that every time CCH buys a company, they just screw things up. Not only has Jeff Gramlich, the CCH SFS president, and the guy in charge of ATX, has resigned, but other top CCH officials have been forced to resign too (but not related to the ATX mess). Mike Sabbatis, CEO of CCH - gone! Ray Barlow, VP of sales of CCH - gone! Pretty soon...CCH's profit will be....gone! They keep buying out companies, laying good people off, doing all kinds of "reorgs" of their various departments, telling us they are "customer focused" and in the end...all you want back is your old ATX and Kleinrock.... Well,at least we can to to Parker Tax Publishing for research....let's hope CCH doesn't buy them out anytime soon....Good luck during tax season!

Hi, I heard that Jeff Gramlich resigned too. I heard it from an ATX employee. Also, CCH recently fired the CEO and the sales director (not related to the mess we are dealing with right now). Why couldn't CCH just leave ATX and Kleinrock alone? Why?