When it rains, it pours. In the midst of an already tense tax season, taxpayers had a brief moment of worry last night when the online system for TurboTax appeared to melt down. After a few error messages, some angry tweeting, and a little hyperventilating, things returned to normal.
So what happened? According to Julie Miller, Director, Public Relations & Social Media for Intuit Inc., it was a glitch. The company experienced an “enormous day” for filings – a day that Miller described to me as “unprecedented” – which volume, together with a software configuration error, knocked some users offline. While the problem lasted just over an hour (from approx. 6:40 p.m to 7:50 p.m. PT), most users only experienced a few minutes delay or received a few error messages when trying to log on. Once the problem was resolved, it was back to business as usual.
Here’s the official statement from TurboTax:
On Sunday, April 14, TurboTax Online was intermittently unavailable for about 1 hour, from approx. 6:40 p.m to 7:50 p.m. PT. We resolved the issue and performance was fully restored. There have been no further issues.
The root cause was a configuration error in the TurboTax Online application – some settings needed to be adjusted to accommodate all our traffic.
The site was never totally offline, many customers continued to work and complete their returns. Some customers were unable to successfully complete some portion of their tax filing process during that time.
What about those rumors circulating this morning that it was Twitter that alerted TurboTax to the error? Not true. According to Miller, TurboTax maintains a very sophisticated monitoring system of its product in real-time which means that they can see a problem as it happens. Of course, so could users, many of whom took to Twitter to complain. In response, TurboTax offered updates on the social media platform.
They also tweeted to let taxpayers know that the system was back up and operational.
This morning, a few taxpayers on Twitter were joking about bringing the system down with their tax returns (must have been some return) while others were blaming procrastinators and last-minute filers. There’s a little bit of truth to the latter: by all accounts – from tax professionals to TurboTax – extensions are way up this season. It’s a shorter season than last year since tax season opened later and we didn’t have those extra days due to Leap Year and holidays, making the season just 75 days this year (as compared with 102 days last year). Taxpayers are pushing to finish returns on a shorter time frame and that’s going to mean last-minute tax filers and lots of requests for extension.
All of that said, the season isn’t over yet. TurboTax expects another uptick today with traffic highest this evening when west coasters are returning home from work and east coasters are still finishing their returns. But don’t worry: Intuit says that TurboTax is ready. Are you?
