Avalara Europe Reviews 489

I signed up with Avalara about 6 months ago, cancelling promptly a week or so later after finding their post sign-up customer help experience is atrocious. It was dangerously misinformed and very robotic when somethings are not that simple. When I needed help filling in their enrollment questionnaire, I suddenly became forced to use their help channel, which just kept saying, 'we are not tax advisors and cannot assist'. The problem is, the questions related to your poorly worded form, which made it near on impossible to be sure I was providing you with the right information. I even had a zoom cool with your support staff, who appeared new to the job, and was painfully ill-informed. I took it upon myself to terminate the call and rebook with the initial enrollment chap as the 3rd member on the call. It quickly transpired that I'd be previosuly mis-informed on something that, if submitted to the authorities, could have been messy. Despite cancelling within my cool off period, and being told categorically that I owe nothing, I was then bombarded with weekly chasers which stretched over many months, asking me to to provide more documentation. Then, and this is the best bit, about 5 months after initially signing up (and cancelling) I started getting demands for about $2,500. I raised it with head office, and was once again told I owed nothing and my account was definitely closed. Another chaser for over-due $2,500 arrived a week later and we repeat the above. Following a 2 week investigation whereby I requested compensation for mis-treatment, Avalara finally come back to tell me that I DID owe the $2,500 (go figure that one out!?) but they've cancelled the charge as a 'gesture'. You can imagine my frustration.

Avalara has proved itself to be nothing short of pathetic. I have found Avalara to be incapable of setting expectations, communicating effectively or understanding when it has done something wrong. Talk about a disconnect and false information. Whilst I have no doubt you've all been working as best you can within the limitations of your organisational structure, this clearly has some serious flaws, as proven. How you can confidently tell me I owe nothing, when actually owing a huge sum is surely impossible to a well organised company. Not as odd as why I ever owed this money, when I terminated within the cancellation period, or so I thought. Clearly I was mis-informed by your enrollment staff.. But that aside, how you can justify charging this amount of money for US one-time registrations when you didn't ever do the one time US registrations? The paperwork and forms were never submitted by me - This behaviour is immoral.

I cannot recommend Avalara less to anyone, and I am forever grateful that I had the wisdom to terminate my dealings with Avalara at an early stage before I let you loose with something as important as tax dealings.

I have given you the opportunity to salvage just a shred of dignity from this sorry saga which has extended over about 6 months, by offering some compensation in recognition of what you have put me through. However, you've chosen to once again show your true colours. That is, a company who doesn't appear to care one iota about the stress, anxiety and time wasting that it causes to its customers.

To conclude, PLEASE save yourself. It simply isn't worth the risk.

Edit following Avalara's response to this review:
- Avalara have attempted to make out that they have been generous enough to offer a 'gesture'. This is not the case, as the 'gesture' they are referring to is simply removing the charge of $2,500 which was confirmed many months prior as not being owed anyway. The details of this were already outlined in my initial review. Having been advised I was in the cooling off period, having never submitted the initial docs which would have allowed them to have done any actual work for me, and having been categorically told several times in writing and by phone that I owed zero, means that their offer of this gesture does nothing other than make themselves look even more inept. Finally, it is worth noting that, in their response, Avalara have opted not to apologize or admit fault or error for what they have made me endure. The fact remains that Avalara's internal systems and comms are dire, their policies immoral, and my perfectly reasonable request for compensation was rejected, seemingly as if they have no care for the time wastage or emotional distress they have caused to a customer (and not just to me by the looks of other reviews!)

@ Avalara - If you wish to respond further regarding my review, perhaps to apologize unreservedly and do the right thing with regards to some actual compensation, they may reach out to me using the details they have on file for me. This would be appreciated.

We have been trying to resolve ongoing account issues with Avalara since September 2023. We've not had any contact with our account manager since June despite trying to contact him several times since, and customer support have given us absolutely no answers. We initially had a good working relationship with Avalara and we are incredibly disappointed at this lack of communication and customer support. We have already emailed support several times and escalated our complaint to managerial level. We look forward to hearing from someone ASAP.

Lloyd has been quick to respond and decisive, the problem is now resolved and we have understood why this problem occurred so that it does not happen again. We are so happy with this assistance that we have asked him to please assist us always. When we open a ticket, we will always put it to the attention of Lloyd Dew

As always I received a good service. This time I was helped by Mr. Dale who demonstrated great professionalism and patience. Thank you again!

One of the worst companies we have ever been involved with.

Mishandled all of our state tax requirements and left us with 10's of thousands in back-payments and fines due to Avalara's failure to lodge. Hasn't stopped them requesting payment for no work done however.

A strong message to all small businesses - dont use Avalara, you'll get a different 'account manager' every second week, their 'done for you' service does absolutely nothing except line their pockets. Please beware.

I had a very helpful experience with Avalara .

I had a very helpful experience with Avalara, Jayne was very helpful with me during my transition and responded quickly. Thank you so much Jayne! Hope to do business again with them when time is right.

Thank you for an instant help with retrieving my Italian VAT certificate. The link was missing on Amazon "Manage your VAT" , but over the phone Mr Ali found it in my file and in a few minutes emailed to me. I'm very happy with quality customer service, Mr ALi is a very kind and helpful person. Thank you

I had a fantastic experience working with Ali. From the moment I reached out, Ali provided exceptional customer service, demonstrating professionalism, patience, and attention to detail. Every question I had was answered promptly and clearly, which made the entire process smooth and stress-free. It’s rare to find such dedicated support, and I truly appreciated the extra effort Ali put in to ensure I was completely satisfied. I highly recommend Ali’s service to anyone looking for top-notch customer care. Thank you, Ali, for making my experience outstanding!

I cannot express enough how disappointed and frustrated we are with Avalara’s services. Since integrating Avalara with our WooCommerce website, we have faced nothing but problems, costing us tens of thousands of dollars and an enormous amount of time and resources.

From the start, we encountered a serious issue with duplicate transactions being submitted. After a month of back-and-forth with their support, it was finally determined that the problem stemmed from the way Avalara guided us to set up our account. This mistake doubled our tax filings, and we’ve been fighting to fix it ever since. Despite resolving the issue once, a July update from Avalara reactivated the problem without our consent, leading to more duplicate transactions and locked data, which we cannot correct.

On top of that, we’ve dealt with Avalara’s unreliable support system, where we can’t even log in to get help. Our attempts to reset the password fail, and the page often doesn’t load. This is unacceptable for a service we’ve paid tens of thousands of dollars for.

Another ongoing issue is Avalara’s failure to import shipping addresses for over 300 orders, forcing us to manually input this information. This is a massive waste of time and should not be happening with a service that claims to simplify tax management.

Worst of all, in early April, Avalara’s AvaTax plugin caused our customers to be unable to check out on our website. We were left with no choice but to disable the plugin, which meant we couldn’t collect sales tax for two months. Despite repeated promises of a quick fix, it took until mid-June to resolve, causing significant financial damage.

In summary, Avalara has been a nightmare to work with. We are dealing with multiple unresolved issues that are directly Avalara’s fault, and their poor communication and lack of support have only made things worse. We’ve wasted an incredible amount of money trying to make their system work, and unless they take immediate action and issue a refund, we will be looking for alternative solutions.

If you’re considering Avalara for your business, think twice. Our experience has been nothing short of a disaster.

After evaluation of several tax support packages, we chose Avalara due to its ability to cover multiple states. We purchased the software and registration services for 14 states and was told they would handle registration and all I had to do was a simple set up for reporting for each state.

Nothing about this process was simple and after 3 months we are partially working. The registration process that we paid for, 50% of the work had to be completed or reworked by my company. The only way I knew it was incomplete was because when setting up the reporting with most all states, you have to call the tax division directly and wait on hold for hours to complete this task for each state. During that process I was told the registration was not complete so the task of registration fell on us. I have requested a refund for the services purchased and the response was, “Log a support case.”

There is little to no support. I continually went back the sales director to get help from his side to complete this, but he was of very little help and pushed me off to again, log a support case.

To date I probably have 10+ support cases zero of which have given me a solution to my problems.

From a software/technical standpoint the software was withdrawing money from my bank account for taxes in a state we were not collecting taxes in. I still have not gotten our money back, and they closed the support case. They did however admit there was a technical issue with this problem and that support case is still open.

Merve responded promptly and provided me an accurate support to do the checks so I was able to submit our country specific ledgers. Thanks!

I am so tired of the incompetence at this company. My company couldn't get a VAT registration in the UK (partially because Avalara were terrible stewards of the process), and so we canceled the registration, and they are still trying to charge us for the invoices. But honestly, someone at their company understands the service didn't work and said the invoices were voided, BUT someone in accounting has sent us no fewer than 40 messages, now threatening to shut down our EU VAT account if we don't pay for the service that doesn't exist. They do not get it. I'm just so tired of them.

In 2023, this my company ceased operations on a European sales marketplace. According to the German tax system, they failed to file the VAT declaration for my work. To this day, the German tax office continues to demand additional money from me in the form of a fine, despite the fact that I paid Avalara 750.00 euros for this service.
I would like to emphasize that I have tried to contact the company numerous times to resolve the problem, but have not received an adequate solution. A company representative named Pete was unable to properly manage my tax case, causing me issues with the German tax authority. Furthermore, the company did not provide a suitable resolution to the problem they created, instead shifting the responsibility onto me.
In conclusion, this experience has been extremely negative. I do not feel comfortable recommending this company's services to anyone, as they have proven incapable of properly handling tax matters in Germany as promised. I would advise avoiding this business for your German tax needs.

Jayne has been very helpful and responsive all around! Jayne has made the UK registration process much easier and has taken away much of the worry we were feeling. She responds quickly & is also quick to take action on our behalf. If it wasn't for Jayne we are not sure we would still be Avalara clients Today. Thank you Jayne!!

What a mess. Impossible to contact them regarding the mess they are making. They keep sending us invoices for services they did not provide.

Terrible company - highly recommend if you're considering Avalara - you look elsewhere. They sell you on their amazing service and ensuring compliance. They're very quick to bill you however! We were left with zero communication, lots of delinquency tax notices almost impossible to schedule meetings or get an understanding of where you're tax is. Their dashboards and software is clunky and very hard to extract information from. Despite not doing what they say they're going to - they also dont provide refunds on service - even if they dont actually undertake any work. Stay away!

Iris is exceptional, one of the moste talented person I had the pleasure of being guided, with employess like this, it is very easy to stay on top, thank you Iris for your patience in guiding me, you are the best!

Very professional and responsive.