The homepage of Intuit Inc.'s TurboTax website is displayed on a computer monitor in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, Feb. 13, 2012.
It would have been a classic practical joke — but it wasn’t. TurboTax, one of the most popular tax preparation programs in the U.S., sent last-minute filers into a state of panic Sunday night after its online services temporarily went down.
According to Twitter, filers were unable to log in or enter data online for about an hour around 6:40 p.m. Sunday night, the evening before the national deadline. TurboTax spokeswoman Ashley McMahon called the problem a “configuration setting” that required adjustment to accommodate high amounts of traffic the site received Sunday, the Washington Post reports.
Users aired their grievances on Twitter, where Turbo Tax also addressed the problem in a tweet:
[tweet https://twitter.com/turbotax/status/323634661865693184]
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TurboTax’s official statement, as posted on Forbes, noted that the site was never totally down.
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.
But it was enough time to stress out customers who were busy filing – or unable to file. Some customers frantically tweeted their frustrations, but after notifying netizens of its slip-up, TurboTax updated its account about 10 minutes later that services were back on. Phew! Twitter user Emily Gunsberger tweets:
[tweet https://twitter.com/EMGotham/status/323646998844678145%5D
With a shorter season than usual due to extra holidays and a leap year, the clock is ticking down for those who waited until the last minute. The season lasted just 75 days compared to last year’s 102 days. The company, which served more than 25 million users last year, was back up and running for the final hours of the April 15 deadline.