Robert Z.
1/5
I would like to share some of my bad experience with Hapala Steuerberatung here. I asked them in June to do my "Steuererklärung" - rather easy stuff, around 30 invoices, 12 of which were identical. They did not do it and more importantly, did not tell me when they are going to do it. So I asked - no response. I asked again - no response. Eventually I booked an appointment with Mr. Hapala (paid of course) and raised that issue again. Now, finally they looked into it and I immediately got notified by them that I have to pay interest, because it took them so long. No excuse, just listed it as a matter of fact, as if it were my fault. I of course complained and reluctantly they agreed to deduct it from the fee. I also had a look at their work and became even more upset. They forgot to declare absolute basic stuff like "Familienbonus Plus"! If I am relied upon to check for everything, I don't need a "Steuerberatung". I expect a "Steuerberatung", a tax adviser to advise, not the other way round. I would also expect them to tell me about deadlines, not me to hunt them down. Now it gets worse. Eventually everything is settled- I checked everything as well as I could (no summary provided by them, I had to manually check through pages of pdf documents) and eventually signed it off, hoping for the best. Then months later, they send me the invoice. They charged 7 hours and 20 minutes at a rate of 149 EUR/h, absolutely not able to explain what took them that long. Best part: They actually listed "Tel/E-Mails bzgl. Fragen zum Jahresabschluss" as part of their service. So they are actually charging me for my work finding out what they forgot. Another example: I had a couple of paid appointments with Mr. Hapala. Especially in the last one he could barely help me at all (still of course charged the full hour). A couple of questions he could not answer, he took note and said he would get back to me. Good enough ... except he never got back to me. One of these questions, I dared to remind him via email. I did get a response: He threw me in a response (single number without any explanation) and claimed that it took him like 52 minutes to arrive at that number (obviously wanting to charge for this). That 52 minutes, I actually believe. The issue is, I was not aware (and not made aware) that the number I wanted was not that straight forward to determine - would have been nice, before just doing it and charging (again). But, it gets worse. That number that was thrown in like that (Trust me, I am a tax advisor), was obviously not correct. So I requested to see how he arrived at that number (I am supposed to pay for this after all), so he sent me a link to a spread sheet two days later. I checked and immediately found 5 mistakes! The number was off by almost a factor of 2 - maybe more, I am not an expert after all. This was just the mistakes I found! So by now, Mr. Hapala knows that he wanted to charge me for a wrong advice. Nevertheless, yes, I receive an invoice over something like 54 minutes. Don't quote me on perfectly exact numbers. Point being, after knowing he had given me wrong advice, he not only still insists on charging for the service, he even charges more than originally claimed. Premium prices for wrong advice. The only thing I could count on was invoices coming in.
