Complaint Review: Malibu Bookkeeping

In February 2015 I hired Suzie Miller to organize and enter two years worth of financial records into Quickbooks, reconcile them and to do my taxes for those years. I provided her with bank statements, credit card statements, merchant statements, Excel dashboards of check registers and related financial records. Upon receipt of these materials, she stated she “had everything she needed to complete the job.” Per our agreement, I paid her for 50% of the job ($1200.00) in advance and would pay the balance when the job was complete. Her estimation to complete the job was 2 weeks.

An agonizing 7 months passed while I begged for the work, requesting meetings she refused to attend, calls she'd not return and 138 emails between us. Miss Miller not only did not do the work, but kept my records and refused to return them. During that time, Suzie told me on many occasions, the work was "done," but it never appeared. She would ask for more records, which I”d produce – I suppose just to make me believe she was doing something.  The IRS began to demand tax returns due and charged me $5000 in late fees and fines because I could not produce the work Miss Miller had promised.

In August 2015, I finally reached her and told her how badly I needed the work for the IRS, showed her the letters from the org demanding returns I could not provide without her doing the work. Though I had not seen any work done, in desperation, I offered her the balance hoping that may inspire her to perform what was promised. Her only response that I pay her in Paypal to which I agreed to do that day and meet her in person to have the work downloaded onto my computer. Instead, she dodged the meeting again.

I had my lawyer write her a letter demanding my work be done and records returned. She refused and ignored his calls.

Now 8 months later, I have given up. I've demanded my records back and for my money to be returned; to no avail. In short, I paid $1200 for no work, my records stolen by "Malibu Bookeeping" and incurred $5000 worth of IRS fines because of it.