#2REBUTTAL Owner of company
Mon, July 15, 2013
We think we know who the former client is. He filed a complaint before ever letting us know he was unhappy with our services and our Agreement he signed.
Our Agreement plainly lets clients know how we charge for our work. The hourly rate for this Agreement was $200 per hour not the $250 he has stated. His Agreement called for the work to be done in 6-minute increments at that hourly rate, meaning the work is rounded up to 6-minute intervals.
After the client’s initial retainer is used, we ask the client to make additional retainer payments of at least $500 after the initial retainer is used. This is only 2½ hours of fees. We do this instead of asking for $1,000 or $1,500 additional retainer payments, but asking for the smaller $500 retainer amount means we must ask for them more often. We make the smaller retainer available in an effort to make the case more "pay as you go". A client is always welcome to pay a larger additional retainer amount, but they almost never do.
Also, this client doesn’t appreciate the work we did to move his case forward. A tax case is made up of big items of work and small items of work. For all the work he was charged the same hourly rate. We must charge for the "small" tasks as well as the "big" tasks.
Anyone taking over the case from us would have had a easier go of it because we’d already done a lot of work. This client is not worse off because he hired us, he simply didn’t have to pay the other tax professional to do the work we’d already done.
We have an A+ Better Business Bureau (BBB) rating. We have been in business 20 years, and represented thousands of clients in all 50 states and 29 foreign countries. We are proud that less than 0.4% of our clients have ever complained. We regret this person is unhappy, but we can’t make everyone happy, even though we try.
It appears this person has filed the same complaint several times in an attempt to make it appear that there are more complaints.
You can speak to us personally at 1-800-509-2770.
Sincerely,
Fouts Law Firm
Admitted:
- U.S. Supreme Court
- U.S. Tax Court
- U.S. Federal District Court