When I woke up this morning, there was a comment in yesterday’s Turbo Tax post on Washington Rebel from someone claiming to be the VP of Turbo Tax. My initial reaction was, “Yeah. Right.” I’m not in the habit of clicking on random links provided by commenters on any of the blogs I write for.
However, upon doing a bit more research, I decided to take a chance.
Sure enough, Bob Meighan IS the Vice President of Turbo Tax. Sure enough, the link was legit. And sure enough he contacted me immediately upon reading my comment on his site and promised to investigate and try to resolve the problem.
I’m floored. This is the last thing I expected, and I’m gratified to know that Mr. Meighan cares about his company enough to personally get involved in one individual’s problem.
I also look at this experience as a success for free market capitalism. No government intervention necessary. No regulations. No formal complaints to any kind of authorities. I had a problem. I couldn’t get a resolution. I took it public. The Vice President of the company stepped in to protect his company’s reputation, and ultimately, its profits.
Politicians tend to treat profits as evil. But profits are ultimately a gauge of your work ethic, of the way you run your business and your commitment to your customers. Profits are an indicator of the value of your work. Bad business practices will ultimately affect your bottom line. Taking the effort to make things good will ultimately improve your reputation and keep customers coming back. This goes for any business, not just Turbo Tax.
I guarantee you that no Senate testimony and consequent legisleech involvement could be as bad as the kind of losses Toyota will suffer in the marketplace unless they take immediate steps to fix the problem! The market works. Once word got around about the serious problems with Toyota cars… once the lawsuits started rolling in, I guarantee no legislative involvement would have been needed (not that this will stop the legisleeches in any way).
True profits are a bottom line measurement of how well you do your job.
I would like to thank Mr. Meighan for at least taking steps to help me resolve this issue… and helping to further underscore my faith in free market capitalism.
I’ll post updates if a resolution is reached.
Feb 26, 2010 @ 08:59:50
Nicki, as you know from your time in the military there are a great many lower rank officers who believe it is their job to protect their commanding officer from unpleasant information. Same in the civilian world. So many times the guy who can do something about it has no clue there is an “it”.Once had a committee of officers try to get me to fill in an excavation that I had just had dug so we could install new boiler/plant piping for the upgraded boilerhouse we were building. I told them I could, but they would need to pay for the extra work because I would have to re-excavate and re-fill it once we had made our installation. They said they couldn’t do that, I said the COE can. Their response, “but, but, the general is due for an inspection of the tank plant (M1A Abrams)and we can’t let him see this hole and all this dirt.” NO shit! That really happened. They didn’t get their way, I left the hole and proceeded with the work. The general actually came by to check the work on the boiler house expansion and we had a pleasant conversation. Without naming any names I mentioned that he didn’t appear to be nearly as stupid as his subordinates led me to believe he was. He got a little testy and asked me what I meant. I told him about the hole and that I assumed his people thought he was too stupid to know that if you were going to bury something you had to dig a hole.At that point he chuckled just a little bit and then he said something I never forgot, “That is the worst thing about attaining command, everyone thinks they must protect you from reality, so most of the time you really don’t know what you are doing unless you just don’t listen to them and go look for yourself. But of course, you can’t personally look at everything and you can’t find anybody who isn’t afraid to tell you the truth.”Never forgot that, never hired a yes man either. I wanted people I could trust to tell it like they saw it. I am grateful to that general for verifying what my father had taught me.
Feb 26, 2010 @ 13:02:34
Yeah, I’ve seen that. I just don’t understand the rationale behind this. If you don’t allow the information to flow, how do you expect things to get fixed?
Feb 26, 2010 @ 14:12:25
Atta way to go,soldier….whats that old saw about the squeeky wheel etc etc…..
Feb 26, 2010 @ 19:33:16
That is AWESOME! Why can’t our “rulers” in DC realize this!?!?!? Free market works so much better and with today’s technologies allowing a “small” person like you to reach others with her complaint a company has very few places to hide.