Kelly Financial Services, Inc.

Avoid at all costs!

- Awful service, based on intimidation (seriously)

- WAY overpriced

- Owner has anger management problem



The detailed story:

Went to Kelly financial for three years or so because my wife and her family had been using them for a while and we both used them after we got married. Every year, we would go in and usually left feeling like idiots after meeting with Frank Kelly, the owner. We are not great with tax stuff, which is why we hire people like Kelly Financial to do them for us. If we didn't have a particular document or something we needed with us, we were made to feel like morons. They try to make up for awful service by offering beer and hot dogs and snacks in the lobby, but don't be fooled.



Because of the awful service, I hadn't planned on using Kelly Financial again after this year, but I wasn't even given a choice after our latest encounter with Frank Kelly. During our meeting for our personal taxes, I mentioned that I had set up an LLC earlier in the year. I was under the impression that LLC taxes could be done separately from my personal taxes, but when I mentioned the LLC to Frank, he insisted that I bring in my LLC papers (ostensibly so he could do our personal taxes). So I obliged and brought in my documents. A couple days later, I received an invoice for $289 for the LLC tax work ("generously" discounted from the $375 it was originally). Because he told me that I "needed to bring him all of the LLC documents", I thought it would be included in our usual fee and not a separate charge.



If he had told me it was going to be a separate fee of nearly $300, I might have had a few more questions. My LLC had virtually no expenses ($500 just to file the LLC paperwork) and no income. Filing those taxes was not exactly a difficult prospect. When I asked him about the invoice and told him I had misunderstood what he was going to do, he told me, "I didn't tell you to start a business, sir, and anyone with any common sense would know that owning a business comes with expenses." This, of course, was not the point. I told him that I wasn't objecting to having to pay money for a service. I mean, I already pay him close to $400 to do the personal taxes, but I didn't feel like it was made clear that I was going to be paying separately. When I asked him if it would be possible for me to file my own LLC taxes and have Kelly Financial file our personal taxes, he said it would be impossible because he couldn't be sure I'd do them properly and Kelly Financial would be responsible for a resulting error on our personal taxes because of it. He was clearly getting heated already just because I asked about any of this in the first place. But since there was no resolution, I asked him if I could file my own LLC taxes and bring him in a copy to be sure everything matched up, which felt like a reasonable solution to me. At this point he told me furiously, "I won't play these games with you." and he began ripping up all of our paperwork and refused to file any of our taxes for us. Not even our personal taxes that we already paid for. He demanded my credit card so he could refund the charges that already went through for the personal taxes, but I kept asking him if we could just talk about it because this obviously wasn't in anyone's best interest. He was so irate that he stormed out of the room and said, "I need to leave before I say something I'm going to regret." At that point, he got my wife from the lobby (who has nothing to do with my LLC by the way) and brought her back to the office and proceeded to humiliate me in front of her, acting like I caused this whole ordeal. I eventually gave him my credit card because I just wanted him to stop making me and my wife feel so awful.



Kelly Financial was more interested in screwing me and my wife over than finding a mutually beneficial solution to what was really a pretty simple issue.

This company provided payroll service for my business. They did a great job, I thought. In January of 2010 I called to cancel my services for payroll and let them know at that time that I was closing my store and will no longer be an employer. I figured they would complete the payroll services for me and wrap things up. In January of 2011 my employees did not receive their W2 forms. I gave a call to Kelly Financial Services only to find out that they "though I changed payroll companies". They failed to tell me at that time that I needed to properly close my business with the government which I would have happily paid them to do. I find out that now need to file for the entire year because all the forms were not completed. I asked how much as I did not have employees for 3 our of the 4 quarters and found out that I would still need to pay $400 for them to fill out all 0's on my forms because they "are still liable".

The following day I called and requested a copy of my payroll for the first period of 2010 - I would do it myself - the payroll was only for 2 weeks. I DID pay for this service and only needed copies. So, what did he want to charge me for copies? Was it $10 - NO, $50 - NO, $100 - NO, $150 - NO - For copies of my payroll he required that I pay him $180.00! I think this charge is ridiculous for 17 printed pages which they have on file. I was also told that I must pay CASH if I wanted these copies. I never paid cash before. For some reason everything was great and very fair up to the point that I cancelled services with them. As soon as I was no longer a current customer I was treated like trash.



To make things worse, the owner insulted me with this statement: "We are not your record keepers - if you cannot keep your records - we charge to reproduce them at the same rates that the government charges. It is that simple. Most responsible business owners understand their responsibility."



Do YOU want to deal with this guy? I didn't know the government did payroll and charged for it. All I wanted was my payroll numbers, no government records or filing info. What a Jerk! I have the records in storage, but don't think I can locate them in time for the W2 deadline the 31st.