Back when I started using the API I was able to actually talk to a person. He said the API was always going to be free and up to date.
He said we would never need to pay or have a sales rep based on our usage.
He sent me the development kit for the IBMi. It looks to be a repackaged version of Scott's YAJL (HYAJL) and HTTPAPI (AHTTPAPI).
I have not had any contact with them in 3 years because everything was working great.
All I am doing is verifying our tax tables to theirs. If there is a discrepancy because order entry/accounting used the wrong tax table I send them an email.
We don't need the full tax reporting parts of their product.
I started checking our TaxJar yesterday.
-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of John Yeung
Sent: Monday, July 17, 2023 4:47 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: External Re: Avalara Tax API
On Mon, Jul 17, 2023 at 11:27 AM (WalzCraft) Jerry Forss <JForss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I have been told through my several different attempts that being we are using the free version to NOT expect any response from them.
This is a completely reasonable stance on their part.
However, I will say that even paid customers do not always get great service.
At my last job, we were an Avalara customer, but I found that they were not always up to date regarding their database. We would occasionally get incorrect results, and through a little digging on Google, I'd discover their database was out of date. I would tell them exactly everything they need to know to update their database, including links to official, government Web sites with announcements that they've just passed some legislation that redefines the taxes for a particular locality. I did all their research work for them, but their response was always "we'll look into it; if we find that you're correct, we'll update our data right away". And it would almost always take months before they corrected it, if ever. I wound up just always putting in ugly special-case calculations on our end.
Given that Avalara is one of the bigger and more expensive players in this arena, I'd investigate other options. Back when I was working on sales tax, TaxJar seemed to be just about as good and much cheaper.
John Y.
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