I have been a Senior Managing Director at 4 large, national real estate firms over 40 years, and I have NEVER experienced any firm as inept and unprofessional as Zapitelli Financial Services. About a month ago, we realized that they incorrectly set up the ownership of our 25 rental homes in our tax returns in such a way that it opened us up to liability if sued. In addition, our annual accounting fees were much higher than they should have been.
Fortunately, I keep all emails relating to our business. I found and sent her copies of the emails that I sent her back in 2018 that had the Operating Agreements describing ownership attached. This was irrefutable evidence of their mistake setting up our tax returns.
I decided to call to speak to Laura first. I was in a good mood, and just wanted them to correct the returns and put the mistake behind us. She started calmly, but quickly flared and became aggressive yelling “as a young professional woman, I don’t appreciate your attitude!!! I never received your Operating Agreement describing who the owners were, I sent you a screenshot of my hard drive showing you its not there (seriously?), and entered you and your partner as owners as I THOUGHT I had seen that somewhere!! (now this is a CPA mind you)”. She continued, “It was YOUR responsibility to have found and corrected our error before this!!” Her father Bob Zapitelli, who was listening in the background, interrupted me yelling out, “YOU CAN GO F--- YOURSELF!!! COME AND GET YOUR BOXES AND GET THEM OUT OF HERE!!!". Reviews of them on other sites reflect similar experiences of ineptitude and inexplicably rude behavior.
Is it the customers responsibility to find and corrects an accountants errors? Plus, she should NEVER have set up our returns without the Operating Agreements in hand. That's accounting 101.
There are plenty of diligent and professional accounting firms out there. Steer far clear of this one. They are not worth the risk or the abuse.
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