KILLEEN, Texas — Lillie Aguero & Associates has provided tax-prep services in Central Texas for over 20 years. Serving around 1500 to 2000 customers yearly, it started using DocuSign last year to serve people who are either stuck at home due to COVID-19 or overseas serving our country.
DocuSign allowed its customers to review and sign documents electronically. Lillie Aguero & Associates' President Kim Walker said she paid $300 a year and it had worked out so far.
Unfortunately, last week, that changed.
Walker told 6 News a DocuSign representative called and said the company went over their 100 sent documents, or "envelopes", that year. Another representative then contacted Walker to talk about pricing. According to emails Walker gave 6 News, the DocuSign representative told her she could pay a fee of $3000 or she could pay either around $1500 or $3000 for a subscription. Walker was furious.
"He explained to me that my only options at that point way to pay for the overages or to sign a contract that was $1500 to sign a contract for a year," Walker said. "He said to pay for my 30 overages it would be $3000...just complete shock."
Walker said both her initial deal with DocuSign cost roughly three dollars an envelope and the new contracts the representative were also around three dollars an envelope. She asked the representative repeatedly for an itemized list showing why the fee was $3000. Email's repeatedly show the representative insisting it was a standard fee.
"They said it's one standard fee. But people choose to upgrade because it's a better value or cancel if they want to go with another provider," the representative said.
He repeatedly asked Walker to sign up for a contract around $1,552 for the year. Walker thought it was wrong.
"How many other customers have they contacted and said 'you either pay this three thousand dollar fee or you sign a contract with us. It's unethical, it's unprofessional," Walker said.
On Tuesday, 6 News emailed DocuSign multiple times to find out if this was a mistake. A DocuSign spokesman revealed there were other, cheaper, options than the ones the representative provided.
"A customer that purchases one seat of our Standard Edition for $300/year includes 100 envelopers per user per year. When a customer exceeds the envelopes for their plan, they have the option to purchase additional seats through DocuSign’s website to increase the limits by 100 envelopes (for example, two seats includes 200 envelopes at a cost of $600/year)," the spokesman wrote in an email.
DocuSign also told 6 News they will work to find out what happened and that Lillie Aguero & Associates will be able to send an additional 100 documents with no charge. In one an initial statement DocuSign said "We'll fix this."
"Our goal is to make it easier for people to do business anytime, anywhere and at any scale. Small business is the heart of our services and what we’re hearing about this experience does not sound like us at all -- and we’re committed to getting to the bottom of it. In the meantime, we’re giving Lillie Aguero & Associates an additional seat with 100 envelopes at no charge until this is resolved," the spokesman wrote.
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