Avalara

They were the third party information collection service hire to obtain "Sales & Use exemption certifications" on behalf of the vendor, Transunion Risk & Alternative Data Solution.

I was contacted by Avalara on behalf of a vendor that we did business with to request “tax exemption information". I replied to the email stating that we were a county government & political subdivision of the state of Texas & submitted our W-9. The representative then stated that she needed the "Sales and Use Tax Exemption certification." So I then sent her both a letter that stated that we were exempt that we submit as our certification and the specific form issued by the state of Texas for "sales & use tax exemption certification" with all of our information completed, thinking surely this will meet their requirements, but NO, she emailed that I did not write "Transunion Risk & Alternative Data Solution" & put "information services" on the description line. SERIOUSLY??? You are going to waste my time when they could have easily filled that in themselves (since they will have to enter their address anyway). This might be easier to outsource the collection of the information to a third party, but that third party should not be difficult.

The frustration I felt as a customer having to deal with a difficult third party collecting information on behalf of a vendor we were using makes us less likely to use that vendor in the future, because I do not want to deal with the frustration of the third party. If your third party representative causes you to lose customers, it’s not a very good third party representative.