<i>"Give the illusion of self-service, but actually have a very high-touch, highservice model
- Feedback we’ve gotten from groups that have left Zenefits to come back to the broker + Maxwell model is the increasingly poor level of service and responsiveness to urgent issues."</i><p>This rings true for us. We're a small company who would've blindly walked into zenefits if they had simply walked us through our enrollment process smoothly. Instead we had repeated paperwork glitches which always left out a few of us (from a very small group already) employees out of the quote/enrollment process.<p>We started looking at Trinet in parallel and to our astonishment found that the comparable health plans, from the same provider, available on Trinet, were significantly cheaper... (as in ... ~30%) for our situation. The Zenefits glitches were really a blessing in disguise for us.<p>(The key to these discounts was that with Trinet you're getting into a group plan... while Zenefits simply enrolls you as individuals if you're a small startup).
Is waiting until they implode from bad management a viable strategy? I remember reading on Quora, a prospective hire had offers at Zenefits and Uber, and asked for guidance in making his decision and the CEO of Zenefits came in and publicly revoked his offer.<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/zenefits-ceo-rescinds-job-offer-on-quora-2015-5" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessinsider.com/zenefits-ceo-rescinds-job-off...</a>
I'm the benefits administrator for our startup (ahhh, the joys of being a cofounder) and we started before Zenefits was available. I might migrate there for the ease of management...<p>But I have to say, it really is hard to replace a good, responsive broker. They don't cost anything (they take the same commission Zenefits takes) and it's easy to get someone on the phone if the inevitable insurance mishap occurs. Then dealing with the insurance company is their problem, not yours.<p>If we started today, we would absolutely be on Zenefits. Now? I don't know if it's worth the migration.
Sigh - I hope this marketing crap isn't what Hacker news turns into, marketing wars from startups.<p>If this was some actual customer experience, so be it, but its posted from<p>cgoodmac - PM from justworks.com - a "payroll and benefits" company...<p>If you agree with me, feel free to click 'Flag' on the parent post.
> <i>Why would an HR person or a CFO EVER give up
1) expert benefits consulting
2) protection against the ACA
3) access to long-standing carrier relationships that allow for renewal negotiations
4) ability to support complex benefits strategies</i><p>I'm really not buying their case here.<p>1) Expert benefits consulting seems like something that could be made easily accessible via research online
2) Obamacare FUD?
3) Haggling is a feature?
4) This seems like expert consulting re-worded
> Rumor that they may have struck a deal with ADP to be their benefits administration system and replace TotalSource<p>If these discussions were going on, I suspect ADP's move to block Zenefits today was either a result of these negotiations breaking down, or a bezos-style move to get more leverage on this negotiation :)
We're using Zenefits and like many of you here super disappointed by the experience for many of the same reasons listed over and over. The main reason we haven't moved away is that they've really automated the onboarding process. Gone are all those email/word doc/PDF's that get passed back and forth as you manually set up a new employee. (To the best of my knowledge) you can't replace that via a broker (which we had before)