Giantumbrella Avis 

Dreadful experience: I was reading that a decent honest umbrella company charges around from £15 to £25per week...now Giant charges me £28 PER DAY! Increased from £22.00...still per day of which l was never informed: they simply cut my salary by £6 per day, which is £30 per week, without telling me...disgusting! l can't wait to dump them, for good.

Currently approaching the end of a short contract via Giant. They are very quick to answer queries when you send messages via the Portal. Special mention to Iqra Saeed who is very helpful and prompt to respond.

Payments + deductions accurate - no complaints. I was confused when issued a P45 with zero entries on earnings / tax paid to date - but when i queried it i got the correct advice that as a week 1 tax code person / multiple earnings source person then the P45 has to show that field as blank - apols for wasting your time on that query guys.

Absolutely diabolical umbrella company, utterly unfit for purpose. An umbrella company literally has to calculate your pay and allow you to enter timesheets. Giant fails miserably at both of these and more.

Timesheets should be the easiest thing in the world to enter. Giant’s interface is confusing and broken. You think you’ve entered time but the interface at first glance makes you think you haven’t. So you re-enter time and then realise you’ve already entered it. Then, when you enter time for a period you haven’t entered, for any dates where you then haven’t re-entered time (because you’ve already done it previously) it over-writes what was there before! Seriously, how can you design a simple timesheet application so badly?

When it comes to pay they hold my money for 7 working days from the agency before sending it to me. What on earth are they doing with it for 7 working days?

Giant Advantage. In all the emails this is sold as a company ‘benefit’. What is completely missed other than in the small print of the contract is that this costs £7.50. Per week. That’s far more than most subscription services. I mean, the cost of a service should be obvious, right?

Finally, even the chat transcript is broken. I have never received an emailed copy of my transcript.

As I said, being an umbrella should be easy. It’s money for old rope, let’s face it. But using Giant will cause you more pain than you need. Giant is a giant pain in the backside.

+++ UPDATE +++
Since this review Giant have abandoned their awful timesheet application so now you only need to complete your agency’s timesheets. Never understood the point of completing Giant’s.
Also, they have increased my umbrella fee by more than 100%. Absolutely outrageous, they let you know via a No-Reply email on the Friday afternoon and then justify it by saying they’re within the notice period of the T&Cs. Utterly hopeless umbrella company, do not join, save yourself pain, shysters like this should be shut down, the IR35-inflicted umbrella company industry needs regulating. In fact, they are completely unnecessary as all tax and NI (employer and employee) and App Levy can be deducted using a formula - a total surprise as to why HMRC don’t provide a free service.

Very poor experience with Giant. Margin was double what I was told in advance. Spent 3 months querying it and getting no response from them. Compared with other Umbrella I have used, the cost was much higher and the quality of the communication, online portal, etc was significantly worse

Worked for them for years but when I got cancer and needed their help, they were hopeless. They still owe me about £500 which they cut me off from claiming by closing access to my account. I was too ill at the time to pursue. Beware - this is not an honest company.

I had two separate good experiences working with GIANT on different contracts in 2020 and 2022. The process was complex to set up but the staff were patient and in one instance moved very quickly to enable me to capitalise on an opportunity offered to me at short notice. In the way their site is designed, there's an emphasis on security and correspondence-tracking that is a little dated but I found the staff to be really responsive both on the webchat, which led to a quick call and action I needed taking, then also via the email portal when there were small issues that arose. There were occasional issues with specific time-sheet data entry problems but everything worked out well enough when I got in touch. Generally these were both good experiences though I can see how the complexities of needing to work through an umbrella company can be frustrating to learn and come to terms with until you get used to them.

This Umbrella company has to be the worst umbrella company I have ever dealt with. They have continuously got my pay wrong, when they do pay me, it is weeks delayed. They have the most unresponsive team and their terms and conditions are just about in line with UK labour law - just enough so they don't get in trouble! Complete unethical, they sign contractors up to terms where they can be "terminated immediately" amongst the many pages of jargon along with demanding that contractors must in turn "complete their full assignment" without giving any notice at all. Most recently they were cyber hacked meaning all of the contractors could not access their payslips for 2 weeks or be paid during this time. The list of issues from this umbrella company have been endless. I would not trust them to process any payroll - limited company or umbrella. They put families at risk for those who have upfront costs like nursery fees etc whilst they mess up your pay. Also blame shift - if you query any issue they have on their T&C's expect them to blame it on the client or the recruitment agency even though it's their T&C's.

Worst business I have ever dealt with.

Made a total of 32 mistakes with my accounts.

the only good thing is the speed of answered questions. The rip off billing and getting the billing rate wrong, even when its on the contract. I would highly recommend using someone else that is more honest.

I have just spent a fruitless 3 weeks after contacting Giant Umbrella to get specific info about joining their umbrella service.
I am a contractor with a competitor umbrella company and the premium service with the salary sacrifice car scheme was of interest to me and may of made me switch to Giant.
It is not to be because after an initial phone call and quick response from their new business team, they seem unable to give me any detail of the scheme as it would work for me. Other than a brief outline after many emails and two phone calls to the same person, they are still unable to get me the detail I would need to join them.
Frustratingly however they are insistent on sending me many pointless emails asking if I am ready to join up. Giant need to get their act together. If they cannot be good when I want to join, what would they be like to use. No thanks I will stay where I am, total rubbish service.

difficult to contact - only option is to email via your personal online portal.
It is not possible to email them directly.
Poor service. Giant messed up and so i did not receive my monthly salary. They made an error so i had to wait another week.
Each time i take on a new role. I have to re register an account. Repeating same information over and over again.
Customer support is poor and so is their process of payment.