TriNet Avis 186

10 years ago, when we signed up for TriNet they were supposed to be the best option and perhaps were for high quality insurance. However, I haven’t been happy with their service in years. Their insurance has been increasing 25%+ yearly and their fees have also been increasing by ridiculous rates of 10%+. To me that implies that this company is either price gouging or doesn’t know how to manage a P&L, neither of which is good. It almost seems criminal.

Their leadership makes no statements about how they are combating this or explains why it’s necessary or apologizes about it. If they can’t keep the insurance carriers in check at all, what are we paying for?

Honestly, their system is pretty much un-usable too, expect for very basic things like payroll. You have to rely on a rep.

I wish I would have known what I was signing up for way back when because I would have gone elsewhere, which is why I am writing this. It’s hard to move from a PEO once your employees get used to it which suspect TriNet is exploiting. There are also tons of hidden fees that make no sense.

This category is ripe for a new competitor to come in and change the game. We’re certainly going to prioritize looking for another provider.

What TriNet can do to keep customers:

Reduce their inflated fees. Anything above 3-5% annually is unsustainable. They need to reverse course at this point. The increases have been too high for too long.

Stop allowing the insurance carriers to walk all over you. Lobby, make deals, change the law, find over providers, etc. These increases can’t continue.

Just Deplorable. I wouldn’t even recommend working for an employer who uses this PEO. Transparency is non-existent, forget about decent customer service, and they’re very disorganized. I’ve been in contact with TriNet about incorrect tax documents that they refuse to fix. They’ve only sent random messages about actions they’re taken that won’t even fix the issue. Don’t waste your time with this walking apology of a company.

We moved to TriNet in 2024.

What we like - the application itself is very strong and provides a reliable payroll processing tool for our startup.

What we DO NOT like - (not sure there will be enough room to document everything).
First, the onboarding process was full of OOps, we forgot to tell you about that, OOps, we gave you the wrong instructions for onboarding your staff. It took nearly TWO months to get everything related to our semi-monthly payroll and integration to QBO working as required. We had to escalate to senior management multiple times to get anyone to respond to our issues.
Second, customer support is horrendous...the only way to submit a support request is online through the TriNet portal. On average, it requires the customer to follow-up on the support case 3-4 times to get any response. Today, we still have two cases open related to notices from a state for unpaid taxes, that are over THREE months old...no feedback, no response.
Third, today we found that our last payroll run included a $1,000 charge for a "Platform Innovation Fee". We have checked and rechecked our contract and the T&C's, and can find NOTHING about this fee...I went online a Googled "TriNet Platform Innovation Fee" and found that there are HUNDREDS of angry customer and potential class action suits against TriNet regarding these fees
BOTTOM LINE - if I knew last year what I know today, I would have NEVER - NEVER moved to TriNet...unfortunately the pains of moving our entire organization to another PEO provider is a bridge to far...Hopefully, this review will give you the knowledge to make a good decision...Good Luck

This company has added multiple email addresses of mine (which I did not provide them) to their marketing list without my permission and requires me to jump through unacceptable hoops to be removed. I consider this unethical behavior, particularly from a publicly traded HR company.

I could not contact anyone at the company outside of customer service. Customer service was unable or unwilling to transfer calls and would not provide any means to contact the appropriate person in the marketing department or the data privacy department to appropriately address this issue.

Company is very poorly managed and really not about client service or responsiveness, from what I can tell. People don't follow up, need reminders, take up to (or past) the maximum time to respond to needs, and even when urgent do not show any interest in being responsive. I've found when you call their 800 number you usually (but not always) get experienced, cooperative people. But emailing is a black hole of customer disservice. No one you reach knows about the email you sent previously. Worst system. Caveat emptor! They also work only with one health plan company so I never think we are getting a good deal at all. Suggest you try other options first!

One of the biggest regrets - definitely in the top 3 - I have in 20 years of accounting/payroll is switching our company to TriNet.

For 3x the cost of regular payroll companies I have less control and the same amount of work. First year we received a 6.5% increase and the second was 9%!!!! Summarized: "Oh, but that is down from the standard 12% that we are doing this year, so it's actually a discounted increase". Really!? I tell them we won't sustain those types of increases and will end up looking for another company and the summarized response is "If you decide to leave give me the chance to keep your business and send me the quotes first." Wow!

Benefits...you can't just give them the budget, nope. You create the budget, YOU then go into the system and assign the budget to the plans, YOU then go in and assign the employees to each budget plan, YOU then discuss the benefit changes with your employees, YOU then help the employees with their choices (using a spare computer you provide). So HEY! Good news is, you are paying TriNet for Benefits Administration but YOU get to be the administrator! Same amount of work...with a higher cost.

You can not print copies of paystubs or W2s for your employees. Or do anything else for them. Yes, it is nice that they can do it themselves (just like with 90% of the other payroll systems out there), but we actually do have employees that don't have computers or printers and one that does not even have a smart phone. We had to get a spare laptop in the office for people to use and they have to teams/screenshare with me if I am not in office so I can help after they get frustrated trying to talk to TriNet. Bye-bye vacations and sick-time! Carry a mobile wifi device with you and make sure you have cell service AT ALL TIMES.

Their reports are lacking and writing a custom report is nearly impossible because the screen for choosing data fields/filters is so small that once you drill down 3 or 4 categories you can not see anything else. If you email your rep asking for a report, they will direct you to the same steps that you have already tried. You don't get help, you just get directed elsewhere. YOU can then submit a case and then you will receive whatever TriNet feels is appropriate to provide to you. And that is that. No - don't ask for more. You won't get it and that is exactly what you will be told....just in more words.

The time-keeping system is Kronos but it is only utilized at about 5% of it's capabilities so don't be fooled by that. You can't use the Time Off in it AT ALL. Holiday and worked time and that is it. Nothing else. So when employees look at their time cards they look incomplete if they took any time off or had any absences. You can add it manually, while you are processing payroll, but that is it. No they won't customize it to fit your needs...even if it is for something as simple as time categories included in the time sheet and payroll export....you know, like the majority of companies out there need.

Can't create more than one paycheck in the same period. So if you like to separate your bonus checks from the regular checks then you have to pay for a secondary processing (hey, they love those fees!)

Setting up the G/L is NOT user friendly (and, no, they will not do it for you). There is a lot of trial and error and guess-work that goes into figuring it all out. So it will probably take several payroll processes for you to get it the way you want/need it and the report you get out of it cannot be changed in format or column order or anything. It is what it is. After you download it to excel THEN you can do what you need from it. So, again, more work and you pay more for it.

There's so much more but you get the gist by now, I hope.

If you do decide to leave, they make it so difficult to get the information that you need. They won't provide complete census information for you to get benefit quotes. Literally WILL NOT. They say it is private information and claim it as their own even though it is YOUR employees. Down to my core, I believe TriNet has the goal of making it so difficult for customers to leave they hope that they'll give up and stay.

Save yourself, your employees and your company. Stay away from this company.

The worst 401k service ever. Would not recommend to anyone.

If you like waiting a month for an answer to a simple question, or 4 months for a change in policy, TriNet is your PEO! Actually, it's more, cause I'm still waiting.

If you like surprise fees in the thousands of dollars that are announced in a misleading email on Friday evening and direct debited from your account without any way, TriNet is your PEO.

If you're used to taking care of little tasks in your payroll/HRIS, but want to give that ability up to wait unknown amounts of time for a case to be created and resolved to change the one piece of data, TriNet is your PEO.

If you like being led to believe you have a dedicated representative that will take care of you, only to have that representative sole purpose to create cases and send them off into the unknown, TriNet is your PEO.

If you want your PEO to refused to provide verification of services and plans provided, TriNet is for you.

If you want your sick and vacation policies to not be compliant because they don't pay attention when setting them up and advise you to correct, TriNet is for you.

If you want wrote answers out of a script to your question, rather than someone actually listening to the information your are giving them and answering the actual question you are asking, TriNet is for you.

The only reason why we went with TN was for the discounted insurance coverage, which turned out to not really be all that great anyway. Other than that, they've been a nightmare. We will be rid of them in a week, and I cannot wait!

TRINET is a very Deceptive Company that will quietly over charge and over promise.

- Their sales folks will butter you up and try to beat pricing from their rivals. Once you agree and sign, you will notice that they will act like they forgot that you are supposed to get a discount. You have to fight to get them to follow through on their promise and it takes weeks.

- They would send out emails on a late Friday afternoon that will look like a Marketing Email. But it is actually loaded that is meant to take money from your bank with little or no time for you to react. They call it a "technology" fee that is in the thousands. No warning, no conversations, just a complete money grab.

We fired them immediately the next Monday with a formal letter. And we have to completely change our bank accounts for them to not have access on our funds. Our employees have to wait 10 days to get it all fixed and get paid because of their bad practices.

You talk to their customer service and management and they give you canned statements.

This is a company that WASTE a lot of their money and pay their top executives quite a bit. And when they need money, they take it from customers.

I will advice anyone that needs a PEO to "STAY AWAY".

After we fired them, they started making up invoices to the sum of $5K with some weird fees and penalties. And they will send you to collections to harass your team. Just a Dirty Company to deal with.

Their brochures talk about all the services they offer, but in reality they make it extremely difficult to use any of those services. It is nearly impossible to complete basic tasks, like allocating parts of a paycheck to different accounts or signing up for medical coverage. They hide critical buttons, and require hidden steps that you could not possibly know about. I had to contact a customer service rep only for her to guide me through a series of easter-eggs hidden on the page, just to complete one task. Truly an evil company.

BEWARE: I could not agree more with the reviews on this page. I would also give ZERO stars if it were an option. The onboarding process is awful. Totally disorganized, lots of balls were dropped by Trinet representatives resulting in LIVID employees. Lots of "bait and switch", salesman Hector outright lies. Very limited "bargain basement" software with even worse customer service.

going thru the onboarding process with trinet... painful doesnt describe the process. Alot of bait and switch, Sales team makes alot of promises and when you talk to the people who actually responsible you get the truth.. they dont do electronic signatures, LOA is expensed to the company and you have to collect medical, 401k and additional expenses.. They charge you a setup fee but you do all the work.. They dont offer any feedback on your handbook or help manage it.. you have to upload each paragraph to a site and supposedly its reviewed which given what ive seen so far I have zero confidence it works... follow up to questions is nonexistent from key people... if you work on the east coast or central time expect alot of 6pm to 7pm meetings your time as they are west coast and dont adjust...

TriNet has the worst customer service in the industry. It is truly mind boggling. They rarely respond and when they do they typically provide little or no help.

And their fees are ridiculous

There are plenty of issues with TriNet. I'll just tell the still incomplete nightmare story of making an FSA claim.

They sent me a debit card for FSA so I used it to pay for childcare. Then all claims got denied immediately but I hade already spent the money and gave the official receipt. Somehow this was not enough.

It took numerous calls over months. Lots of hang ups and sass back. The chat box will auto kick you out after 60sec no response. This made the saga . . . difficult. The reimbursement form does have all the needed info and signatures but doesn't work with the debit card.

Now I find out my daycare is a rare case that is ok or unaware of the 3% surcharge for the sketchy debit cards. Turns out, most daycares won't take them and most people don't use them.

Finally someone actually kind of told me what was wrong but still could not help me. This person was much more patient and actually realized I was certainly stuck. They made me an appointment with a "specialist". Wish me luck.

I believe this is a case of a Grounded Vindaloop.

On Tuesday 11/28 Trinet sent an email announcing rate increases to the tune of 7-10% at the bottom of a letter that buttered you up by raving about all the technology enhancements they'd made this year. It seemed this was their way of justifying the increases for 2024. Then on Friday 12/1 at 3pm Trinet sent out another email announcing an Innovation fee that would be implemented and charged on the next payroll cycle in 2 weeks and used the same exact enhancements from the previous rate increase notice to justify the need for the fee. They even noted to make sure to keep this in mind when funding your payroll to ensure timely pay to your employees. Basically, make sure you have enough money in your account to cover this fee so your employees get paid because we are charging the fee regardless of how you feel about it. This new fee and the timing of its release was calculated and sticks it to their customers and leaves them with little to no options. Per their Terms & Conditions section 20m they must give 30 days notice, lucky for them December has 31 days and coincidentally renewals are complete for 2024. Had this change been implemented prior to renewals companies would have had time to get their affairs in order to make a move. 30 days is not enough time in a normal month much less at year end for the average company to move their business. They sure did show their true colors! Stay away if you want a partner you can trust.

Trinet decided to assess $1000 platform fee to every client without any notice. We had decided to terminate our relationship with them one day before this annoucement was released in an email at 5pm on a Friday. There is no way around it, as it will be assessed on our next payroll invoice. Management is being very quiet and will not give any answers to our many questions about this fee that is being thrown at us. There are plenty of other PEO's that care about their customers that are a LOT less expensive and responsive to our questions. Stay away.

The customer service is terrible. They are more focused on compliance, procedures and regulations than customers and people

I joined a new company and they use TriNet for HR, payroll and employee expenses. There are several things not mapped properly and we can't export from TriNet into our ERP. The way TriNet is currently being used is not scalable and old fashion for my new company. I want to fix the issues.

I reached out to our rep to introducing myself and asked who would be able to provide me with support and an overview. I received an email back with several webinar links for things that I had no idea about and terms I didn't understand. I will quote Tiffany's response to me "The webinars are necessary before 1:1 support as the webinars are live support".

Call me crazy but all I asked for was a call to get an overview, an introduction and I got a list of live webinars I MUST take before Tiffany will help me.

I have never experienced such a lack of customer service. Am I being crazy.

I hope to leave TriNet as soon as we can because of the lack of support and customer service.

Worst experience with any company by far! Issues are not resolved in a timely manner. Multiple people are involved in any issue. When speaking with a Trinet employee they acknowledge the lack of care or urgency to resolve issues. Flat out lied on multiple occasions.

If I could give 0 stars I would.

They have completely messed up closing our account, we are UK based hence using them for our US operations which we have just fully closed, they closed our account too early (their error) leaving us without the means to pay our last terminated employee. Despite it being their error they say they can't help us. The service throughout our contract with them has been fairly poor. We are expecting within the next two years to reopen US operations, we will not be using TriNet!