Paychex Sucks

Email this guy. He's the man behind the Paychex "curtain".

"Clark, Steven S" <sclark[at]paychex.com>

I was told by the salesman (Jason Rush) that paychex would handle everything,after signing up I never even got a follow up call. The first payroll paychex reported the tax I owed but did'nt take it out of my account and pay the tax as promised by my salesman. I had no idea this happened until 18 months latter the tax comm. informed me of the infraction.Paychex promised to fix the problem if it was there mistake. 6 months later the tax comm. is intending to file a tax warrant for back taxes and a large fine,thanks paychex.

Right now I'm so disgusted with Paychex I could scream. We have employees in both Maryland and Delaware and just found out that due to a huge error on Paychex part they have been paying 99% of Delaware's unemployment contribution to the wrong state (even though the state taxes have gone to the correct state) Naturally, the wrong state's rate is much higher than Delaware would have been. Prior to hiring Paychex to do payroll, we did it ourselves for over 30 years with no errors, but thought Paychex would be much easier and save us time. This error by Paychex even caused us to have our Unemployment account in Delaware to be dropped due to no activity (an account we've had since the early 70's). This error has caused us over $5,000 and all Paychex tells us is that it's up to us to catch these errors and let them know. Isn't this what we hired them for? We didn't have the time or employees trained to do payroll or check for errors. Now.. how can we be sure this will not happen again.. I've lost my confidence in this company. They didn't even apologize for making this costly error. What do they care !!! Thanks paychex !!

Words cannot even describe how much this company sucks. Been a nightmare from day 1, when the salesperson flat out lied to me. No one cares, no one wants to give you answers. Stay away from this company unless you want to feel pain from them.

Anyone up for a good class action against Paychex? Any hungry attorneys out there? I have recorded phone conversations and videotaped meetings with these people that would make your head spin with disbelief.

My Employer provided Paychex with a garnishment order for student loans. Paychex misinterpreted the order and garnished my wages in excess of the order by $5212.00. Everyone is pointing fingers.Considering the negligence of Paychex, who is libel? Paychex or the Employer?

I worked for paychex for almost 4 years. i have to say the training program is extensive and most people that are hired have no accounting background. unless you live in a metro area the starting rate is 12 (14 for NYC, LA, and other expensive areas). Most reps dont fully understand what they are doing. I had no experience in payroll and paychex taught me alot, I was probably one of the best reps in the company (for paychex ee's reading this i was best of the best 2 years in a row made sr in 7 months and pss 8 after that) I handled every issue completely and accurately. (believed every client was mine and deserved the best) when the economy went down ee's started dropping like flies as did clients. the ee's were replaced with less knowledgeable ones. The managers pushed the harder clients on the expereinced reps. with 345 calls weekly and a short staff management pushed us to the limit (we went through 2 branch managers in 1 year, both were fired) the new mangement didn't care how good you were and went on a firing spree. at the time i was putting 50- 60 hour weeks at year end to make sure everything was done (i had to manually produce about 1000 w-2s at year end because the updated system couldn't handle it). so after busting my hump for 4 years i was denied a promotion because of a facebook status i put up that had nothing to do with paychex, even though i was the most qualified. (i think they didn't want to loose me on the floor and my CS skills) low and behold when i complained about the bureaucracy I was fired for being "8 minutes late" I was at my desk and logged in at 9:02. Paychex on a whole is a good company to work for and i enjoyed my time there, however the branch specifics can lead to a general distaste for the company on a whole. Corporate america has destroyed human compassion and this industrialized world cares about numbers not individuals. Paychex reports payroll, thats it. they are supposed to put in what you, the employer or cleint, gives them. Paychex reps arent psychic and don't know your employees SSN nor can they ask. if you have a rep worth their salt they should ask to avoid errors later. however a new rep wont know what to ask if they have never experienced one. If you have an issue you should call your rep if they dont know ask for a Sr rep if they dont know ask for a CSS supervisor, if they dont know or wont help you go to another company or branch... it will save you alot of headaches in the end. Because paychex fired me they lost almost triple my salary in revenue from clients who left because Bari was gone... of well their loss.

Paychex has done a great job of hiring sales people who are way more interested in getting praise from their managers then being honest with their prospects/clients and selling the client what they need. They look for zombies who buy into the company line then send them to indoctrination camp where they drill into their head how lucky they are to work for such a great company and they are far from transparent about their true motivation which is to increase revenue and report good news to Wallstreet. Why would a company doing a greater than 20% net after tax profit pass on a price increase to their clients, mostly small businesses who are struggling in this economy. Its to hide the poor performance in lost business by making the loyal clients, or those who do not have time to shop around pay more. In the industry Paychex is famous for using the worst sales tactics and blindly overselling products to their clients (most of their clients come from CPA referals and aren't shopping around because their CPA told them to use Paychex)that they do not need. CPA's who exclusively refer to Paychex because of the pretty sales reps or gifts that they receive should be ashamed of themselves.

If you (insert word of choice) spent this much effort running your business instead of writing pointless blogs about how Paychex screwed you over, your bank accounts might actually be in the positive. Your probably just blaming paychex because your business went under and Paychex Fired YOU!

I received a call from them for an interview and after a few minutes I was about to hang up. The HR person was so rude and abrasive, demeaning at times. Sounds like they have an internal culture of assholes working there and I am glad I was able to learn first hand what a pure joke this company appears to be.

I am truely shocked at how unrealistic people are. Has anyone dealt with a sales person at a dealership? And if so, do you really think they cared about you or the commission they made? It's life people and we live in a ME generation. Sales people are a kind of their own.
Operations is hit or miss when you deal with Reps. Sometimes good and sometimes bad. We all work with people like this, correct? Everyone believes that they-themself are the best worker in the company. I agree that some of you probably got that short end of the stick and are a bit bitter. Although alot of time this happens either due to wanting to be "hands off" (which most employers are) or not trained and educated on the subject. Not pointing fingers or calling anyone out, cuz we all know, sometimes nothing is right no matter how it's done. But in the scheme of life how many big companies have horrible customer service? Almost all of them. It's a sign of the times. It's sad that we deal with bad customer service, since it's the norm and good service is surprising. It's all a luck of the draw.
But I do agree, specialists are hit or miss. You either get a good one or a bad one. Hopefully you've built a reputation with yours so that they truely care about your well being. I'd go way farther for a client that I built a relationship with than some run-by-night person that could care less who I am anyway.
Everything in life comes done to a pshycological head game.

HEY TELEMARKETER>>> How's your quest for medicrity going?
Go annoy another caller at dinnertime and Shut The Hell UP!!!

Paychex is by far the worst payroll services I have ever worked with in my 20+ year career. My recent company (the 3rd one I've kicked paychex out of) probably suffered the worst because of their unbelievable mistakes and complete disregard for us as a customer. Here are just a few of the horrifying problems we encountered over the last year:

1) Paychex miscalculated, thus mis-filed our 2009 YE payroll taxes
2)Paychex corrected the miscalculations, refiled our 2009 payroll taxes, but then, somehow messed up a social security #...Our controller is beside himself...
3) They failed to file our taxes in a certain state, causing us to receive a "Failed to File" notice subject to penalties of course
4)It took them literally months to correct this(and we only have 1 employee in that state), and then, to top it off, when they finally did file, the left a portion of the filing blank and had to go back and fix it (or at least that's what their suppose to do).
5) Their "system", which must have been designed by Flinstone & Rubble, randomly paid a terminated employee, and they couldn't explain how this happened.
6) Their 401(k) service - equally horrible and one of the most expensive around - We were out of compliance in the testing twice because no one monitors or advises on anything.

And I dare you to call the 401(k) side and ask for help. Generally the person you talk to will refuse to give their last name (in case your trying to keep track of where all of the misinformation is coming from), and whatever they tell you, if you call back and get a new person they will likely tell you something completely different. And go ahead and ask for manager - good luck getting a call back.

7) Do I need to talk about their awful report generating capabilities? And, heaven forbid if you can get the data you want, try to covert it to Excel - Not Possible.

8) The software freeze up several times a day.

I could go on for days about the nightmares I've expderienced with them. I am relieved we finally got rid of them - replaced them with a new service provider at literally 1/2 the cost and now have a fully integrated system with robust reporting capabilities.

I wonder what paychex is going to do in 2011 when they are forced to disclose all of the fees on their 401k? Currently they charge a reasonable admin fee but there are a ton of hidden fees, not the least of which is the fees in the employee's investments. As best as I have been able to figure out these fees are as high as 380 basis points 3.8%, that is nearly double what I have seen as the average fees. If I lost a ton of money in my retirement funds only to find out that Fidelity and Paychex are robbing my funds every year I would sue my employer as they are the responsible party, who should sue paychex becuase it is impossible to figure out these fees and they don't disclose them anywhere.

I am a rep at ADP and have switched over 125 people from paychex in my 4 years. If you are interested in saving money while getting a better product and service, please email me at dominic_bellfield[at]adp.com

I was a payroll sales rep at Paychex for about three years and you definitely get blue kool-aid water-boarding daily. Don't get me wrong there are some great people who work there, but a majority of the management are completely worthless. Dinosaurs from an era when Payxhex could grow money on trees and reps could sell purely on direct deposit. Cheap and accurate online payroll is the doom of Paychex, not to mention CLEAR disclosure of their fees in 2011 due to the recent financial reforms. Our online payroll product was comparably horrible and the call-in customer service you have to deal with was/is truly embarrassing. You set up a client on payroll, well have him get ready for the Paychex cold calling avalanche. Every department... 401k, HR, workers comp, health insurance, general insurance... are all just waiting on the run list to attack. Felt great to be reviewing first run payroll reports with a customer when in the course of 20 minutes three different sales reps would call from Paychex trying to up-sell them on products that they already told you they had ZERO interest in. The best part has to be when you are flat out encouraged and/or instructed to mislead customers to make sales, observe coworkers literally scam customers, or directed to steal deals from your co-workers in the name of your manager making quota. Nothing is free at Paychex, except maybe open liability when a Paychex rep says how great it is to change payroll companies in the middle of a quarter. When your Paychex office has the nations highest sales rep turnover-rate you must have some truly inspiring leaders running the place. While working there it was obviously clear that it was never the manager’s fault, it was always the reps, just bad hires not bad managers. When a district sales manager gets so toasted at a work function that he literally has to be carried out of the establishment, then proceeds to urinate in his pants in front of everyone, that sure does motivate you to sell payroll for him. He was obviously drinking way to much of the blue kool-aid. Any reason why you would not ask yourself why their CEO just quit while on vacation? Maybe he got so tired of the unethical culture so ingrained there. Just one example... this year a three-judge California appeals court panel unanimously affirmed that the actual founder (aka Chairman of the Board) of Paychex, and the former Senior Vice President of Sales were liable for $32.2 million in compensatory damages to a former competitor for using inside information to squeeze them out of business. My advice to Paychex, salvage the customers you still have by changing your entire corporate culture, or keep playing your violin as the city burns.

Looks like there are changes coming from the top down. The newest VP of sales hooked up with a new DSM from the Oregon office ( can you say career suicide ). This company needs to change their leadership quickly otherwise it will never get back to the industry leader it was.

Nothing will ever truely change while Golisano is in charge. It really is time for him to truly retire.

Rumor is they demoted the VP of sales ( West Coast). This company is out of control with their VP's and directors. There are no true champions of this company anymore and that's unfortunate. Watch the number of reps that leave very shortly.

For all of you complaining about Paychex being a horrible company. Then why the hell do you stay with them. Go to ADP or Checkpoint, guarantee you will be running back to Paychex as I see many do. By the way I do alot of the data entry for our branch and if you think you can enter the data faster and more accurate I dare you to put it to the test. I would love to see you enter the information 100% accurate and in a rush as clients love to do all the time. If clients gave their information on time like they agreed to do with the sales and account reps then a third, fourth or even fifth audit could be done! And for the social security numbers how they hell would we be able to input it into the system if the reps have to ask a million times for the information! What you think we magically know what they are?!! If you do your part and put in the effort that the employees at Paychex are trying to do then you would be happier with the company.