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ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

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Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#71

I have a lot of respect for what Zenefits has done to date in shaking up the insurance space, but you have to REALLY question what the heck is going on with Parker's leadership there. What is going on that the founder/CEO has enough time to chastise an engineer candidate on Quora and put out factually inaccurate posts on topics like healthcare reform (he had something out on LinkedIn a few weeks back) but doesn't hav…

I was curious what "chastise an engineer candidate on Quora" meant so I looked it up: http://qr.ae/7IErH1 Sounds like a perfectly reasonable answer to me. Especially after reading the question. It gives me a bad taste, I wouldn't want to work with that guy. He's the annoying guy at the table who is like "I work at x" and wants everybody to go "oooh," not "wtf is zenefits?" It reeks of the almost ubiquitous entitled t…

The worst part of that answer was edited out. He had "(n.b. -- we are revoking the questioner's offer to work at Zenefits)." Which is a reasonable thing to do, I guess, if you feel the person isn't all that interested in working for your company, but it isn't all that reasonable to say in a public forum.

Edit: Here's a link that has the quote about rescinding the offer: http://www.quora.com/Zenefits-CEO-Rescinds-Job-Offer-May-201...

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#72
post #60

We're a very small company (10 FTEs), but we have been anything but impressed with Zenefits as a customer. We only use them for medical and dental insurance, but in reality, they provide very little, if any value. The Zenefits software is really nothing special, and in fact, the onboarding UI is pretty poor. Now that we have our insurance, Zenefits adds zero value to us. We deal directly with United and Zenefits coll…

Have you ever had an insurance broker before? They're like the same thing but without the easy software.

[deleted]

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#73

I have a lot of respect for what Zenefits has done to date in shaking up the insurance space, but you have to REALLY question what the heck is going on with Parker's leadership there. What is going on that the founder/CEO has enough time to chastise an engineer candidate on Quora and put out factually inaccurate posts on topics like healthcare reform (he had something out on LinkedIn a few weeks back) but doesn't hav…

I was curious what "chastise an engineer candidate on Quora" meant so I looked it up: http://qr.ae/7IErH1 Sounds like a perfectly reasonable answer to me. Especially after reading the question. It gives me a bad taste, I wouldn't want to work with that guy. He's the annoying guy at the table who is like "I work at x" and wants everybody to go "oooh," not "wtf is zenefits?" It reeks of the almost ubiquitous entitled t…

I get where you're coming from, but you have to realize, this guy is a new grad and he's probably pretty scared about which path to take because he doesn't understand the long term implications. He went to quota to discuss it with people and try to figure things out.

It seemed pretty obvious to me that the guy was just trying to make the best decision for himself. The right thing would have been for the CEO to let the guy talk it out and come to the conclusion that Zenefits would be the best opportunity for him, not to attack him publicly for trying to figure out the best career path.

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#74
post #4

The descent into lawsuits is pretty sad. When customers hate your product (i.e. the ADP front-end) so much that an entire company forms around making something less terrible, you really have to look at yourself in the mirror. I continue to be amazed by the horribleness of benefits web front-ends. I recently did a simple task in our Hewitt system, and it required five pop-up windows. It's just so, so terrible.

I continue to be amazed by the horribleness of benefits web front-ends. I recently did a simple task in our Hewitt system, and it required five pop-up windows. It's just so, so terrible. ADP EZ-Labour - not so EZ, but plenty of labour. There are 20 work days in a month. There are 20 rows in the timesheet form. Every one of them has 8 drop-down boxes, and every one of them needs to be filled with your work status, pro…

Are you using it for time tracking? Would you be able to use a dedicated time-tracking tool like Toggl [0]? I'm not connected Toggl, just a happy user. It seems to have good reporting and project-granularity for timesheets, better than any I've used before.

0: https://toggl.com/

I'm sure there are several other great time tracking ones, too. Is there a particular reason you must use ADP's timecard tracking?

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent is addressing whether ADP will win a defamation suit; it's possible that Zenefits violated TOS and that ADP shut them down with good reason, but that doesn't mean that Zenefits defamed ADP.

Yeah, but DannyBee's post explicitly mentions that they'll fail based on 4. "That Zenefits failed to use reasonable care to determine the truth or falsity of the statement(s)". I wanted to know if he knows something factually about what went on other than what's been reported here, because if I were a jury member and the facts were that Zenefits used their customers' login credentials (against ADP's TOS) to access AD…

See the blog post i just posted. In fact, ADP launched a competing products, just as zynamics said they were going to.

This is good enough for reasonable care. :)

Even if it wasn't, ADP would have to prove that Zynamics didn't bother to do any investigation at all before making the statement (IE not quite negligence, but at least something)

This seems "highly unlikely" given the situation.

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#76
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you rather have something that looks nice or actually works? Especially when it comes to nontrivial things like benefits and payroll? Don't you think it's a bit silly for you as a user to be swayed to use one thing or another by a pretty interface? We seem to understand never to "judge a book by its cover"...except when it comes to web interfaces.

Why can't I have both? Isn't that the value proposition of Zenefits?

You can, but given the mixed reviews from actual Zenefits customers on here and elsewhere they aren't there yet.

I liken it to tech's war on banks. Everyone loves to make fun of the fact that banks still use "old" technology like mainframes, but when was the last time a bank went down? I will go with a old school bank over a NewCo tech bank any day when it comes to nontrivial things like storing my money.

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#77

We're a very small company (10 FTEs), but we have been anything but impressed with Zenefits as a customer. We only use them for medical and dental insurance, but in reality, they provide very little, if any value. The Zenefits software is really nothing special, and in fact, the onboarding UI is pretty poor. Now that we have our insurance, Zenefits adds zero value to us. We deal directly with United and Zenefits coll…

> Zenefits doesn't have any intrinsic rights to ADP's system.

Zenefits doesn't want or need intrinsic rights to the ADP system. They do need (and deserve) the same level of access as a human working for a client using ADP. They might provide little to no value or be a worthless company but NONE OF THAT MATTERS. The client paid for ADP access and has every right to use whatever means they deem necessary to input or output data from the ADP system.

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#78

I have a lot of respect for what Zenefits has done to date in shaking up the insurance space, but you have to REALLY question what the heck is going on with Parker's leadership there. What is going on that the founder/CEO has enough time to chastise an engineer candidate on Quora and put out factually inaccurate posts on topics like healthcare reform (he had something out on LinkedIn a few weeks back) but doesn't hav…

> You read the glassdoor reviews of Zenefits

Am I the only one that finds it strange their reviews seem to alternate between "worst company ever" and "greatest job ever"?

One of the reviewers wrote:

> Don't "advise" your employees to go to this website and leave good reviews to cover up the truth.

Oh yeah well that explains that.

update: typo

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ADP is not likely come close to winning Are they trying to win the case, or a longer game involving customer confidence?

Probably the latter, but this is a dumb way to do it :) As a customer, my takeaway would be "If ADP doesn't like what i tell people about it, it's going to actually sue me".

I like your posts here but think this one missed the mark. I think as ADP you want "Uncertainty startup Zenefits uncertainty sued Zenefits incumbent ADP uncertainty Zenefits" in the minds of every non startup CFO or VP of HR who was thinking there might be something worth investigating with Zenefits raising $500 mil at a huge valuation.

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#80

I feel like Zenefits is becoming a case study in everything you don't do when you enter an industry. We'll be switching away because I'm worried who else they won't play nice with in the future. Uber and AirBNB have scared the heck out of huge incumbent industries and cities/governments and had scraps to be sure. But they don't have the consistent missteps as Zenefits. They know when to fight and when to take a lump…

Also Über and AirBNB are consumer companies. Zenefits has to appeal to enterprise customers. Beyond that we're talking payroll. This is the most conservative part of any business. Lawsuits do not make for good advertising.

Great point.
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