I requested on empower that I have no 401k contributions withheld for 2/4 payday. When I reviewed my pay voucher this morning, they were taken even though I requested on empower system that they should not be. Lots of complaints about this.
20 replies (most recent on top)
I confirmed there was no technical issue with Empower or WF. Employees who did not have a contribution change, as intended, stopped short of confirming their election change. You can either stop, reduce or increase your contribution rate on future pay checks to contribute the amount you want to by the end of the year. There's nothing magic about bonus payments vs other pay all year long.
@1pfj+1f6QekY4 You apparently don’t realize that the 6% is fungible and can come from any other paycheck. Front load, back load, whatever is clever instead of being stuck in a one track mentality like yours of “it has to be spread out over all pay checks.” Yet here you are working at a Financial Institution. Scary times indeed.
Empower’s directions were confusing. I followed the directions a second time and decided that I needed to continue even though the directions didn’t state that. I got to a point where I did finalize & received a confirmation email.
I think the make the web site more difficult to navigate than it needs to be so people use their 'do it for you' option. Probably a fee involved somewhere when they do it for you. I zeroed mine out on the 15th and had no issues. I'm not expecting to be here on 12/15 and I'd rather hoard the cash for now.
I went through the steps on Empower’s website on 01/20/22 but I didn’t receive a confirmation email. I called yesterday and they said that I needed to confirm it on the website. I did everything I was promoted to do and had the instructions up on my other screen. I even went through to do it twice.
Anyway, they said lots of people had the same issue but that I should have gone through to confirm it (I never saw this as an option) and there is no way to fix it. Seems like if alot of people had the same issue then it was a tech issue or they need to reevaluate how this is setup in their website and the instructions provided.
They said you should have received a confirmation when you completed the change. I did get a conf# and did it twice back when the first email came out. However, I went in today and try to change it and get the confirmation code. Hmmmm….go figure right? Seems odd to me that many people had an issue with it and empower says “yeah not our problem”
"who would elect to forgo free money?"
People that gave their notice 10 milliseconds after seeing the bonus amount in their paystub, that's who.
And that's me!
Did we land on a bunch of people being stupid en masse or on a technical issue with Empower?
Post ID: @1pfj+1f6QekY4
Anyone who doesn't plan on staying here until 12/15 might pass on it. I did. I'd rather take the cash.
You realize bonus is part of the 6% match, who would elect to forgo free money. At minimum you should have 6% contribution for bonus pay check.
Like someone mentioned below I bet it's due to user error in assuming that moving the slide bar on your account's front page actually changed the withholding percentage. The slide bar is only used for modeling rather than a formal request.
sounds like the issue is between chair and keyboard. although is truly an issue with empower I would think they could correct it, send you a check for the difference and then a 1099r at the end of the year to pay the taxes on it.
Just got off the phone with Empower and they acknowledged they've received numerous calls from folks today stating that the 401(k) deduction was made when it wasn't supposed to...sounds like a technical issue on Empower's end.
Mine worked, but I upped mine to 30% for this paycheck and it is showing up correctly.
I did mine in December to prevent this from happening
Thanks for contacting HR via thelayoff.com. I have submitted a ticket on your behalf, please be patient and I will reach out to you directly.
Did u just move the slide bar to 0% or did you correctly click on Account -> Contributions and edit the % there.
an email went out on 1/11 indicating you need to make the change by 1/21 in order for it to be reflected for your 2/4 paycheck. did you do it by that date? if so then perhaps you did it in correctly. Does empower also provide a one time option for folks? I know I adjusted mine up that week and it took.
You must have missed the deadline
I requested that no 401k withholding occur in the 2/4 paycheck through Empower, and my stub reflects that. The dollar amount is just blank.
Not saying there's not a problem for others, but it's not across the board (thankfully).