After accounting startup Bench abruptly shut down on Dec. 27 and was acquired in a fire sale by Employer.com, Bench customers are now learning that they can't simply walk away with just their financial data.
And some people are very unhappy about it, three customers told TechCrunch.
In summary, when Bench, a Canadian-based startup that raised $113 million from investors including Bain Capital Ventures and Shopify, shut down, thousands of businesses lost access to their accounting and tax documents. . A few days later, Bench announced that it would be acquired by Employer.com for an undisclosed price in a last-minute deal.
San Francisco-based HR technology company Employer.com focuses on payroll and onboarding, in contrast to Bench, which specializes in accounting and tax.
On the surface, Employer.com appears to be a relatively new company. CEO Jesse Tinsley announced in November that it had acquired the domain name for about $450,000. Tinsley powers numerous HR, onboarding and recruiting businesses, including Recruiter.com and BountyJobs.
But digging deeper, TechCrunch learned that Employer.com is a dba of Recruiting.com Ventures. In 2023, Tinsley acquired Recruiter.com, then a Nasdaq-listed company, and took it private, said Employer.com CMO Matt Charney. He said it has been in existence since 2015.
In his letter of intent, Bench described Employer.com as “a highly successful and profitable organization with a proven track record of acquiring and managing companies over the past 10 years.” Chief Marketing Officer Charney said the company is actually making a profit. But Employer.com's lack of accounting and tax expertise is a concern for some Bench customers.
One Bench customer told TechCrunch that when he tried to retrieve records from two of the five years he was a Bench customer, he was asked to “hit the consent button.”
“The text on that page said that if you agreed, you were agreeing not to get your money back, which I think was a very despicable and low-grade act,” he added. The company has since changed its page and removed the statement that refunds are not available.
Below is a screenshot of the original consent page before Employer.com updated it.
Screenshot image credit: Bench Customer
The customer said he was able to contact his credit card company and receive a refund for two years of prepaid service fees. However, he remained dissatisfied with the treatment.
“It's disappointing because I thought very highly of them and my clients worked with them,” he said.
Another long-time customer said Employer.com “displayed a message on the bench” offering users the option to continue the service and accept the updated terms, or discontinue the service and download their data. said. He chose the latter.
“A few days later, I received a message saying I needed to accept the terms to export my data,” he said. “In this case, to proceed and address this common problem,[同意]I clicked on it, but forcing users to do this in order to transfer data is pretty questionable. By agreeing to these Terms, I choose to continue using the Bench Service. ”
In other words, it appears that Bench customers had to agree to have their data transferred to Employer.com before they could access it.
Below is a screenshot of what a customer who has been a client of Bench for 10 years received.
Image credit: TechCrunch (Provided)
The customer decided that Employer.com was not comfortable remaining as a client because it “doesn't seem to be used to actually running this type of business.” He is considering alternative provider options.
Another customer, Michelle Gale, a business advisor at Core Insights Group, said she understands that her husband's company can download the data if they agree to certain conditions.
She told TechCrunch that the company has updated its consent page to remove the option to opt out of forwarding to Employer.com. Below is a screenshot of the updated page.
Screenshot image credit: TechCrunch (Provided)
“They are hiding the fact that this new 'authorization' is the same as the previous 'consent' and that it is backed by a privacy policy that is inappropriate for the financial services provided by Bench.com. ” she said. “Furthermore, given this situation, they are offering discounts on recruitment services, which seems tone-deaf and inappropriate.”
She went on to say that Employer.com's privacy policy is ridiculous.
“This policy has nothing to do with protecting financial data. When I tried to email legal@employer.com about this grossly inadequate policy, I received a bounce message,” she added.
The above complaint is echoed in a reddit thread filled with comments from disappointed former customers.
Employer.com, for its part, says customers can access their data with consent, which allows Employer.com to “make their data available for download.”
“After consent, customers will be able to manage their data, including downloading, deleting, and continuing services on the platform,” Employer.com's Charney told TechCrunch. “Once we have your consent, you can choose to continue with the same contract and pricing as before or cancel your service.”
Charney said customers seeking refunds for advances that covered future services that will no longer be provided by the defunct Bench should contact Bench Accounting Inc.'s bankruptcy trustee or request a refund through Stripe. said.
After publication, Mr. Charney provided the following quote regarding consent regarding customer data: “Simply put, the only way they can get their data is if they choose to give Employer.com access to their data, because the only other entity is Employer.com. Now, the company that originally had that data no longer exists and is in bankruptcy proceedings, so if they don't agree to give you access to Employer.com, you won't get that data at all. Actually, this is Bench. The only way to ensure that your customers have access to those records, regardless of whether they choose to remain a customer, is to delete all data for users who choose to opt out immediately after downloading their data. and none of that information will be retained.”
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