Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
After the beginning of accounting Bench closed abruptly on December 27 and was bought in a fire-sale by Employer.com, Bench customers are now learning that they can not easily just take their financial data and leave.
And some are very unhappy about it, three customers told TechCrunch.
To recapitalize: When Bench, a Canada-based startup that raised $113 million from investors like Bain Capital Ventures and Shopify, shut down, it left thousands of businesses without access to their accounting and tax documents. Days later, Bench announced that it would acquired from Employer.com for an undisclosed price in a last-minute deal.
Employer.com, the San Francisco-based HR technology company, 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: Its CEO, Jesse Tinsley, announced its acquisition of the domain name in November for approximately $450,000. Tinsley is behind a number of HR, onboarding, and recruiting businesses, including Recruiter.com and BountyJobs.
However, digging deeper, TechCrunch learned that Employer.com is a dba for Recruiting.com Ventures. Tinsley acquired Recruiter.com in 2023, when it was a Nasdaq-listed company, and took it private, according to Employer.com CMO Matt Charney. This entity has been around since 2015, he said.
In its consent form, Bench described Employer.com as a “highly successful and profitable organization with a proven track record in acquiring and managing companies over the past decade.” CMO Charney said the company is in fact profitable. However, Employer.com’s lack of accounting and tax expertise is concerning to some Bench customers.
A Bench customer told TechCrunch that when he tried to obtain his records for two of the five years he was a Bench customer, he was asked “to press a consent button.”
“In the text of that page they said if you agree, then accept no refunds, and I thought that was a very slimy, low thing to do,” he added. The company later changed the page to remove the mention of not being able to get a refund.
Below is a screenshot of the original consent page before Employer.com updated it:
The customer said he was able to contact his credit card company and get a refund for two years of service he had paid for in advance. But he was still unhappy with the treatment.
“It’s disappointing because I talked a lot about them and they had clients working with them as well,” he said.
Another longtime customer said Employer.com “displayed a message” on Bench offering users the choice to continue service and accept the updated terms or to discontinue service and download data. He chose the latter.
“A few days later I got a message saying that to export your data, you still have to accept the terms,” he said. “In this case, I have only accepted to continue and deal with this general problem, but it is relatively suspicious to force users to do this in order to transfer their data. The acceptance of these terms has chosen me to continue using the services of Bench.
In other words, it appears that Bench customers have agreed to transfer their data to Employer.com in order to be able to access that data.
Below is a screenshot of what the customer, who was a Bench customer for 10 years, received.
The customer decided that he did not feel comfortable being a customer because Employer.com “doesn’t seem … familiar with actually operating this type of business.” It is reviewing its options for an alternative supplier.
Another client, Michelle Gayle, who serves as a business consultant at Core Insights Group, said she realized her company — which is owned by her husband — could download her data after she agreed to certain terms.
She told TechCrunch that the company has updated its consent page, removing the option to opt out of transferring to Employer.com. Below is a screenshot of the updated page.
“They concealed the fact that this new ‘knowledge’ is the same as the previous ‘consent’ and is backed by a privacy policy that is not appropriate for the financial services that Bench.com provides,” he said. “Furthermore, they are offering discounts on recruiting services that seem tone-deaf and inappropriate given this situation.”
She went on to describe Employer.com’s privacy policy like laughing.
“This policy has absolutely nothing to do with the safeguarding of financial data and when I tried to email [email protected] about this woefully inadequate policy, I received an acknowledgment message,” he added.
The above complaints are repeated a reddit thread filled with comments from former disappointed customers.
For its part, Employer.com says customers can access their data by providing consent, which authorizes Employer.com “to make their data available for download.”
“After consent, customers can manage their data, including download, deletion or continued services on the platform,” Employer.com’s Charney told TechCrunch. “Once consent is given, they can choose to continue with the same contract and prices as before or cancel their service.”
As for customers seeking refunds for advance payments they made covering future services that the defunct Bench no longer provides, Charney said they should contact the bankruptcy trustee for Bench Accounting Inc. or try to request a refund through Stripe.
Post-publication, Charney provided the following quote regarding consent around customer data: “Simply put, the only way they can get their data at all is by opting to give Employer.com permission to access their data, because the only other entity that currently has that data to begin with no longer exists and is in the process of active bankruptcy Employer.com, then they’re not going to get that data. That’s really the only way we can make sure that any Bench customer, whether or not they choose to be one, can access those records. We’ll delete all the data of any user who chooses to opt out immediately after downloading the data, and will not retain any of their information.
Want more fintech news in your inbox? Sign up for TechCrunch Fintech here.
Want to get a tip? Send me an email at [email protected] or send a message on Signal at 408.204.3036. You can also send a note to the entire TechCrunch crew at [email protected]. For more secure communication, click here to contact uswhich includes SecureDrop and links to encrypted messaging apps.
