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After opening a Bench account sudden shutdown on December 27 and was purchased in a fire sale by Employer.com, Bench customers are now learning that they can’t just take their money and walk away.
And some aren’t happy about it, three customers told TechCrunch.
Recap: When Bench, a Canadian 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 records. A few days later, the Bench announced that it would happen found by Employer.com for an unknown price at the last minute.
San Francisco-based HR technology company Employer.com focuses on payroll and reimbursement, unlike Bench, which handles accounting and tax.
On the surface, Employer.com looks like a new company: Its CEO, Jesse Tinsley, announced his discovery of the domain name in November about $450,000. Tinsley is behind many HR, onboarding, and recruiting-related businesses, including Recruiter.com and BountyJobs.
However, digging deeper, TechCrunch learned this Employer.com and dba Recruiting.com Ventures. Tinsley found Recruiter.com in 2023, when he was a Nasdaq-listed company, and took himself private, according to Employer.com CMO Matt Charney. The organization has been in existence since 2015, he said.
Instead, Bench described Employer.com as “a successful and highly profitable organization with a proven track record of acquiring and operating companies over the past decade.” CMO Charney said the company is profitable. However, Employer.com’s lack of accounting and tax expertise affects some Bench clients.
A Bench customer told TechCrunch that after trying to access his records for two of the five years he was a Bench customer, he was asked to “hit the allow button.”
“In the statement on the site they said if you agree, then you agree not to refund, and I think that was a very small thing,” he added. The company later updated the website to remove the mention that it was unable to refund.
Below is a screenshot of the original Employer.com website before the changes:
The customer said he was able to contact his credit card company and get a refund for two years of pre-paid service. But he still wasn’t happy with the treatment.
He said: “It’s disappointing because I really liked them and had clients to work with.
One long-time customer said Employer.com “displayed a message” on the Bench giving users the option to continue and accept the changes or cancel and download the data. He chose the latter.
“A few days later I received a message saying that in order to send your data, you have to agree,” he said. “In this case, I agree to continue and solve the problem, but it is unlikely to force users to do this in order to send their data. Accepting this allowed me to continue using Bench services.”
In other words, it appears that Bench customers had to agree to transfer their data to Employer.com in order to access the data.
Below is a picture of what the customer, who has been a Bench customer for 10 years, received.
The consumer decided that he did not feel comfortable remaining a customer because Employer.com “does not appear. He is reviewing his options for other providers.
Another customer, Michelle Gayle, who works as a business consultant at Core Insights Group, said she understood that her company – which is owned by her husband – could download her data after agreeing to certain terms.
He told TechCrunch that the company has updated its recruiting website, removing the option to transfer to Employer.com. Below is a screenshot of the updated page.
“They are hiding that this new ‘approval’ is the same as the previous ‘approval’ and is backed by confidential information that is not sufficient for the financial services Bench.com provides,” he said. “Furthermore, they are offering discounts on recruiting services that seem tone-deaf and inappropriate because of this.”
He went on to explain about Employer.com Privacy Policy like laughing.
“This law has nothing to do with protecting financial data and when I tried to send an email to legal@employer.com about this incomplete information, I received a return message,” he added.
The above complaints are repeated reddit thread full of reviews from already disappointed customers.
For its part, Employer.com says customers can access their personal information by providing consent, which allows Employer.com to “make their data available.”
“After opting in, customers can control their data, including downloading, deleting, or continuing to work on the platform,” Employer.com’s Charney told TechCrunch. “Once the license is granted, they can choose to continue with the same contract and prices as before or stop their work.”
As for customers who want to return the prepaid money that they paid for the future services that the bankrupt Bench will no longer provide, Charney said they need to contact the trustee of Bank Accounting Inc. or attempt to make a refund through Stripe.
After the publication, Charney gave the following statement regarding the consent surrounding the customers: “In short, the only way they can access their data is to choose to give Employer.com permission to access their data, because the only other organization that currently has the data does not exist and is taking action. So if they don’t agree to give Employer.com a chance, that’s the only way we can ensure that any Bench customer, whether they choose to stay, can access to the records. We will delete all information about any user who chooses to leave immediately after downloading, and we will not store anything.”
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