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After starting Accounting Bench turn off suddenly Dec. 27, and was acquired by Employer.com in a clearance sale, Bench users are now learning that they can’t just take their financial information and walk away.
And some are very unhappy about it, three customers told TechCrunch.
To recap: When Bench, a Canadian-based startup that raised $113 million from investors like Bain Capital Ventures and Shopify, shut down, it left thousands of companies without access to their accounting and tax documents. Days later, Bench announced that it would be acquired from Employer.com at an undisclosed price in a last minute offer.
San Francisco-based HR technology company Employer.com focuses on payroll and integration, unlike Bench, which specializes in accounting and taxes.
On the surface, Employer.com appears to be a relatively new company: Its CEO, Jesse Tinsley, announced its acquisition domain name in November for about $450,000. Tinsley is behind a number of HR, onboarding and recruiting businesses, including Recruiter.com and BountyJobs.
However, digging deeper, TechCrunch found out Employer.com is caring for Recruiting.com Ventures. Tinsley taken over by Recruiter.com 2023, when the company was listed on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, and took it private, according to Employer.com CMO Matt Charney. That entity has existed since 2015, he said.
In its consent form, Bench described Employer.com as “a highly successful and profitable organization with a proven track record of acquiring and operating companies over the past decade.” Marketing director Charney said the company is actually profitable. However, Employer.com’s lack of accounting and tax expertise worries some Bench clients.
One Bench user told TechCrunch that when he tried to get his records for two of the five years he was a Bench user, he was asked “to hit the consent button.”
“Inside the text on that page they said that if you agree, then you agree to no refund, and I think that was a very slimy, low thing,” he added. The company later changed the page to remove the non-refundable mention.
Below is a screenshot of the original consent page before Employer.com updated it:
The customer said he was able to contact his card company and get a refund for two years of prepaid service. But he was still dissatisfied with the treatment.
“It’s disappointing because I’ve spoken so highly of them and I’ve had clients who have worked with them,” he said.
Another longtime user said Employer.com “displayed a message” on Bench offering users the choice to continue with the service and accept the updated terms, or to end the service and download the data. He chose the latter.
“A few days later I got a message saying that you still have to accept the terms to export your data,” he said. “In this case, I pressed accept just to continue and deal with this general issue, but forcing users to do this in order to transfer their data is relatively suspicious. Acceptance of these terms allowed me to continue using the Bench services.”
In other words, it appears that Bench users had to consent to the transfer of their data to Employer.com in order to access that data.
Below is a screenshot of what the customer, who has been a Bench client for 10 years, received.
The customer concluded that he did not feel comfortable remaining a customer because Employer.com “doesn’t seem.. unfamiliar with running this type of business.” He is considering his options for an alternative service provider.
Another user, Michelle Gayle, who works as a business consultant for Core Insights Group, said she understood that her company – which is owned by her husband – would be able to download her data after she agreed to certain conditions.
She told TechCrunch that the company has updated its consent page, getting rid of the option to opt out of uploading to Employer.com. Below is a screenshot of the updated page.
“They covered up the fact that this new ‘acknowledgment’ 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,” she said. “In addition, they are offering discounts on recruitment services which seems tone-deaf and inappropriate given this situation.”
She then described Employer.com privacy policy like funny.
“This policy has absolutely nothing to do with protecting financial information and when I tried to email legal@employer.com about this woefully inadequate policy, I received a bounced message,” she added.
The above complaints are repeated reddit thread full of comments from disappointed former 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.”
“Once consented, users can manage their data, including downloading, deleting or continuing services on the platform,” Employer.com’s Charney told TechCrunch. “Once they get consent, 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 that cover future services that the late Bench will no longer provide, Charney said they would need to contact the receiver for Bench Accounting Inc. or try to request a refund through Stripe.
Following the release, Charney provided the following quote regarding user data consent: “Simply put, the only way they can get their data in the first place is to give Employer.com permission to access their data, because the only other entity that currently has that the data for the beginning no longer exists and is in active bankruptcy proceedings. So if they don’t agree to give Employer.com access, then they won’t get that information at all. It’s really the only way we can ensure that any Bench user, whether they stay or not, can access those records. We will delete all data of any user who chooses to opt out immediately after downloading the data and will not retain any of their data at all.”
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