After accounting startup Bench suddenly shut down on December 27 and was bought in a fire sale by Employer.com, Bench customers are now learning that it’s not easy to just take their financial data and walk away. And some aren’t too happy about it, three customers told TechCrunch. Recap: When Bench, a Canadian-based startup that raised $113 million from investors like Bain Capital Ventures and Shopify, shut down, thousands of businesses couldn’t access their accounting and tax documents. Days later, Bench announced it would be acquired by Employer.com for an undisclosed price in a last-minute deal. San Francisco-based HR tech 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: Its CEO, Jesse Tinsley, announced the acquisition of the domain name in November for approximately $450,000. Tinsley is behind many HR, onboarding, and recruiting businesses, including Recruiter.com and BountyJobs. However, digging deeper, TechCrunch learned that Employer.com is the 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. The entity has been in existence since 2015, he said. In the consent form, Bench described Employer.com as “a successful and profitable organization with a proven track record of acquiring and running companies over the past decade.” CMO Charney says the company is actually profitable. However, Employer.com lack of accounting and tax expertise regarding some Bench customers. One Bench customer told TechCrunch that when he tried to take notes for two of the five years he was a Bench customer, he was asked to “press the consent button.” “In the text of the page they say that if you consent, then you agree not to refund, and I think it is very slimy, less of a thing to do,” 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: ScreenshotImage Credits:Bench customer The customer said they were able to contact their credit card company and get a refund for the two years of service they paid for. But he still wasn’t happy with the treatment. “It’s disappointing because I used to speak highly of them and have clients working with them as well,” he said. Another longtime customer said Employer.com “displayed a message” on Bench that offered users the option to continue service and accept updated terms or terminate service and download data. He chose the latter. “A few days later I got a message saying that in order to export your data, you still have to accept the terms,” he said. “In this case, I accept only to continue and solve this common problem, but it is suspicious enough to force the user to do this in order to transfer data. Accepting these terms chooses me to continue using the Bench service. In other words, it appears that Bench customers must agreed to transfer data to Employer.com in order to access the data Below is an image received by a customer who has been a Bench client for 10 years Image Credit: TechCrunch The customer decided they were not comfortable with remains a client because Employer.com “doesn’t seem to be familiar with this business.” her husband — will be able to download the data after agreeing to certain terms. She told TechCrunch that the company updated its consent page, removing the option to opt out of going to Employer.com. Below is a screenshot of the updated page. ScreenshotImage Credits:TechCrunch (provided) “They hide the fact that this new ‘acknowledgment’ is the same as the previous ‘consent’ and is supported by an inadequate privacy policy for the financial services provided by Bench.com,” he said. “In addition, they offer discounts for recruiting services that seem tone-deaf and inappropriate because of this situation.” He went on to describe Employer.com’s privacy policy as laughable. “This policy has absolutely nothing to do with protecting financial data and when I tried to email legal@employer.com about this inadequate policy, I received a bounced message,” he said. The above complaint was read in a reddit thread full of comments from disappointed former customers. For his part, Employer.com says that customers can access their data by providing consent, which authorizes Employer.com “to make the data available for download.” Employer.com’s Charney told TechCrunch. “If consent is granted, they can choose to continue with the same contract and price as before or cancel the service.” For customers seeking refunds for advance payments they made that guaranteed future services that Bench will not send again, Charney said they should contact the bankruptcy trustee for Bench Accounting Inc.. or try to get a refund through Stripe. After the publication, Charney provided the following quote about the agreement on customer data: “Simply, the only way to get the data is to choose to give permission to Employer.com to access the data, because the only other entity that currently has that data to begin with no longer and in the process of bankruptcy. So if they do not agree to give access to Employer.com, then they will not get the data. It is really the only way to ensure that customers of Bench, whatever they choose to be one, can access the record. We will delete all the data of the user who chooses to download the data. Want more fintech news? Do you want to get a tip ?Email me at maryann@techcrunch.com or send me a message on Signal at 408.204.3036. You can also send a note to the entire TechCrunch crew at tips@techcrunch.com. For more secure communications, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop and links to encrypted messaging apps.
