They say Bench customers are now forced to hand over their data or risk losing it

After starting bench accounting Shut down suddenly On December 27 and bought on the cheap by Employer.com, Bench customers are now learning they can’t easily take their financials and walk away.

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 businesses without access to their accounting and tax documents. Days later, Bench announced that he would be acquired By Employer.com at an undisclosed price in a last minute deal.

San Francisco-based HR technology company Employer.com focuses on payroll and onboarding, unlike Bench, which specializes in accounting and taxes.

On the surface, Employer.com appears to be a relatively new company: its CEO, Jesse Tinsley, He announced his acquisition The domain name was purchased in November for about $450,000. Tinsley is behind a group of HR, onboarding and recruitment-related companies, including Recruiter.com and BountyJobs.

However, digging deeper, TechCrunch learned Employer.com is db l Recruiting.com Projects. Tinsley Acquired Recruiter.com In 2023, when it became a Nasdaq-listed company, it was taken private, according to Matt Charney, director of marketing at Employer.com. He said that this entity has existed since 2015.

In its approval form, Bench described Employer.com as “a highly successful and profitable organization with a proven track record of acquiring and managing companies over the past decade.” CMO Charney said the company is actually profitable. However, Employer.com’s lack of accounting and tax expertise concerns some Bench clients.

One Bench client told TechCrunch that when he tried to get his records for two of the five years he was a Bench client, he was told to “press the consent button.”

He added: “In the text of that page they said if you agree, you agree not to get any refunds, and I thought that was very mean.” The company then changed the page to remove the mention of not being able to get a refund.

Here’s 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 previously paid for. But he is still not satisfied with the treatment.

“It’s disappointing because I used to talk highly about them and I had clients who worked with them as well,” he said.

Another long-time customer said Employer.com “pushed up a message” on Bench offering users the option to continue service and accept the updated terms or stop service and download data. Choose the latter.

“After a few days, I received a message that in order to export your data, you still had to accept the terms,” he said. “In this case, I pressed Accept just to continue and deal with this general issue, but it is relatively questionable to force users to do this in order to transfer their data. Accepting these terms enabled me to continue using bench services.

In other words, it appears that Bench customers had to consent to their data being transferred to Employer.com to be able to access that data.

Below is a screenshot of what the client, who has been a Bench customer for 10 years, received.

The client decided that he did not feel comfortable remaining a client because Employer.com “didn’t seem… familiar with running this type of business.” He is reviewing his options for an alternative provider.

Another client, Michelle Gayle, who works as a business consultant for Core Insights Group, said she understood that her company – owned by her husband – would be able to download her data after agreeing to certain conditions.

She told TechCrunch that the company has updated its consent page, getting rid of the option to opt out of transfer to Employer.com. Below is a screenshot of the updated page.

“They concealed the fact that this new ‘acknowledgment’ was the same as the previous ‘consent’ and was backed by a privacy policy that was inappropriate for the financial services offered by Bench.com,” she said. “In addition, they are offering discounts on employment services which seems tone deaf and inappropriate given the situation.”

I went on to describe Employer.com privacy policy Laughable.

She added: “This policy has absolutely nothing to do with financial data protection, and when I tried to email [email protected] about this completely inappropriate policy, I received a bounce message.”

The above complaints were repeated Reddit thread Full of comments from disappointed previous customers.

For its part, Employer.com says customers can access their data by providing consent, which allows Employer.com to “make their data available for download.”

“After approval, customers can manage their data, including downloading, deleting or continuing services on the platform,” Employer.com’s Charney told TechCrunch. “Once approval is given, they can choose to continue with the same contract and price as before or cancel their service.”

As for customers seeking refunds of advance payments they made that covered future services that the defunct Bench company will no longer provide, Charney said they will need to contact Bench Accounting Inc.’s bankruptcy trustee. Or try to request a refund through Stripe.

After publication, Charney provided the following quote regarding consent to customer data: “Simply put, the only way they can get their data at all is to choose to give Employer.com permission to access their data, because the only other entity that currently has that data to begin with It no longer exists and is in active bankruptcy proceedings, so if they don’t agree to give Employer.com access, they won’t get that data at all. It’s really the only way we can be sure that any Bench customer, either Whether they choose to remain so or not, they have access to these records. We will delete all data of any user who chooses to opt out immediately after downloading the data, and we will not retain any of their information at all.

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