After the commencement of the accounting Bench suddenly turned off on December 27 and purchased in a fire-sale on Employer.com, Bench customers are now learning that they can’t just grab their financial data and leave.

And some aren’t too happy 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 it Obtained through Employer.com for an undisclosed price in a last-minute deal.

San Francisco-based HR tech company Employer.com focuses on payroll and onboarding, as opposed to Bench, which specializes in accounting and taxes.

On the surface, Employer.com appears to be an innovative company: Its CEO, Jesse Tinsley, announced his claim of the domain name in November for about $450,000. Tinsley is behind several HR, onboarding, and recruiting-related businesses, including Recruiter.com and BountyJobs.

However, digging deeper, TechCrunch found out that Employer.com is a dba for Recruiting.com Ventures. Tinsley acquired Recruiter.com in 2023, if it is a Nasdaq-listed company, and takes it private, according to Employer.com CMO Matt Charney. That entity has been in existence since 2015, he said.

In its consent form, the 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.” CMO Charney said the company is actually profitable. However, Employer.com’s lack of accounting and tax expertise concerns some Bench customers.

A Bench customer told TechCrunch that when he tried to retrieve his records for two of the five years he was a Bench customer, he was asked to “hit an authorization button.”

“Within the text on that page they say if you agree, then you agree to no refunds, and I think that’s a very slimy, low thing to do,” he added. The company later changed the page to remove the mention of not getting a refund.

Below is a screenshot of the original consent page before Employer.com updated it:

The customer said he contacted his credit card company and got a refund for the two years of service he paid for in advance. But he was still not happy with the treatment.

“It’s frustrating because I used to speak highly of them and have clients who work with them as well,” he said.

Another longtime customer said Employer.com “displayed a message” on Bench offering users the option to continue service and accept updated terms or stop service and download data. He chose the latter.

“A few days later I received a message saying that in order to export your data, you must accept the terms,” ​​he said. “In this case, I hit accept just to go ahead and deal with this general issue, but it’s a bit suspicious to force users to do this to transfer their data. Accepting these terms makes me choose to continue using the Bench services.

In other words, it appears that Bench customers must agree to transfer 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 decided he was not comfortable remaining a client because Employer.com “doesn’t appear..familiar with operating this type of business.” She is exploring her options for an alternative provider.

Another customer, Michelle Gayle, who serves as a business advisor at Core Insights Group, said she understood that her company – owned by her husband – could download its data after agreeing to certain terms. .

He told TechCrunch that the company has updated its consent page, removing the option not to transfer to Employer.com. Below is a screenshot of the updated page.

“They hid the fact that this new ‘acknowledgement’ was the same as the previous ‘consent’ and supported it with a privacy policy that was inadequate for the financial services provided by Bench.com,” he said. “Furthermore, they offer discounts on recruiting services that seem tone-deaf and inappropriate given this situation.”

He went on to describe Employer.com’s privacy policy as funny.

“This policy has nothing to do with safeguarding financial data and when I tried to email [email protected] about this inadequate policy, I got a message that kept repeating itself,” it added. he.

The above complaints are echoed a reddit thread full of comments from disappointed former 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 consenting, customers can manage their data, including downloading, deleting, or continuing services on the platform,” Employer.com’s Charney told TechCrunch. “Once approval is granted, they can choose to continue with the same contract and price as before or cancel their service.”

As for customers seeking refunds for advance payments they made covering future services that will no longer be delivered by the defunct Bench, Charney said they should contact the bankruptcy trustee for the Bench. Accounting Inc. or attempt to request a refund through Stripe.

After the publication, Charney provided the following quote about customer data consent: “Simply put, the only way they can get their data is by choosing to allow Employer.com to access their data , because the other entity that currently has that data is going to be defunct and in active bankruptcy proceedings. So if they don’t agree to give Employer.com access, no This is the only way we can ensure that any Bench customer, even if they choose to remain one, can access the records choose to opt out immediately after they download the data, and no longer retain any of their information.”

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