Bench customers are now being forced to hand over their data or risk losing it, they say

After the accounting startup bench sudden stop Dec. 27 and purchased in a fire-sale by Employer.com, Bench customers are now learning that they can’t simply take their financial information and walk away.

And some are very unhappy about it, three customers told TechCrunch.

To recap: Bench, a Canada-based startup that raised $113 million from investors like Bain Capital Ventures and Shopify, shut down, leaving thousands of businesses without access to their accounting and tax documents. Days later, the bench announced it would 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, unlike Bench, which specializes in accounting and tax.

On the surface, Employer.com appears to be a relatively new company: Its CEO, Jesse Tinsley, announced its acquisition domain name for about $450,000 in November. Tinsley is behind many HR, onboarding and recruiting-related businesses, including Recruiter.com and BountyJobs.

However, digging deeper, TechCrunch learned this employer.com is a dba for Recruiting.com Ventures. Tinsley Acquired Recruiter.com in 2023, when it was a Nasdaq-listed company, and took it private, according to Matt Charney, CMO of Employer.com. That entity has been around 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 running companies over the past decade”. CMO Charney said the company is actually profitable. However, Employer.com’s lack of accounting and tax expertise is a concern for some Bench customers.

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

“In the text on that page they said if you agree, you agree to no refund, and I think that was a very thin, low thing,” he added. The company then changed the page to remove the mention of not being able to get a refund.

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

The customer said he was able to contact his credit card company and get a refund for his pre-paid two years of service. But still he was dissatisfied with the treatment.

“It’s disappointing because I used to speak so highly of them and I had clients work with them,” he said.

Another longtime customer said Employer.com “showed a message” on the bench offering users the option to either continue service and accept the updated terms or turn off service and download data. He chose the latter.

“A few days later I got a message saying that to export your data, you still have to accept the terms,” ​​he said. “In this case, I press accept to go ahead and deal with this common issue, but forcing users to do this to transfer their data is relatively questionable. By accepting these terms I choose 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 be able 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 being a client because Employer.com “isn’t really familiar with running this type of business.” She is reviewing her options for an alternative provider.

Another customer, Michelle Gale, 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 agreeing to certain conditions.

He told TechCrunch that the company has updated its consent page, getting rid of the option to move to Employer.com. Below is a screenshot of the updated page

“They have concealed the fact that this new ‘acknowledgment’ is the same as the previous ‘consent’ and is backed up by a privacy policy that is not adequate for the financial services that Bench.com provides,” he said. “Furthermore, they are making concessions to recruiting services that seem tone-deaf and inappropriate given this situation.”

He went on to describe Employer.com Privacy Policy as ridiculous

“This policy has absolutely nothing to do with protecting financial data and when I tried to email legal@employer.com about this woefully inadequate policy, I received a bounce back message,” he added.

The above complaint is 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.”

Employer.com’s Charney told TechCrunch, “Upon consent, customers can manage their data, including downloading, deleting, or continuing service on the platform. “Once consent is granted, they can continue with the same contract and pricing as before or cancel their service.”

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

After the publication, Charney provided the following quote regarding consent around customer data: “Simply put, the only way they can get their data is by choosing to allow Employer.com to access their data, as the only other entity that currently has access to it to begin with. That data 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 ensure that any bench customer, whether they choose to be one 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 information.”

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