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After accounting startup Benchabruptly shut downon December 27 and was grease one’s palms in a firing - sales event by Employer.com , Bench customer are now learning they ca n’t well just take their fiscal data and leave .
And some are very unhappy about it , three customers told TechCrunch .
To recap : When Bench , a startup based in Canada that raised $ 113 million from investors like Bain Capital Ventures and Shopify , shuttered , it left thousands of business without admission to their accounting and taxation documents . Days later , Bench announce it would beacquiredby Employer.com for an unrevealed 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 account statement and taxation .
On the Earth’s surface , Employer.com looks like a comparatively newfangled company : Its CEO , Jesse Tinsley , harbinger his acquisitionof the domain name in November for about $ 450,000 . Tinsley is behind a emcee of hour , onboarding , and recruiting - relate businesses , including Recruiter.com and BountyJobs .
However , digging deeper , TechCrunch learned thatEmployer.comis a dba forRecruiting.com Ventures . Tinsleyacquired Recruiter.comin 2023 , when it was a Nasdaq - list caller , and acquire it private , concord to Employer.com CMO Matt Charney . That entity has been around since 2015 , he say .
In its consent form , Bench draw Employer.com as a “ extremely successful and profitable organization with a bear witness track record book of assume and running companies over the past decade . ” CMO Charney order the caller is in fact profitable . However , Employer.com ’s lack of accounting system and revenue enhancement expertise is relate to some Bench customers .
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One Bench client told TechCrunch that when he seek to get his records for two out of the five year that he was a Bench client , he was asked “ to hit a consent button . ”
“ Within the schoolbook of that page they say if you accept , then you agree to no refund , and I think that was a very slimy , low affair to do , ” he tote up . The company then later changed the page to remove citation of not being able to get a repayment .
Below is a screenshot of the original consent varlet before Employer.com updated it :
The customer enounce he was capable to contact his credit circuit card company and get a repayment for two years of overhaul he had pre - paid for . But he was still unhappy with the discussion .
“ It ’s disappointing because I used to speak so highly of them and had client forge with them too , ” he pronounce .
Another longtime client said that Employer.com “ show a message ” on Bench offer the drug user a choice to either carry on service and accept update terms or discontinue table service and download data . He chose the latter .
“ A few days subsequently I acquire a message that said that for export your data point , you still have to assume the term , ” he state . “ In this case , I hit take just to continue and deal with this worldwide issue , but it ’s relatively suspicious to force the user to do this in society to transfer out their information . assume these damage opted me into continuing to use the Bench services . ”
In other words , it appear that Bench customer had to consort to transfer their data to Employer.com to be able to access that data .
Below is a screenshot of what the client , who had been a Bench client for 10 years , received .
The client decided that he did n’t feel comfortable with remaining a node because Employer.com “ does not appear .. conversant with really operating this kind of business . ” He ’s reviewing his option for an alternative provider .
Another client , Michelle Gayle , who serves as a business sector advisor to Core Insights Group , said she understood that her company – which is owned by her husband – would be able to download its information after consenting to certain terms .
She told TechCrunch that the society updated its consent pageboy , getting rid of the option to choose out of shift to Employer.com . Below is a screenshot of the updated Sir Frederick Handley Page .
“ They have concealed the fact that this young ‘ acknowledgement ’ is the same as the previous ‘ consent ’ and it is backed up by a privacy policy that is not passable for the financial services that Bench.com provide , ” she said . ” to boot , they are extend bank discount on recruitment service which seem tone of voice deaf and inappropriate given this berth . ”
She pass on to describe Employer.com’sprivacy policyas idiotic .
“ This policy has dead nothing to do with safeguarding financial data and when I strain to email legal@employer.com about this woefully short policy , I receive a bounce back message , ” she added .
For its part , Employer.com say customers can access their data point by cater consent , which authorizes Employer.com “ to make their information available for download . ”
“ After consenting , customers can manage their data , include downloading , deleting , or continuing services on the program , ” Employer.com ’s Charney told TechCrunch . “ Once consent is give , they can pick out to continue with the same contract and pricing as before or call off their overhaul . ”
As for customers seeking refund for advance payment they made that covered succeeding service that the defunct Bench will no longer deliver , Charney said they will need to get in touch with the bankruptcy legal guardian for Bench Accounting Inc. or attempt to call for a repayment through Stripe .
Post - publication , Charney provided the following quotation regarding the consent around customer datum : “ only put , the only way that they can get their information at all is to opt into giving Employer.com permit to access their data , because the only other entity that currently has that data to begin with no longer exists and is in active bankruptcy legal proceeding . So if they do n’t consent to give Employer.com access , then they ’re not going to get that information at all . It ’s really the only way we can check that that any Bench client , whether or not they choose to stay one , can access those record . We will erase all data of any exploiter who select to opt out immediately after they download the datum , and will not retain any of their information at all . ”
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