After Employer.com acquired bankrupt accounting startup Bench in a fire-sale late last year, CEO Jesse Tinsley pledged on LinkedIn and elsewhere to honor past customer payments.
“We’re honoring all prepaid Bench services even though we will not have the revenue from that directly ourselves,” Tinsley said in an interview with founder and investor Julian Weisser.
But some Bench customers say they’re being charged to get books or tax returns they previously paid for.
A lawsuit filed on Tuesday by Bench customer Qorum claims that Bench required it to pay to get its 2023 tax return, despite having already paid for the service under Bench’s previous owners.
“Defendant Jesse Tinsley made negligent misrepresentations when he falsely stated that Employer.com would honor prepaid Bench services,” the lawsuit alleges.
Another customer, who requested anonymity, was shocked to learn they needed to renew their subscription to get accounting books completed when they paid for that service two years ago, according to correspondence seen by TechCrunch.
When they questioned this, a Bench representative told them that “Bench 2.0” has no affiliation with prior obligations and that Employer.com couldn’t take on unpaid work.
Employer.com’s CMO Matt Charney strongly disputes that Bench is charging for previously paid work. “We have been, and are honoring pre-paid services for our customers,” he said.
Charney also said it delivered that tax 2023 return to Qorum without requiring additional payment. But Qorum’s founder Andrew Pietra told TechCrunch he was required to continue his subscription to get the return in the first place.
Under its previous ownership, Bench burned through $135 million and struggled to get AI to replace human bookkeepers. That led to long delays and big piles of books that still needed to be completed, according to former employees.
Multiple Bench customers previously told TechCrunch that Employer.com had also sent them notices intended to get them to click on a consent button that had them foregoing refunds on prepaid services.
Many books and returns remained incomplete when Bench abruptly shut down on December 26 last year. Employer.com, a U.S. company, announced plans to buy the Canadian fintech less than 72 hours later.
Employer.com bought Bench for $9 million, bankruptcy filings submitted in Canada show.
The fintech’s abrupt collapse was caused by a lack of liquidity after its main creditor, the National Bank of Canada, declined to lend it an additional $7.7 million in December 2024. The NBC had already provided $51 million USD in credit to the troubled startup, according to previous filings.
Ironically, it’s the news of Bench’s sudden shutdown that led to its rescue. The company had previously shopped itself around but failed to find a serious buyer, the filings note.
