After the employer.com won the bankruptcy start bench in a fire sale at the end of last year, CEO Jesse Tinsley pledged to LinkedIn and elsewhere to honor past customer payments.
“We are honoring all prepaid bench services even though we will not have income from himself directly,” Tinsley said in an interview with founder and investor Julian Weisser.
But some bench clients say they are charging to get books or tax returns they pay before.
A lawsuit filed Tuesday by the Klub’s Knit Customer claims that Bench demanded that she paid to receive her 2023 tax return, despite having already paid for the service under the previous owners of Bench.
“Defendant Jesse Tinsley made negligent abuses when he fake that the employer.com would honor the prepaid services of the bench,” the lawsuit claims.
Another client, who demanded anonymity, was shocked when he learned that they had to renew their reconciliation to complete accounting books when they paid for that service two years ago, according to the first correspondence by Techcrunch.
When questioning this, a bench representative told them that “Bench 2.0” had nothing to do with preliminary liabilities and that employer.com could not obtain unpaid work.
CMO Matt Charney of employer.com strongly opposes that Bench is charging for previously paid work. “We have been and are honoring the pre-paying services to our clients,” he said.
Charney also said he submitted that tax 2023 return to the dead end without requesting additional payments. But the founder of the dead end, Andrew Pietra, told Techcrunch that he was required to continue his reconciliation to get the return in the first place.
Under its previous ownership, Bench was burned with $ 135 million and tried to take it to replace human librarians. This led to long delays and large piles of books that still had to end, according to former employees.
Numerous bench customers previously told Techcrunch that the employer.com also sent them notifications intended to make them click on a button of consent they had to relinquish prepaid services refunds.
Many books and returns remained incomplete when the bench was suddenly closed on December 26 last year. Employer.com, a US company, announced plans to buy Canadian Fintech less than 72 hours later.
Employer.com bought the bench for $ 9 million, bankruptcy records shown in Canada Show.
Fintech’s sudden decline was caused by a lack of liquidity after its main creditor, the National Bank of Canada, refused to give it an additional $ 7.7 million in December 2024. The NBC had already provided $ 51 million in credit for the tumultuous start, according to previous threads.
Ironically, it is the news of Bench’s sudden closure that led to his rescue. The company had previously shattered itself, but failed to find a serious buyer, marking recordings.
