Thanks Conrad however in the interest of clarity + transparency can you add some insight/details into how/why this statement came about in both the shut down email customers got today + what is currently posted on the Bench.co page?

"For continued support with your bookkeeping, we recommend exploring Kick, a modern accounting software, which has created an exclusive offer to handle your ongoing needs: kick.co/bench."

Having an "exclusive offer" listed in the initial closure communication/announcement + you having a landing page ready to go sounds like there was more to Bench just happening to mention Kick because your company has "onboarded a significant number of customers from Bench onto Kick before this happened"...

Hopefully you'll get an answer from Conrad, but the landing page does not mention the shutdown, so I would point out when I was comparison shopping something else recently, their website had dedicated pages to why you should choose them over each major competitor, and a switching discount is also not uncommon.

It's entirely possible this landing page is Kick's competitive offer, and Bench linked to it because it offers all the people they just screwed over by collapsing a discount.

Good point! I like what I see so far in Kick. It's just given the level of pain Bench has just caused me, my businesses, and a couple very unlucky employees in my office + the financial cost = I have to make super duper sure Kick is not related to/involved with Bench in any way shape or form.

If they asked Kick to be listed as an alternative in the closure email or asked them to do a discount nbd I have no issue there. I just want the full story given Bench events.

I am not related to any of the parties in this dolce, but I did discontinue a product once.

On the shutdown page I listed some alternatives people could try. I found them via Google, but i didn't first try them or talk to them.

They were really just a helpful hint for folk wanting to change to get started. (The thing I was killing was a product not a service so it wasn't going to actually stop working, it was just no longer being updated.)

So, in this case, a simple statement of fact (as above) would be good enough for me. But feel free to do your due diligence.

For what it's worth Google's index suggests kick.co/bench was indexed/last updated: Oct 16, 2024.