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Comment by solidgiant | Hacker News Reader

I was just sold bench.co for my three businesses and the sales person Luc Lewarne made me sign a payment agreement with Capchase. The agreement states that I still owe Capchase the full amount for a year, even if Bench.co shuts down...

Does anyone have any contacts or experience with Capchase? I never even started my service, which was supposed to begin January 1st, 2025 and now I will have to pay out 12 months to Capchase?!?!

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Solidgiant, this is Luc Lewarne. I assure you that I am just as shocked as you are. I woke up today, along with my colleagues, to an email telling us that Bench was insolvent, and that all operations and employment would cease effective immediately. I know what it is like to be mislead in a buying process - it feels terrible. I want to let you know, person to person, that I had no bad intentions or knowledge of Bench’s future when I sold you our services. As for Capchase, I’m pretty sure they haven’t processed a payment from you yet, which means they haven’t sent us any funds. If you contact them, you should be able to get out of it.

I imagine it wasn't very fun to wake up to the news that you lost your job, and then to have your name personally called out :( I don't doubt you were just as mislead as your customers were. I hope you are able to take a few days to process the situation and decompress, and then you rebound quickly into your next position! I don't think anyone will hold it against you personally :)

Thanks Luc for the response, I have emailed Capchase support and they asked me to talk to bench.co I wasn't trying to publicly name you to shame you, but was looking for help in case someone knew where to point me. Hindsight I can see, should have probably left that out. The public page on Bench.co didn't have any contact or way to talk to anyone so I used the only contact I had. I do wish you the best in your next endeavors.

Well in hindsight, that was a silly thing to do...

First step- make sure you have read and understand your contract. Is there a cancellation period? What state laws may apply (Some states a allow a cooling off period, but often this applies only to consumer contracts, not B2B).

Second, contact Capchase via email and see if they will will allow you out of the contract "peacefully". If they are smart, they will so "sure, no problem, of course" and cancel the contract. If not, name and shame them everywhere you have an audience.

Third, if that doesn't work, you can either proactively sue them to cancel the contract, or just don't pay them and let them decide whether or not to sue you. Doing the latter may result in a negative report on your business credit.

And fourth maybe don't name and shame the poor salesperson.

> I was just sold bench.co [...] made me sign a payment agreement with Capchase. The agreement states that I still owe Capchase the full amount for a year, even if Bench.co shuts down...

I might ask a lawyer if that looks like fraud. (And then wouldn't be surprised if the lawyer can quickly make it like the sale never happened, other than your time wasted, and the lawyer fees.)

Or maybe ask your state AG's office if that looks like fraud.

(Edit: I mean the appearance that Bench.co was entering contracts to provide service for a period, knowing that they probably wouldn't provide that service, and, further, attempting to obligate you to pay for service for the entire period anyway. Or something like that. I'm not a lawyer, so I'd ask one.)

Do account execs get a heads up about a shutdown? If not, maybe there wasn't a good reason to mention the account exec by name here.

Which is part of why I didn't put the name in. The essence was that the company might have signed contracts that they knew they wouldn't fulfill.

Of course, salespeople should have professional reputations (e.g., for honesty, or for dishonesty). But don't let them be a scapegoat for the more likely real culprit or bigger fish.

Good call.

Agreed. Also, even if they did get a heads up, hn is not the place to resolve this kind of dispute. Emailing them, or a lawyer sounds more productive.

Shaming companies publicly is fine; shaming individual workers and posting personal data is bad taste to say the least.

I don't know the dollar figure here and I would hope Capchase is a company that will value their reputation over screwing you on that dollar figure, but I would definitely question why you signed an agreement to pay for a product even if that product is not deliverable. One of the primary value adds to the middleman in a transaction is generally that they take on some of the risk.

Please do not name individual workers, they were likely unaware and no longer work there.

Shaming companies is fine, shaming individual workers is not; usually they are powerless, likely here too.

> I was just sold bench.co for my three businesses and the sales person Luc Lewarne made me sign a payment agreement with Capchase.

I'm sorry for the troubles you had, but is it really fair to say the salesman made you sign an agreement?

Wouldn't "you have to pay even if we don't deliver the product you're buying" be considered unconscionable?

Yea. That doesn't sound right. I'd say Op should talk to a lawyer ASAP.

I mean, bad to agree to in the first place, but it doesn't seem like a contract where the other party is non-performant, should be enforceable.

I’m guessing Capchase is a financier of sorts. Capchase pays Bench for the full term up front, then the customer pays Capchase in monthly increments.

So Capchase is delivering their product, the financing. Which is why there would be a clause that the customer still owes Capchase even if Bench closes; Capchase has already paid Bench and wants to be made whole.

This is how I read it as well. I hope OP got a significant discount on Bench service in exchange for this kind of agreement.

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