Terms of Service
Last updated: 10 September 2026
These Terms govern your use of efiling.us.com and app.efiling.us.com and every service you order through them. eFiling is a private document-filing service run by USA eServices LLC. We are not a law firm and we are not a government agency.
In short
This section is a summary. It does not replace anything below it, and where it is shorter than a section below, the section governs.
eFiling is a private document-filing service run by USA eServices LLC. We are not a law firm and we are not a government agency. You pay our service fee, and separately the state's own filing fee, which we pass on without adding to it.
Three things are set for you and you can see all three before you pay. Registered agent service at $199 a year is selected by default at checkout: you can remove it before you pay, and if you leave it, the first year is charged a few days after checkout, when we place your order with our filing partner, and so is not part of the total you approve at checkout. A box consenting to text messages about your order is selected by default on the application form, and you can clear it. Every checkout stores your card with our payment gateway so that a later purchase you authorize can be charged in one click; there is no checkbox for that, in either direction.
Registered agent service and some other extras renew every year or every month until you cancel them. A refund request has to reach us within six months of the charge it concerns. Disputes are resolved by individual arbitration unless you opt out within 60 days.
Section 3 states what eFiling is not. Section 24 contains a binding arbitration agreement and a class action waiver that change how disputes between you and us are resolved, and explains how to opt out of them.
Who we are, and what this agreement covers
USA eServices LLC, a Florida limited liability company, doing business as eFiling ("eFiling", "we", "us", "our"), is a private document preparation and filing service. Our mailing address is 8950 SW 74th Ct, Ste 2201 F9, Miami, FL 33156, United States. Our email address is support@efiling.us.com.
These Terms govern your use of efiling.us.com and app.efiling.us.com (together, the "Site") and every service you order through them (the "Services").
You accept these Terms by checking the box that says you agree to them, at the authorization step of the application and at checkout. That box is how you accept, and nothing else is. If you do not agree, do not use the Services.
Two other documents form part of this agreement and are incorporated by reference: our Privacy Policy, which describes what we collect and what we do with it, and our Refund Policy, which governs cancellations and refunds. The Privacy Policy is at efiling.us.com/privacy and the Refund Policy is at efiling.us.com/refund-policy. These Terms are at efiling.us.com/terms.
What eFiling is not
We are not a law firm, and we are not attorneys. We are not a substitute for an attorney or a law firm. We cannot give legal advice, opinions, or recommendations about your legal rights, remedies, defenses, options, choice of entity, choice of state, selection of forms, the provisions in a document, or legal strategy. What we do is clerical. You decide what the documents say; we prepare them from your answers, submit them, and follow up. We do not advise you on what to choose. Using the Services does not create an attorney-client relationship. Communications between you and us are covered by our Privacy Policy, but they are not protected by the attorney-client privilege or the attorney work-product doctrine.
We are not an accounting or tax firm. We do not give tax, accounting, or financial advice, and we make no representation about the tax or legal consequences of forming a limited liability company, electing S corporation treatment, obtaining a federal tax identification number, or anything else you buy from us. Consult a licensed professional in your state if you need that advice.
We are not a government agency. eFiling is a private document-filing service. We are not a government agency. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Internal Revenue Service, FinCEN, any Secretary of State, or any other federal, state, or local government agency. We are not a law firm and we cannot give legal advice. Every state accepts formation documents from the public. If you file yourself you pay only the state's fee and nothing to us.
You can file directly with the state yourself. Your state's Secretary of State publishes the form and the current fee on its own website, and will accept your filing directly. Our per-state fee table at efiling.us.com/pricing shows what each state charges. What you pay us is for preparing the paperwork, submitting it, and handling the follow-up on your behalf.
You choose. You select the entity type, the state, the company name, and what the documents say. We do not select any of those for you.
Who may use the Services
You must be at least 18 years old and able to enter into a binding contract.
When you place an order, you tell us the following, and we rely on it:
- you are authorized to form the entity you are asking us to form, and to act for it;
- you are entitled to name every person you name as a member, manager, officer, or organizer, and to give us their information;
- the information you give us is accurate, complete, and current; and
- the filing you are asking for is lawful.
We may refuse an order, or suspend or end an account, where information given to us is false, where the Services are used unlawfully, or where an amount owed to us is unpaid.
The Services we provide
We prepare and submit business formation documents and related filings to the state agency you select, based on the information you give us. Depending on what you order, the Services may also include registered agent service, a federal tax identification number application, an operating agreement, an S corporation election, annual compliance service, bookkeeping, and business-entity reports. What each of those is, and what it costs, is described on the screen where you buy it.
We act at your direction as a filing intermediary. The state or federal agency, not eFiling, decides whether to accept, reject, or require changes to a filing. We do not control what an agency requires, how long it takes, or what it decides.
We use one company to place your filing with the state and, where you buy it, to act as your registered agent. These Terms call it our filing partner. It is Northwest Registered Agent, trading as Corporate Tools. Section 19 lists the other companies we rely on.
The dashboard also lets you add a company you formed without us and keep its state filing calendar there, at no charge. That calendar, the due dates and fees it shows, and the reminders we send about them are information taken from the states' published rules and checked on the date each entry shows. They are not legal or tax advice, the state's own page is the authority on what is due and when, and filing with the state is your act, not ours. We are not responsible for a filing you did not make or for a change in a state's rule that has not yet reached the calendar.
What you pay: our service fee, and the state's filing fee
These are two separate things and we show them separately.
Our service fee is what you pay eFiling for preparing and submitting your filing. For LLC formation it is $149 for Standard processing and $199 for Expedited processing as of the date at the top of this page. We sometimes offer a discount, in which case you pay less. Add-on services have their own prices, listed in section 11.
The state's filing fee is set by the state, not by us. It varies by state and by filing type. It is shown as its own line, with the state named, before you authorize payment. We pass it on in full through our filing partner. We do not add anything to it and we do not keep any part of it.
The price that applies to you is the price shown on the screen where you authorize the purchase, and recorded in your order. Prices on the Site can change; a change never applies to an order already placed. All amounts are in U.S. dollars.
One charge, itemized. At checkout your card is charged once, for a single amount made up of the separate lines shown to you: the state's filing fee, our service fee, and any add-on you selected that is charged today. Two things are deliberately not in that amount: registered agent service, which is charged later (section 10), and any service whose first period is free (section 12). The screen says so before you pay.
Discounts come off our fee only. A discount reduces our service fee and never the state's filing fee, because the state's fee is not ours to discount. A discount can reduce our formation service fee to zero and no further.
If the state's fee turns out to be different. Our per-state figures come from published state schedules and can fall out of date. If we find that the state's actual fee was lower than the amount you were charged, we refund the difference to the card that paid. If it is higher, we contact you and ask before charging anything more.
We do not currently collect sales tax on our service fee. If that changes, any tax will be shown as its own line before you pay. The state's filing fee is a government charge and is not taxed.
Turnaround, state decisions, and rejections
There are two clocks and they are not the same one. The first is how long we take to prepare your filing and submit it. The second is how long the state takes to process what we submit. We control the first. We do not control the second.
Standard processing means we aim to prepare and submit your filing within three business days. Expedited processing means we aim to submit to the state on the next business day, or the same business day where the state allows it. Where a state's own portal or schedule does not allow it, we submit as soon as it does. Both are targets, not guarantees.
Turnaround figures shown anywhere on the Site, including per-state processing times, are estimates. We do not guarantee that any agency will accept or approve a filing, or that a filing will be completed by any particular date. We are not responsible for agency backlogs, portal outages, rejections, name unavailability, or changes to what an agency requires.
If a filing is rejected, we contact you by email, tell you what the state said, and tell you what happens next. The portal shows the stage a formation has reached; it does not show a rejection, so the email is where you will read about one.
- If the rejection is caused by an error we made in preparing or transmitting what you gave us, we correct it and resubmit at no additional service fee. Where the state charges a further fee to resubmit, we pay it.
- If the rejection is caused by the information you gave us, or by a decision the state made, such as refusing a name, correcting and resubmitting may require a new state fee, which is yours to pay. We tell you the amount before anything is charged.
The Refund Policy governs what a rejection or a cancellation means for money already paid.
The information you give us, and what we do with it
You are responsible for the accuracy, completeness, and legality of everything you give us: the company name, the entity type, the state, the addresses, and the names and details of members, managers, officers, and organizers.
We prepare your filing from what you give us. We do not verify it, and we are not obligated to. We do not check whether a name infringes someone's rights, whether an address is valid for a particular purpose, or whether the structure you chose suits your business.
Where you authorize it during the application, we sign the filing in your name and tick the standard declarations the state's form requires — that the information is true, and that the person signing is authorized to sign. We do this only to complete the filing you asked for, and only with the information you gave us.
We never do that on a form carrying a declaration under penalty of perjury. We do not sign, and we do not select certifications on, IRS Form SS-4 or any other document that carries such a declaration. You make that declaration yourself.
A formation in Colorado, the District of Columbia, or Mississippi requires a Social Security number or an ITIN for the responsible party, because those states' filing portals ask for it to verify the filing account. Those three states are the only case in which we ask for it. An application for a federal tax identification number requires the responsible party to have a Social Security number or an ITIN, as section 11 explains, but we do not ask for the number to prepare that application and the EIN service does not transmit it. Our Privacy Policy describes how it is stored and who it is disclosed to.
Where we hold that number, we use it to complete the filing it was collected for, to verify the identity of the person named as the responsible party, and to establish whether that person needs an ITIN rather than a Social Security number. We do not use it for anything else.
What is filed becomes public. Information in a state filing, such as the company name, its addresses, and the names of officers and the registered agent, generally becomes a public record when it is filed. That is a matter of state law, not a choice we make, and neither we nor you can withdraw it from the record afterwards.
Your company's ongoing obligations are yours: annual reports, franchise taxes, licenses, and anything else your state or the federal government requires. That is true whether or not you buy a compliance service from us.
Business names and name checks
The name check in our application, and the search on our business-search pages, look up names in public records through our search partner (businessregistry.com). Those records can lag the live register, so a search can show a name as free that the state has already taken, or the reverse.
A name check is not a name reservation, and it is not a decision. The state decides whether your name is available and whether it complies with that state's naming rules. A search result is information, not an opinion about trademark rights or about anyone else's claim to a name.
If the state refuses your name you will need to choose another. Section 7 explains what that costs.
Registered agent service
Every state requires a company to have a registered agent with a physical address in the state of formation, to receive service of process and official mail.
How it is provided. Registered agent service is provided through our filing partner, Northwest Registered Agent, trading as Corporate Tools. That partner's name and address appear on your public filing and in your portal, and the partner consents to the appointment. Process, government mail, and other official documents addressed to your company are received by the partner and made available to you in the portal or forwarded to the contact details on your account. Keep those contact details current, because that is where they go.
Price and when it is charged. Registered agent service costs $199 per year as of the date at the top of this page. It is offered at checkout and is selected by default. It is not part of the amount you pay at checkout, and you can remove it before you pay. If you leave it selected, the first year is charged to your card on the day we place your order with our filing partner, which is several days before the document reaches the state. The checkout screen says this before you pay.
Renewal. The service renews for successive one-year terms on each anniversary of that first charge, at the then-current price, until you cancel. Section 12 governs renewals, price changes, and how to cancel.
If it lapses. If you cancel, or if a renewal charge is not paid, you are responsible for appointing a replacement registered agent with your state. A company without a registered agent can lose good standing and can be administratively dissolved by the state. Our filing partner may resign as your registered agent, following whatever notice the state's law requires, if the service is cancelled or unpaid. eFiling is not itself your registered agent and is never named as your agent of record.
Add-on services
The following are optional and are bought separately. Prices are the prices in effect on the date at the top of this page. The price that applies to you is the one shown on the screen where you authorize the purchase.
- Federal tax identification number (EIN) preparation and submission: $79
- Operating agreement: $99, sometimes offered at a lower price in the portal
- S corporation election: $199
- Annual compliance service: $175 per year, with any state fee billed separately at cost
- Monthly bookkeeping: $149 per month, with the first month free
- Registered agent service: $199 per year (section 10)
Nothing is added to an order without your action, except registered agent service, which is selected by default at checkout and which you can remove before you pay (section 10). In the portal, each offer shows its price before you buy, and one click authorizes the charge to the card on file. Section 14 explains that authorization.
About the federal tax identification number. The Internal Revenue Service issues a federal tax identification number, also called an Employer Identification Number or EIN, directly and at no cost, and you can apply yourself, free, at IRS.gov/EIN. What you pay us is for preparing and submitting the application on your instruction. We are not the IRS and this is not a government website. The responsible party named on the application must be a natural person, not an entity and not a nominee. The application we prepare requires that person to have a Social Security number or an ITIN; if yours has neither, the IRS's online application cannot be used and the application has to be made on paper, so tell us before you order and we will say whether we can prepare it. You, not we, make the declaration on the application. Where you name us or our filing partner as a third party designee, that authority is limited to answering the IRS's questions about that application and receiving the number once it is assigned, and it ends when the number is assigned. It does not make us your representative before the IRS and gives us no continuing access to your tax records. Representation before the IRS requires Form 2848, and access to your tax records requires Form 8821. We do not provide either.
About the beneficial ownership information report. We do not sell one. FinCEN's rule reaches companies formed under the law of a foreign country that then register to do business in a U.S. state. Every company we form is created under the law of a U.S. state, so our customers do not owe that report, and the owner's own nationality does not change that. We withdrew the service for that reason. If you bought one from us before we withdrew it, your order and your receipt still stand.
About the operating agreement. What we provide is a document prepared from the answers you give, for your own use. It is not legal advice and it is not a substitute for the advice or services of an attorney.
Recurring services
Some services renew automatically. As of the date at the top of this page they are: registered agent service, at $199 per year; annual compliance service, at $175 per year; and monthly bookkeeping, at $149 per month after a first month that costs nothing.
For each of them:
- The service continues until you cancel it. There is no end date.
- The amount and the frequency are the ones shown on the screen where you authorized it, and are repeated in your order record in the portal.
- When the first charge falls is stated before you authorize it. For registered agent service it is the day we place your order with our filing partner. For a service with a free first period it is when that period ends.
- Each later charge goes to the card on file on the anniversary, or on the monthly date, of that first charge.
We keep the record of your authorization of a recurring service for at least three years, or one year after the service ends, whichever is longer.
We email a reminder before each renewal, thirty days ahead, to the address on your account. It names the service, the amount that will be charged and the date it falls, and it tells you how to cancel. The renewal date is also fixed when you buy, shown before you authorize the purchase, and recorded on the order in your portal, so it is a date you can diary.
Price changes. We do not change the price of a recurring service without emailing you first, between 30 and 10 days before the change takes effect, naming the new amount, the date it takes effect, and how to cancel. If you cancel before that date you are not charged the new amount. If we increase the price, we will either obtain your agreement to the new amount before charging it, or give you at least 14 days to cancel and refund on a prorated basis any period already charged at the new price.
How to cancel. Open the service in your portal account and press Cancel the renewal. It stops the next charge immediately, and it is the same medium you bought in. If you would rather not use the portal, ask in Help and support, email support@efiling.us.com from the address on your account, or write to us at the postal address at the foot of this page, and say which service you are cancelling. Cancelling a recurring service stops the charges that follow; the period already paid for runs to its end.
Cancel before the renewal date to avoid the next charge. Cancelling stops future charges. A period you have already paid for runs to the end of that period unless our Refund Policy says otherwise, and the Refund Policy governs any refund of an amount already charged.
Cancelling a service does not cancel the obligation it covered. If you cancel registered agent service you still need a registered agent (section 10). If you cancel a compliance service you still owe your state whatever it requires (section 8).
Business-entity reports
We sell reports about business entities, compiled from public sources. A single report is $29. A bundle covering several reports is $29 for each report in it, and the total is shown before you buy. These are one-time purchases. We do not sell a report subscription.
Reports are prepared and sent by a person, not generated instantly. We aim to send one within one business day. If a report you paid for has not arrived by then, tell us at support@efiling.us.com and we will find out where it is.
Report content is drawn from public records and other public sources, and can name individuals as those records name them, including owners, officers, and the registered agent. Those sources can be incomplete, out of date, or wrong, and we do not independently verify them. A report is general information for business research. It is not a legal opinion, a credit decision, or a verification of anything.
Sample reports shown on the Site are labeled as samples and contain no real records.
Fair Credit Reporting Act. eFiling is not a consumer reporting agency as defined by the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq. Reports provided through this service are for business-entity research and general information only. You may not use a report, or any information in it, in whole or in part, to determine any individual's eligibility for employment; for housing or tenant screening; for credit or insurance; or for any other purpose governed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. You may not resell a report, or information from it, for any of those purposes. If you cannot agree to that, do not buy a report.
Cancellations and refunds
Cancellations and refunds are governed by our Refund Policy, at efiling.us.com/refund-policy, which forms part of this agreement. It states what can be cancelled, at what point, and what is refundable at each stage. It is not restated here.
Three things in it follow from how the money moves, and are worth stating in both places.
Our service fee and the state's filing fee are different money: the first is ours, the second is the state's. Once the state's fee has been paid to the state, the state does not return it to us, so we cannot return it to you.
A refund is requested in Help and support in your portal account, by email to support@efiling.us.com, or by post to the address at the foot of this page, and is reviewed and processed by a person. There is no button in your account that issues one. Approved refunds go back to the card that paid.
A refund request must reach us within six months of the charge it concerns. That deadline does not affect any right the law gives you that runs longer.
Your account, sign-in codes, and passkeys
An account is created for you when you place an order, when you create a free account, or when you give us your name and email address in an application, whether or not you finish it. There is no password.
Sign-in codes. You sign in by asking for a six-digit code, which we email to the address on your account. The code expires, allows a limited number of attempts, and can be used once. Anyone who can read that mailbox can sign in to your account. Keeping the mailbox secure is your responsibility. Tell us at support@efiling.us.com if you believe your email account or your eFiling account has been compromised, and keep the email address on your account current.
Passkeys. You may register one or more passkeys and use them to sign in instead of a code. A passkey signs in on the device that holds it, confirmed by your fingerprint, face, or device lock. You can remove a passkey at any time; removing the last one leaves the emailed code as your way in. If a passkey reports a usage counter that indicates it may have been copied, we delete that credential and you sign in with a code and register a new one.
You are responsible for what happens under your account. You can sign out at any time, which ends that session. We may also end a session and require you to sign in again.
Acceptable use
You agree not to:
- use the Services to make a filing you are not authorized to make, or for any unlawful purpose;
- give us false information, or information about a person whose details you are not entitled to give us;
- use a business-entity report for any purpose governed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (section 13);
- scrape, crawl, or bulk-extract the Site, or place automated orders;
- copy, resell, or redistribute our content or documents except as section 18 allows;
- reverse engineer the Site, probe it for vulnerabilities, or interfere with its operation or with another customer's use of it; or
- present yourself as eFiling, or use our name or marks in a way that suggests we endorse you.
Our intellectual property
The Site and its content, including text, layout, graphics, logos, software, and our document templates, belong to us or to our licensors and are protected by intellectual property law.
We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the Site, and to use any document you purchase from us, for your own business. That license does not let you resell a document or a template, redistribute it, or make it available as part of a competing service.
The information you give us remains yours. You grant us the license we need to use it to provide the Services you ordered, including passing it to the agencies and partners described in these Terms and in the Privacy Policy.
Third parties we rely on
Delivering an order requires other companies. We use:
- our filing partner (Northwest Registered Agent, trading as Corporate Tools), which places your filing with the state and acts as your registered agent if you bought that service;
- our payment processor (Stripe; or Maverick, on the NMI platform, when it stands in for Stripe), which takes and stores card details and processes the charges you authorize;
- an email delivery provider, which sends the messages we send you;
- our search partner (businessregistry.com), which answers name checks and business searches; and
- analytics and advertising services on the Site.
Our Privacy Policy identifies these and describes what each receives.
We are responsible for the Services we agreed to provide. We are not responsible for the acts, omissions, fees, or policies of a government agency, a bank, a card issuer, or a third-party site linked from ours. A link is not an endorsement.
Electronic records and signatures
You consent to transact with us electronically. Clicking a control that says you agree, checking a box, or typing your name where we ask for a signature has the same legal effect as a handwritten signature, under the federal E-SIGN Act and the electronic transactions law of your state.
You consent to receive these Terms, the Privacy Policy, the Refund Policy, order confirmations, receipts, filing updates, price-change notices, and every other disclosure and communication about your account electronically, at the email address on your account and in the portal. Specifically:
- Paper copies. You may ask for a paper copy of any record we have sent you electronically, by emailing support@efiling.us.com or writing to the address at the foot of this page. We do not charge for it.
- Withdrawing consent. You may withdraw your consent to electronic delivery by telling us at support@efiling.us.com. Withdrawal takes effect once we have processed it and does not affect the validity of anything delivered before then. Because the Services are delivered online and account access depends on email, withdrawing consent may mean we can no longer provide some or all of them, in which case we will tell you and stop the affected services.
- Scope. Your consent covers this transaction and every record relating to your account and your orders, for as long as you have an account with us.
- Keeping your address current. Notices we send to the email address on your account are effective when sent. Update that address in the portal, or tell us at support@efiling.us.com, whenever it changes.
- What you need. To receive, view, and keep these records you need a device with an internet connection, a current web browser, an email account that can receive our messages, and the ability to save or print a web page or a PDF. If our requirements change in a way that creates a real risk you could not access or keep the records, we will tell you and ask you to confirm your consent again.
We communicate with you by email. Section 14 describes the text-message consent on the application form and the fact that we send no text messages today.
Disclaimer of warranties
Except for what these Terms expressly promise, the Site and the Services are provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.
We do not warrant that the Site will be uninterrupted or error-free, that any filing will be accepted by any agency, that any filing or report will be completed by a particular date, or that information drawn from public records is complete, current, or accurate.
If you live in North Carolina, this section does not apply to you.
Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent the law allows, eFiling and its owners, officers, employees, and agents are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages. That includes lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, and lost business opportunity, even if we were told they were possible.
To the maximum extent the law allows, there is a cap on what we owe you. The cap is whichever is greater: what you paid us in the twelve months before the event, for the service the claim is about, or $100. Government filing fees do not count towards it, because that money is the state's and never ours.
This limit does not apply to an amount we have expressly agreed to pay under section 7 or under the Refund Policy, including a state fee for a re-filing caused by our error, and it does not apply to our own gross negligence or willful misconduct.
Some states do not allow the exclusion of certain damages or the limitation of certain liability, so parts of this section may not apply to you. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including liability for fraud.
If you live in North Carolina, this section does not apply to you.
Indemnification
You agree to indemnify eFiling and hold it harmless against any third-party claim, and the damages and losses awarded on it, arising out of:
- information you gave us that was inaccurate, incomplete, or unlawful;
- a filing you asked us to make that you were not authorized to make; or
- your use of a business-entity report for a purpose section 13 prohibits.
This section covers third-party claims only. It does not apply to a dispute between you and us, and we may not invoke it against a claim you bring against us. Section 24 governs how a dispute between us is resolved, and each of us pays our own attorneys' fees in it.
Your total liability under this section will not exceed the greater of what you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, for the service the claim relates to, or $100.
This does not apply to anything caused by our own error or misconduct. We will tell you promptly about any claim we ask you to cover, and you may take over the defense with counsel we reasonably approve. You may not settle a claim in a way that admits fault on our part, or that requires anything of us, without our written consent.
If you live in North Carolina, this section does not apply to you.
Binding arbitration and class action waiver
Read this section. It changes how disputes between you and us are resolved, and it limits how you can bring a claim. You can opt out of it, and this section explains how.
Informal resolution first. Before starting an arbitration, you and we agree to try to settle the dispute directly. Send a written description of the dispute, and what you want, to support@efiling.us.com or to the postal address at the foot of this page; we will send ours to the email address on your account. Both of us will negotiate in good faith for 30 days from the date the description is sent. Either of us may start an arbitration after that.
Agreement to arbitrate. Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms, the Services you bought from us, or the Site, which is not resolved informally, will be resolved by binding individual arbitration and not in court. This agreement to arbitrate covers only disputes about the Services, the money paid for them, and the Site. It does not reach unrelated matters. The Federal Arbitration Act governs this section.
How arbitration works. Arbitration is administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, which are published at adr.org. The arbitrator can award you the same individual relief a court could, including any remedy the law provides. A judgment on the award may be entered by any court with jurisdiction. The arbitration is conducted by videoconference, or, if you choose, in person in the county where you live. We pay the AAA's filing, administration, and arbitrator fees to the extent its Consumer Rules require, and we will pay them within the time the rules and applicable law require. Each of us pays our own attorneys' fees unless the law says otherwise.
What you and we give up. You and we each give up the right to have a covered dispute decided in court by a judge or a jury.
Class action waiver. You and we each agree that a covered dispute will be brought only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, collective, consolidated, or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate claims or preside over any form of representative proceeding. If this waiver is held unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim, and only that claim, is severed from the arbitration and proceeds in court; the rest stays in arbitration. If you live in North Carolina, this class action waiver does not apply to you.
Exceptions. Either of us may bring an individual claim in small claims court instead of arbitration, so long as it stays there and stays individual. Either of us may ask a court for an injunction to protect intellectual property. Nothing in this section prevents you from reporting a concern to a government agency, including the Federal Trade Commission or your state attorney general. Nothing in this section waives your right to seek public injunctive relief in a court, in any forum where that right cannot be waived. And under the federal Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act (the "Ending Forced Arbitration Act"), a person alleging conduct covered by that Act may choose not to arbitrate; that choice is theirs and a court decides whether the Act applies.
Who decides what. The arbitrator decides questions about the interpretation and scope of this section and whether a particular dispute is arbitrable. A court, not the arbitrator, decides whether an agreement to arbitrate was formed at all, whether the class action waiver above is enforceable, and whether the Ending Forced Arbitration Act applies.
How to opt out. You may opt out of this entire section, with no effect on any other part of these Terms and no effect on the Services you receive. Email support@efiling.us.com with the subject line "Arbitration Opt-Out", or write to us at the postal address at the foot of this page, and include your name, the email address on your order, and a statement that you are opting out of the arbitration agreement. We must receive it within 60 days of the date you first accepted these Terms. We will confirm in writing that we received it. If you opt out, disputes between us are resolved in court under section 25. If we later make a material change to this section, you get a fresh 60 days from the date the change takes effect.
Nothing here takes away your state's protections. Nothing in this section deprives you of the protection of the consumer laws of the state where you live, to the extent those protections cannot be waived by agreement. If your state's law voids a choice of another state's law or of an out-of-state forum for a consumer claim, that choice does not apply to you.
This section survives the end of this agreement.
Governing law and venue
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Florida, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules, except that the Federal Arbitration Act governs section 24.
For a dispute not subject to arbitration, you and we consent to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the state and federal courts sitting in Miami-Dade County, Florida, except that either of us may bring a small claims action in the county where you live.
If you are a California resident, this does not apply to you. California law governs any claim arising in California, and you may bring it in the county where you live. The choice of Florida law and Florida venue above does not apply to you. The same is true if you live in Tennessee, Wisconsin, Maine, or Iowa and your state's law voids a choice of another state's law or of an out-of-state forum for a consumer claim.
Nothing in this section takes away a consumer protection your own state's law gives you and does not let you waive. If your state's law gives you the right to bring a claim there, you keep it.
Changes to these Terms
We may change these Terms. When we do, we change the date at the top of this page and post the new version.
For a material change we give notice by email to the address on your account, or by a prominent notice on the Site, at least 15 days before it takes effect. A change never applies retroactively to an order already placed.
A material change to section 12, to section 22, to section 23, to section 24, to the class action waiver, or to section 25 requires your fresh acceptance. A material change to section 24 or to the class action waiver also reopens the 60-day opt-out described in section 24.
A change to the price or terms of a recurring service is notified separately and in advance, as section 12 describes.
For a change that is not material, continuing to use the Services after it takes effect means you accept it. A material change takes effect for you only when you accept it.
Termination
You may stop using the Services at any time. Closing an account does not by itself cancel a recurring service; cancel it as section 12 describes.
We may suspend or end your access to the Services for a breach of these Terms, for unlawful use, or for non-payment, with notice where that is practical.
Ending this agreement does not undo a filing already made. A document filed with a state stays filed, and the state's record of it is the state's to keep.
Sections 3, 6, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 17 to 28 survive the end of this agreement, together with anything else that by its nature should.
General
Entire agreement. These Terms, the Privacy Policy, the Refund Policy, and the order screens, authorizations, and confirmations you accepted are the whole agreement between you and us about the Services, and replace anything said before.
Order of precedence. If these Terms and the Refund Policy conflict about a refund, the Refund Policy governs. If these Terms conflict with anything else, these Terms govern.
Severability. If a provision is held unenforceable, it is limited or removed only as far as necessary, and the rest stays in effect.
No waiver. If we do not enforce a provision, that is not a waiver of it.
Assignment. You may not assign this agreement without our written consent. We may assign it in connection with a merger, an acquisition, or a sale of assets, and we will tell you if we do.
Notices. Notices to you are sent to the email address on your account and are effective when sent. Notices to us go to support@efiling.us.com or to the postal address at the foot of this page.
Force majeure. Neither of us is liable for a delay or failure caused by something outside our reasonable control, including a government agency's actions, a state portal outage, a natural event, or a failure of a communications or payment network. This does not excuse an obligation to refund money owed.