Refund Policy

What this policy covers

USA eServices LLC, doing business as eFiling ("eFiling"), is a private document-filing service. In this policy, "we", "us" and "our" mean USA eServices LLC; "you" means the person who bought the service.

This policy forms part of our Terms of Service, and where the two disagree about a refund, this policy governs. It is published at efiling.us.com/refund-policy and is linked from the footer of our site and from our Terms of Service. Our Terms of Service are at efiling.us.com/terms and our Privacy Policy is at efiling.us.com/privacy.

Two things to know before the detail.

A refund is requested and processed by hand. There is no refund button in your account. You tell us what happened, a person reviews the order, and the money is returned to the card that paid.

What is refundable depends on two facts: what has already been paid out on your behalf, and what work has already been done. The rest of this policy is those two facts, applied service by service.

Terms of Service Privacy Policy

The two amounts on a formation order

A formation order has two parts, and they are refundable on entirely different terms.

Our service fee. What eFiling charges to prepare your documents, submit them, and handle the order. This is our money, and we can return it.

The state's filing fee. What the state charges to record the filing. We collect it with your payment, show it as its own line at checkout and on the order in your portal, and pass it through to the state. We take no margin on it. It is not our money at any point, and once it has been paid out we can return it only if it is returned to us. Most states do not return a filing fee once a document has been submitted, whether they accept the filing or reject it. Where a state does return it, or applies it to a corrected filing, that comes back to you.

If we find that the state's fee was lower than the amount shown when you paid, we refund the difference. If it turns out to be higher, we tell you the amount and ask you before charging anything more.

Some add-ons carry a state or agency fee of their own. Those fees follow this same section: pass-through, no margin, refundable until they are paid out.

The two moments that matter

Two moments change what is refundable, and they are days apart.

When we place your order with our filing partner. We do not file at the state counter ourselves. We place the order with our filing partner, who prepares and submits it, and their charge to us at that moment covers both their fee and the state's filing fee. That is when your state fee leaves us. It is also the day the first registered agent year is charged, if you kept that service — see section 7.

When the document is submitted to the state. That is when our service fee has been earned, because the thing you paid us to do has been done, and it is when the state's fee is with the state.

Your business in the portal moves through four stages: received, in review, filed with the state, and approved. Those stages are a good guide to where your order stands. The exact question a refund turns on is narrower — whether we have paid for your filing yet, and whether it has reached the state. If you are not sure, ask us and we will tell you.

A formation order, stage by stage

Received. We have your order and your payment, and nothing has been paid out. Everything is refundable in full: our service fee, the state's filing fee, and every add-on on the order. A request made at this stage is refunded in full, and we do not ask you for a reason.

In review. We have placed the order with our filing partner and paid for it, and the filing has not yet reached the state.

• Our service fee is refunded in full. The line we draw is submission to the state, not the start of our work.
• The state's filing fee has left us. We ask our filing partner to return it, and if it comes back to us it comes back to you. If it does not, we cannot return it, and we tell you which of the two happened.
• Add-ons not yet performed are refunded in full.

Filed with the state. The document and the fee are with the state.

The state has the filing fee. Most states do not return it, whether they accept the filing or reject it, and we cannot return what is not returned to us. Where your state does return it, or applies it to a corrected filing, that comes back to you.

Our service fee for the formation is not refunded. The filing we were paid to prepare and submit has been prepared and submitted.

What can still be refunded is any part of the order we have not delivered — an add-on not yet done, a recurring service not yet performed. A registered agent year already charged follows section 7; sections 8 and 9 cover the rest.

Approved. The state has recorded your LLC. Nothing about the formation is refundable. Services still running follow sections 7 and 8.

If the state rejects the filing

States reject filings, and it is the ordinary case rather than a rare one. The usual reasons are a name that is already taken or does not meet the state's naming rules, an address the state will not accept, and a detail the state requires that was not on the form.

When a filing is rejected we email you what the state said, correct what needs correcting, and file it again. There is no second service fee from us for re-filing the same order, whatever caused the rejection. The four stages in your portal do not show a rejection; the email is how you hear about it.

The state's fee is the part that can cost twice. Some states apply the original fee to the corrected filing; some charge it again. Where a state charges again, we tell you the amount and ask you before charging it — unless the rejection was our mistake, in which case we pay it. See section 6.

A rejection is not by itself a reason to refund our fee, because the preparation and the submission were done. If you decide not to continue after a rejection, we refund the parts of the order we have not performed and keep what we have.

If information was wrong

We file the information given to us on the application. This section is about who pays for the correction, and nothing more.

If the detail that caused the problem came from the application — a name spelled differently on the state's records, an address that was no longer current, an ownership detail that had changed — we correct it and file again at no service charge. Where the state charges its fee a second time, that fee is yours, and we ask before charging it.

If the mistake is ours — we mistyped what you gave us, used the wrong form, filed in the wrong state, or missed something you told us — we correct it and file again at no service charge, and we pay the state's fee for the second filing. If our mistake cannot be corrected by re-filing, we refund our service fee for that filing in full.

The registered agent service

The registered agent service is selected by default at checkout, so it is on your order unless you remove it before you pay. Nothing is charged for the registered agent at checkout. The service is quoted per year at the price shown on the checkout screen, $199 as of the date at the top of this page, and the first year is charged on the day we place your order with our filing partner, which is several days before the document reaches the state. If you cancel before that day, nothing is charged for it at all.

After the first year, the service renews once a year on the anniversary of that first charge, at the price then in force, and it goes on renewing until you cancel it. We email you thirty days before each renewal with the amount, the date and how to cancel. Our Terms of Service set out the notice we give before a change to the price. A price change applies to you only after we have told you about it, and never to a renewal already charged.

To cancel, open the service in your portal account and press Cancel the renewal. It takes effect at once and stops the next charge. The routes in section 12 also work if you would rather write to us, and a request that reaches us before the renewal date stops that renewal even where a person processes it the next working day. If a renewal is charged after such a request, we refund it in full.

A year already charged is refunded in full if you ask within 30 days of the charge. After 30 days the charge is not refunded, and the service runs to the end of the year it paid for.

A refunded year ends the service. Our filing partner will resign as your registered agent, on the notice your state requires, and you must appoint a replacement before that resignation takes effect — otherwise process served on the former agent may not reach you.

One consequence to plan for. Every state requires an LLC to keep a registered agent at all times. If the service is canceled, refunded, or left unpaid, you must appoint another registered agent with your state. A company without one can lose good standing and can be administratively dissolved by the state.

Terms of Service

Recurring services

Some services recur, billing yearly or monthly rather than once. The price, the interval, and the date of the first charge are shown on the offer before you buy, and on the order in your portal afterwards.

Cancel at any time through any of the three routes in section 12. A cancellation stops the next charge. On its own it does not refund the period already paid for.

A charge already taken is refunded in full if you ask within 30 days of it and we have not yet done the work that charge pays for. Otherwise the service runs to the end of the period the charge paid for, and then stops.

Where a service begins with a free month, that month costs nothing. The first charge falls on the date shown when you bought it, and a cancellation before that date costs nothing at all.

Where the law of the state you live in gives you more than this section does — a prorated refund after a price increase, for example — the law governs. Section 15 says so generally.

Add-ons

An add-on is refunded in full until the work it pays for has been done. Once it has been done, it is not refunded. What "done" means differs by service.

• Federal tax identification number (EIN) service. Refunded in full until the application has been submitted to the IRS. Once it has been submitted it is not refunded, whether or not the number has been assigned yet. The IRS issues these numbers directly at no cost, and our fee is for preparing and submitting the application.
• S corporation election. Refunded in full until the election has been submitted to the IRS. Once submitted, it is not refunded.
• Operating agreement. Refunded in full until we send you the document. Once we have sent it, it is not refunded.
• Any state or agency fee attached to an add-on follows section 2.

We no longer sell the beneficial ownership information report. Where one was bought from us before we withdrew it and has not been filed, it is refunded in full on request.

An add-on bought from the portal is charged to the card already on file for your order, at the price shown on the offer. A declined charge leaves nothing behind and buys nothing.

Processing speed

Standard and Expedited differ by $50, and what the extra buys is a faster submission where the state offers one.

If your state offers no expedited handling at all, or if we do not submit on the business day we said we would for a reason within our control, that $50 is refundable. Ask us and we return it.

A delay caused by the state — its portal, its queue, its schedule — is not within our control, and the difference is not refunded for that. Where a state's own schedule does not allow an expedited submission on the day, we submit as soon as it does.

Business-entity reports

A business-entity report is compiled by hand from public records and sent to you by email. Reports are sold one at a time, or as a bundle covering a set number of reports. Nothing on the report pages charges you on a schedule.

A report is refunded in full at any time before it is sent. Once it has been sent it is not refunded, because it is finished and delivered. If a report is sent while your refund request is open, we treat the request as made before it was sent.

If we cannot produce a report — the public record does not hold enough to compile one, or the source is not available to us — we refund it in full. Where a bundle of reports was bought, we refund each report we could not produce and keep the ones we delivered.

A report that is short because the public record is short is still a report we produced. What is sold is the search and the compilation, not a guaranteed set of findings.

A report may not be used for employment, tenant screening, credit, insurance, or any other purpose governed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Our Terms of Service set out that restriction in the section on business-entity reports, and buying a report does not change it.

Terms of Service

How to ask for a refund

There are three routes.

• Help and support in your portal account. This is the route we prefer, because the request and our answer stay attached to your order.
• support@efiling.us.com.
• By post, to the address at the foot of this page. Post is slower, and we answer it in the order it arrives.

Tell us the name on the order, the email address used at checkout, the business name if there is one, what you are asking us to refund, and what happened. We do not need your card number, and we will not ask for it.

A refund request must reach us within six months of the charge it concerns. That does not affect any right the law gives you that runs longer.

Help and support

How a refund is returned, and how long it takes

We answer a refund request within three business days. If we need something more from you, that answer is where we ask for it.

An approved refund is returned to the card that paid for the order. We do not refund to a different card, to a bank account, or as credit against another service. If the original card has been closed and the return cannot be made to it, we contact you and arrange another route.

We start the refund within three business days of approving it. The credit usually appears on a statement five to ten business days later. What happens after we send it is the bank's and the card network's timing, not ours.

A refund returns what was charged. Where a discount was applied to the order, the refund is of the amount actually paid. We deduct nothing from a refund — no processing fee, no administrative charge.

Before you dispute a charge with your bank

If a charge looks wrong, or a service was not delivered, tell us first. We can usually settle it in a day or two, where a bank dispute takes weeks.

Disputing a charge with your card issuer is your right. Nothing in this policy takes it away, and we do not ask you to give it up. If a dispute is opened, we answer it with the record of the order: what was bought, when, what was filed, and what was delivered.

One practical note. If a dispute is opened while we are already reviewing a refund, we pause that review until the dispute is resolved, so the same charge is not returned to you twice. Opening a dispute costs you nothing under this policy. If the dispute is withdrawn or declined, we resume the review and refund whatever this policy says is refundable.

What this policy is not

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.

This policy describes how we handle refunds. It is not legal or tax advice, and it does not limit any right the law gives you that cannot be waived. Where the law gives you more than this policy does, the law governs.

We may change this policy. A change applies to orders placed after it takes effect and never to an order already placed. The date at the top of this page is the date of the version you are reading.