“Wow”, I thought, “mail already.” I have to admit I felt a little tingle and sense of pride seeing my business name in print on that envelope. Then I opened it. It was a bill! It was an invoice with a due date for my Certificate of Status. There were even columns for late charges.
I had received my Certificate
of Status in that email from the state (I paid extra for it). I thought
maybe I just wasn’t finished with the process yet. I was getting ready
to cut a check $58 and some change, but something didn’t feel quite
right. I thought to myself “I paid extra already, and received the email
copy”. So I took a closer look. In small print near the bottom was “Not
a government agency” and “optional document” that raised a red flag.
So
I looked up the name of the business that sent me the invoice on
SunBiz.org and saw that it was owned by an LLC that appeared to be a
maid service. So I asked a friend who works with business accounts, she
emailed me a link (www.nationalcorp.com)
stating these are called Misleading Solicitations and the site warned
against sending money for documents that you do not need to have. I
scanned, and emailed this invoice to National Corp and they emailed back
saying “... it’s a scam, we were not aware of this one in your state,
thank you for letting us know”.
Well
that same day I was going to cut that check I went to my mailbox and
there were TWO MORE for the same document and different prices for the
service. They had the same “Not a government agency” and “optional
document” on their invoices too.
So
if you are starting a business and you have paid your Dept. of
Corporations for your state and still receive a bill, look closely. If
it is not from a government agency (it can be hard to tell, all three of
mine had some version of state seals on them) or if it says “Optional
Document” it’s probably a scam. Check it out. You have spent and are
going to spend a lot of money for your business, don’t spend it on
something you don’t need.
