If you’ve recently formed a business in North Carolina, watch your mailbox. New business creators are frequent targets of official-looking mail that isn’t from the government at all.
What these mailings look like
The NC Secretary of State’s Office has issued repeated warnings (see their alerts and the ABC11 Misleading Mailing segment) about deceptive solicitations that cite statutory requirements or imply you have more steps to take to stay “compliant” as a new company. Most of what they’re pushing is false or unnecessary.
These letters typically offer to file or retrieve documents for a fee well above what the state actually charges — sometimes for filings that aren’t even required in the first place. By law, the solicitor has to disclose that they’re not a government entity, but that disclaimer is often buried in fine print you’d have to go looking for.
Good to know, straight from the Secretary of State’s Office
- Once you submit your Articles or Registration and get a certified filed document back, there’s nothing else to do until you make changes to that filing or your Annual Report comes due.
- Certificates of Existence are ordered directly from sosnc.gov for $10, plus a $3 electronic transaction fee — and you print it yourself. You’d only need one for a specific reason, like registering to do business in another state.
- Meeting minutes are kept in your own business records at your principal office. They don’t get filed with the Secretary of State.
- Annual Reports can be filed directly with the NC Secretary of State’s Office online. You don’t need a third party to do it — that’s always your choice, not a requirement.
Bottom line
Before you pay anyone who mails you a notice about your LLC, pause and verify it directly with the state. If something arrives that claims to be time-sensitive or official, a two-minute check on sosnc.gov can save you from an unnecessary fee.
If you’d rather not have to sort real notices from junk mail at all, NC LLC Agents handles registered agent service and compliance filings for you — at transparent, published pricing.