What Is TX UCC Statement Service: The Mailer and What to Do

TX UCC Statement Service is a private solicitation company, not a government agency, and the $90 mailer it sends to Texas business owners is not a bill you owe. The Texas Attorney General has issued a consumer alert warning that these notices are designed to look like official government correspondence even though the sender has no connection to any state office.¹ You can throw the mailer away. Nothing bad happens if you ignore it.

What the Mailer Actually Is

TX UCC Statement Service is a private business that watches public UCC filing records and sends solicitations to the debtors named in those filings. The pitch is an offer to mail you a copy of a UCC-1 or UCC-3 filing linked to your business for $90. According to the Attorney General’s office, the solicitation “is designed to mislead Texans to believe that it was sent by a government agency and that the $90 is already due.”¹ The mailer does include a disclaimer somewhere on the page stating the sender is not a government agency, but the AG found that disclosure was not clear or conspicuous enough to overcome the misleading look of the document.

Nothing about the mailing is a legal demand. There is no overdue balance, no filing deadline tied to your business, and no penalty if you set it aside. The $90 is simply the company’s price for retrieving a public document on your behalf. You can do the same retrieval yourself for a few dollars.

What to Do If You Received One

The safest response is to discard the mailer. You are under no obligation to pay, respond, or contact the company.

If seeing your business name on the envelope makes you want to confirm that nothing is actually wrong, go directly to the Texas Secretary of State, which is the only official filing office for UCC records in the state.² A basic web inquiry on the state portal costs $1 and will show you whether any UCC filings exist against your business. That tells you everything the $90 mailer is offering to tell you, for roughly one percent of the price.

You can also report the solicitation. The Texas Attorney General’s consumer protection division tracks complaints about companies that imitate government notices, and the alert about this type of mailer came from exactly those kinds of consumer reports.¹

Getting the Same Document from the State

If there is a real reason you want the UCC filing itself, the Texas Secretary of State offers it at a small fraction of what the solicitation charges. Current fees:³

Web inquiry (basic filing information): $1 per search
Plain copies of filed documents: $0.10 per page
Certified copies: $1 per page plus $15 per certificate
Debtor or secured party search certificate: $15

A basic web inquiry is enough for most owners who just want to confirm what is on file. The certified search certificate is the version lenders and attorneys expect to see during a business sale, refinancing, or similar transaction. Even the certified option is well under the $90 the solicitation charges.

Filings and searches run through the SOS UCC Portal, the state’s online platform. As of August 29, 2025, the Secretary of State no longer accepts paper UCC filings, so the portal is now the point of entry for both filing and most lookups.² You need an SOS Portal account to use it.

How to Recognize Similar Mailers

TX UCC Statement Service is one example of a broader pattern. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office keeps a running list of comparable solicitations aimed at trademark holders and notes that these notices “can be challenging to identify” because the sender names sound like government agencies.⁴ The same approach shows up around business formation filings, annual reports, and other public records.

A few things give these mailers away:

The document reads like an invoice or past-due notice rather than a product offer. Real notices from the Texas Secretary of State reference a specific statute or filing number and come from an sos.state.tx.us address.
The amount is dramatically higher than the actual state fee. Standard UCC filings in Texas cost $5 and searches start at $1, so a $90 charge for anything related to a UCC record is a red flag.³
There is fine print somewhere stating the sender is not affiliated with any government agency. Actual government notices do not need that disclaimer.

When any one of those appears, treat the mailing as a sales pitch rather than a legal document. If you want to verify, go directly to the agency that would have sent the real notice.

If the UCC Filing Itself Looks Wrong

A separate problem, worth flagging because it gets confused with the solicitation issue: some people file entirely fabricated UCC-1 statements against someone else’s name or business as a form of harassment or fraud. That is different from a $90 mailer about a real filing. Under Section 405.022 of the Texas Government Code, the Secretary of State can refer suspicious filings to the Attorney General to determine whether the document is fraudulent before it enters the public record.² If you check the state portal and find a UCC filing against your business that corresponds to no real debt, contact the Secretary of State’s UCC section and the Attorney General’s office. A bogus lien can affect borrowing and asset sales until it is removed.

For a routine mailer from TX UCC Statement Service with no underlying problem, no action is needed. The $90 charge is not a government fee, not a legal obligation, and not something you need to pay to protect your business.

1
Texas Attorney General. Office of the Attorney General Issues Consumer Alert Warning Texans About Companies That May Appear to Be Government
2
Office of the Texas Secretary of State. About the Uniform Commercial Code
3
Office of the Texas Secretary of State. Uniform Commercial Code – Fees
4
United States Patent and Trademark Office. Examples of Fraudulent or Misleading Solicitations