Security Deposit Demand Letters

Terms of Service

Last updated September 2026 · applies to securitydepositdemandletters.com

The short version

Those five points are the deal. The rest of this page is the same agreement in full. By using this site or buying a letter, you agree to it.

1. Who we are, and what this service is

Security Deposit Demand Letters (“we”, “us”) is a self‑help document preparation service. You give us the facts of your security deposit dispute; we assemble those facts into a demand letter that cites your state's deposit statute; you review and sign it; and, when you pay, we print it and mail it to the recipient you named.

We are not a law firm, we are not your lawyer, and we do not practice law. Using this site, buying a letter, or emailing us creates no attorney–client relationship and no confidential privilege. We do not give legal advice, we do not tell you whether to sue, we do not evaluate the strength of your letter, and we do not represent you before any court or agency. Everything on this site is general legal information about published statutes. See our Disclaimer.

If your situation is complex, high‑value, or already in litigation, talk to a licensed attorney in your state. We will not be offended.

If you are in Texas: under Tex. Gov't Code § 81.101(c), what we offer is self‑help material and is not a substitute for the advice of an attorney.

2. Who may use it

You may use this service if you are at least 18, you are in the United States, and the deposit dispute is your own, or you have actual authority from the tenant to act for them, in which case you are responsible for everything these terms say the tenant is responsible for. One letter covers one tenancy and one recipient.

3. How the service works

  1. You answer questions about the tenancy, the deposit, and what you did or did not get back. You may optionally have your lease read on your own device to fill some of it in for you; see section 8.
  2. We build your letter and show it to you in full, free, before any payment.
  3. You sign it electronically, also free. Signing sends nothing and charges nothing.
  4. You pay. Payment is what causes the letter to be printed and mailed. Until you pay, your landlord hears nothing from us.
  5. We print and mail it by USPS Certified Mail with return receipt. Orders placed Monday to Friday before 11am Eastern go out that day from our Santa Ana, California facility. After 11am it mails the next business day. After 11am on a Friday that means Monday, or Tuesday when Monday is a federal holiday.
  6. We email you your signed PDF, your tracking number when the envelope is scanned, a delivery confirmation when USPS records delivery, and a note when the deadline in your letter passes. Your letter tracker shows the same status.

4. Your electronic signature, and what it authorizes

Before you pay, you sign the letter and an authorization block. By signing you confirm three things: that you are the person named, that the facts in the letter are true to the best of your knowledge, and that you authorize us to prepare that letter and mail it on your behalf to the recipient shown.

Consent to sign electronically. You agree that your electronic signature has the same legal effect as a handwritten one under the federal E‑SIGN Act and your state's Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, and that we may deliver everything about your order electronically. To sign and read what we send you, you need a device with a current browser, an email address you can access, and the ability to open a PDF. You may withdraw consent, or ask for a paper copy of anything we sent you, by emailing support@securitydepositdemandletters.com. But we cannot deliver this service without electronic signature, so withdrawing consent before mailing ends the order and you are refunded in full.

What we record. Your signature is stored with the date and time, the IP address and browser you signed from, and a cryptographic hash of the exact letter text you signed. All of it prints on the last page of your own PDF, so you hold the same evidence we do. Our Privacy Policy explains it in detail.

The authorization is limited. It lets us prepare and mail that one letter. It is not a power of attorney, it does not let us negotiate, settle, collect, sign anything else, or speak for you to anyone.

5. What you are responsible for

The facts are yours. We do not investigate your dispute, contact your landlord to check anything, review your lease for accuracy, or verify names, addresses, dates or amounts. We assemble what you tell us. If a name is misspelled, an amount is wrong, or the letter goes to an old address, that follows from the information you gave us, which is exactly why we show you the whole letter and make you sign it before anything is sent. Read it before you sign it.

Knowingly making false statements to support a demand for money can carry real legal consequences for you. Do not do it.

Your deadlines are yours. Statutes of limitations and other legal deadlines apply to your claim, they run whether or not you use us, and we do not track or manage them for you. If a deadline is close, do not rely on our mailing schedule. Talk to an attorney.

6. What we do not do

We do not give legal advice or recommend a course of action. We do not file anything with a court, appear for you, or prepare court forms. We do not negotiate with, telephone, or otherwise deal with your landlord. We do not collect the money for you, and we are not a debt collector acting for a creditor. We do not report anyone to a credit bureau. We do not review your lease as a lawyer would.

7. Prices, payment and taxes

The letter is $20, one time, and includes preparation, printing, envelope, USPS Certified Mail postage with tracking, and same‑business‑day mailing when you approve it before 11am Eastern on a business day. There is no upgrade to buy, no subscription, no recurring charge and no hidden fee. An optional tip is offered once, after you have signed, and nothing changes if you skip it.

Payment is processed by Stripe on Stripe's own checkout page. We never receive your card number. Prices are in US dollars. If sales tax applies where you are, it is added at checkout.

Same‑business‑day and next‑business‑day refer to when we hand the envelope to USPS, not to when it arrives. Delivery time is USPS's, not ours.

8. The lease reader

You may point the form at a lease PDF to fill some fields in automatically. That file is read on your own device, inside your browser. It is never uploaded to us and we never see it. Because we never see it, we cannot check that what it found is right. The values it fills in are a starting point, and you are responsible for correcting them before you sign.

9. Refunds and cancellation

Our Refund Policy is part of these terms. In short: before your letter is mailed, a full refund, no questions. Email us, and note that an order signed before 11am Eastern on a business day mails that same day. Once it is mailed it cannot be recalled, so the fee is not refundable at that point. Two exceptions survive mailing. If we introduced an error (wrong statute, wrong deadline, a formatting failure, the wrong recipient because of our mistake), we correct and re‑mail it at our cost. And if an add‑on you paid for did not happen, we refund that add‑on. Refunds go back to the original card and typically appear within 5 to 10 business days.

We do not refund because a landlord ignored the letter, refused to pay, or responded badly. That is the outcome, and we do not sell the outcome.

10. Signed letters that were never paid for

If you sign and do not pay, nothing is printed and nothing is sent. Your signed letter just waits. We will email you about it at most twice; ignore those emails and nothing happens. You can come back and send it later, or ask us to delete it.

11. Unfinished drafts

If you start a letter and never sign or pay for it, we delete it automatically after 30 days. You can ask us to delete it sooner.

12. Your letter link

We email you a private link to your letter tracker and signed PDF. It is long and unguessable, but it is the only key: anyone who has that link can read that letter. Treat it like a password, do not post it publicly, and tell us if you think it has been exposed and we will invalidate it.

13. Emails from us

When you buy a letter we send you transactional email about it: your PDF, tracking, delivery confirmation, and deadline notices. Those are part of what you bought and are not marketing, so they continue for the life of your letter. Anything else, you can opt out of at any time.

14. Acceptable use

Do not use this service to send a demand you know to be false, to threaten or harass anyone, to demand money you are not owed, or for any unlawful purpose. Do not scrape, mirror, or automate ordering against this site, attempt to reach other customers' letters or letter trackers, probe or interfere with our systems, or place orders on someone's behalf without their authority. We rate‑limit drafts per connection to keep the service usable for everyone. We may refuse or cancel any order, with a full refund, if we believe it breaks this section. We are not obliged to be the delivery mechanism for something abusive.

15. Who owns what

The site, its wording, design, letter templates and statutory research are ours and are protected by copyright. You may not copy them to build a competing service. Your finished letter is yours: you can keep it, print it, forward it, use it as evidence, and show it to your own attorney, without restriction.

16. No guarantee of outcome

We guarantee that we prepare, print and mail the letter you approved. We do not and cannot guarantee that your landlord answers it, returns your deposit, pays interest, or acts within any deadline, or that a court would agree with anything in the letter.

Where this site describes what a statute allows, for example “up to 3× the deposit”, that is a ceiling a court may award on the right facts, not a prediction and not a promise. Statutes are amended, carry exceptions, and are interpreted by judges. Results vary.

17. The service is provided as it is

To the maximum extent the law allows, the site and the service 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 is uninterrupted or error‑free, or that the legal information on it is complete or current for your specific situation. Some states do not allow certain warranty exclusions, in which case those exclusions do not apply to you.

18. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent the law allows, our total liability to you for any claim connected to this service is limited to the amount you actually paid us for the letter the claim concerns. We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost deposits, lost claims, lost recovery, or a missed legal deadline, including where a letter is delayed or lost by USPS or is delivered to an address you gave us.

Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for our own fraud. Some states do not allow the exclusion of incidental or consequential damages, in which case those exclusions do not apply to you and our liability is limited to the smallest amount the law permits.

19. Your indemnity

You agree to cover us for claims, losses and reasonable legal costs arising from information you gave us that was false, from a letter sent on someone's behalf without their authority, or from your use of this service in breach of section 14. This does not apply to anything caused by our own error or misconduct.

20. Services we rely on

Providing this service means using Stripe (payment), Cloudflare (hosting), Resend (email), Google (address suggestions), USPS (mail and tracking), and a print and mail operation. We choose them carefully, but we do not control them and we are not responsible for their failures, outages, or delivery times. Our Privacy Policy sets out exactly what each one receives.

21. Changes

We may change the service or these terms. If we change these terms we update this page and the date at the top; if a change is significant we will say so plainly here and email customers with an active case. The terms that govern your order are the ones in force when you paid. A later change does not apply backwards to a letter already sent.

22. Ending the relationship

You can stop using the service at any time. We may decline or cancel an order under section 14, or if we cannot lawfully prepare what you are asking for. In either case you get a full refund of anything you paid. Sections 5, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 23 survive.

23. Disputes, arbitration and governing law

Read this section. It affects how any dispute between you and us gets decided, it limits class actions, and it gives you 30 days to opt out of arbitration without any effect on your order.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, where the service is operated, without regard to its conflict‑of‑laws rules. Nothing in this section takes away a right or remedy that the consumer‑protection law of your own state gives you and does not let you waive.

23.1 Talk to us first

Before starting arbitration or a lawsuit, email support@securitydepositdemandletters.com with what happened and what you want. We will respond within 30 days, and neither of us may begin a formal proceeding until those 30 days have passed. Most problems with a $20 letter are fixable in one email, and we would much rather fix it than argue about it.

23.2 Agreement to arbitrate

If we cannot resolve it that way, you and we agree that any dispute arising out of or relating to this service or these terms will be resolved by binding individual arbitration rather than in court, except for the carve‑outs in 23.3. This agreement is governed by the Federal Arbitration Act.

Arbitration is run by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, which cap what a consumer pays and are published at adr.org/consumer. It is less formal than court: an arbitrator, not a judge or jury, decides, and the decision can be entered as a judgment. The arbitrator can award the same individual relief a court could. We will pay all AAA filing, administration and arbitrator fees for any claim of $10,000 or less that is not frivolous, and we will not seek our attorney’s fees from you unless the arbitrator finds your claim frivolous. Arbitration takes place in the county where you live, or by phone, video or documents only, at your choice.

23.3 What arbitration does not cover

Either of us may still: bring a claim in small claims court, including in the county where you live, for any dispute that qualifies there; seek an injunction in court to stop misuse of intellectual property; and report anything to a government agency, which you may always do regardless of this section.

23.4 Individual claims only

Claims are brought in your individual capacity, not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, collective, consolidated or representative action, and the arbitrator may not consolidate claims or preside over any representative proceeding. If this paragraph is found unenforceable as to a particular claim or request for relief, that claim or request is severed and heard in court while the rest stays in arbitration.

23.5 Your 30-day opt-out

You can reject this arbitration agreement. Email support@securitydepositdemandletters.com with the subject line “Arbitration opt‑out” and your name and order email, within 30 days of your first order. That is all it takes. Opting out has no effect on your order, your price, or anything else in these terms. Disputes then go to the courts described in 23.6, and section 23.4 no longer applies to you.

23.6 If arbitration does not apply

Where this section does not apply (because you opted out, because a claim falls in 23.3, or because a court or the law of your state holds that arbitration or the class waiver cannot be enforced against you) the dispute goes to a court of competent jurisdiction, and you keep every procedural right you would otherwise have had, including trial by jury where available.

Sections 23.2, 23.4 and 23.5 do not apply to the extent applicable law prohibits them, and the remainder of this section still stands.

24. The rest

If any part of these terms is unenforceable, the rest still stands and that part is narrowed to what is enforceable. Our not enforcing something once does not waive it. You may not transfer your order to someone else; we may transfer these terms as part of a sale or merger of the business, on the same terms. Neither of us is responsible for delays caused by events outside reasonable control, and if such an event stops us from mailing your letter, you get a refund. These terms, along with the Privacy Policy, Refund Policy and Disclaimer, are the whole agreement between us about this service.

25. Contact

Security Deposit Demand Letters
Support and refunds: support@securitydepositdemandletters.com
Privacy: privacy@securitydepositdemandletters.com