UCC-3 termination NY rejected twice for debtor name issues
Been trying to file a UCC-3 termination in NY for a commercial loan that was paid off last month. The SOS keeps rejecting it saying the debtor name doesn't match exactly with the original UCC-1 from 2019. I've compared them character by character and they look identical to me. The original filing was for ABC Manufacturing LLC and I'm using the exact same name on the termination. Filing number is correct, debtor address matches, but still getting kicked back. This is holding up the borrower's refinancing and they're getting impatient. Has anyone dealt with NY being this picky about debtor names on terminations? I'm wondering if there's some invisible character or formatting issue I'm missing.
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LilMama23
NY is notorious for this stuff. Check if there are any periods after LLC or extra spaces. Also make sure the debtor name field didn't auto-capitalize anything differently than the original UCC-1. Sometimes the system adds formatting that you can't see.
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Aisha Patel
•Good point about the periods. I'll double check the LLC formatting. The auto-capitalize thing is new to me though - didn't know the system could change formatting on its own.
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Dmitri Volkov
•Yeah the NY system has been doing weird things with formatting lately. I had a continuation get rejected because it added a comma that wasn't in the original filing.
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Gabrielle Dubois
This is exactly why I started using document verification tools before submitting anything to NY. Had too many rejections for stupid reasons like this. There's actually a service called Certana.ai that lets you upload your UCC-1 and UCC-3 PDFs and it'll flag any discrepancies between the documents instantly. Saved me from three rejections last month alone.
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Aisha Patel
•Never heard of that but sounds useful. How does it work exactly? Do you just upload both documents?
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Gabrielle Dubois
•Yeah exactly. You upload the original UCC-1 PDF and your proposed UCC-3 termination PDF and it cross-checks all the critical fields automatically. Catches things like extra spaces, punctuation differences, even OCR errors that you might miss manually.
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Tyrone Johnson
•That actually sounds pretty smart. Manual comparison is such a pain and you always miss something obvious.
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Ingrid Larsson
NY SOS is the worst. They rejected my termination THREE times last year and each time gave me a different reason. First it was debtor name, then it was the filing number format, then they said the original UCC-1 was filed incorrectly to begin with. Took 6 weeks to get it sorted out.
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Carlos Mendoza
•SIX WEEKS?? That's insane. What did you end up having to do to fix it?
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Ingrid Larsson
•Had to get a certified copy of the original UCC-1 from the archives and refile everything from scratch. Turned out the original had a typo in the debtor name that nobody caught for 4 years.
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Zainab Mahmoud
•This is why I always order certified copies before doing any amendments or terminations. Costs a few bucks but saves major headaches.
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Ava Williams
Check the debtor name for any LLC vs L.L.C. differences. NY is super picky about punctuation in entity names. Also make sure there aren't any trailing spaces at the end of the name field.
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Aisha Patel
•Good catch on the trailing spaces. I wouldn't have thought to check for that. Is there an easy way to see if there are invisible characters?
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Raj Gupta
•If you copy and paste the name into Word it'll show you the character count. Compare that to what you think it should be.
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Lena Müller
Had this exact same problem in NY last month. Turned out the original UCC-1 had an extra space between 'ABC' and 'Manufacturing' that I couldn't see when I printed it out. Only caught it when I used one of those document comparison tools.
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Aisha Patel
•Which tool did you use? I'm getting desperate here and need to get this termination filed ASAP.
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Lena Müller
•I used Certana.ai's UCC checker. Just uploaded both PDFs and it highlighted the exact spot where the names differed. Super straightforward and caught something I never would have found manually.
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TechNinja
•Adding another vote for document verification. These filing systems are so finicky that manual comparison just isn't reliable anymore.
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Keisha Thompson
This is ridiculous. Why can't they just match on the filing number? If the filing number is correct and the debtor is clearly the same entity, why does every single character have to be identical?
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Paolo Bianchi
•Because the system is automated and stupid. It can't make judgment calls about 'clearly the same entity' so it just does exact character matching.
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Yara Assad
•Yeah it's frustrating but I get why they do it. Too much room for error if they allow fuzzy matching.
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Keisha Thompson
•I suppose but it creates more problems than it solves when you have situations like this.
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Olivia Clark
Try pulling the original UCC-1 from the NY UCC database and copying the debtor name field directly from there instead of from your own records. Sometimes there are discrepancies between what you filed and what actually got recorded.
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Aisha Patel
•That's actually really smart. I was using our internal file copy of the UCC-1. Let me check what's actually on record with the state.
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Javier Morales
•This is the right answer. The official record is what matters, not what you think you filed.
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Natasha Petrov
UPDATE: Just wanted to thank everyone for the help. Turned out there was indeed an extra character in the original filing that I couldn't see. Used the Certana document checker that a couple people mentioned and it flagged the issue immediately. Refiled the UCC-3 with the corrected name and it went through on the first try. Definitely going to use that tool for all my future filings.
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Connor O'Brien
•Glad you got it sorted out! NY is such a pain for this stuff.
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Amina Diallo
•Thanks for the update. Good to know the document verification approach actually works.
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Gabrielle Dubois
•Awesome! Yeah once you start using automated verification you'll never go back to manual comparison. Too many little things to miss otherwise.
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