UCC records office lost my continuation filing - anyone else deal with this nightmare?

Yeah I saved everything - confirmation page, email receipt, even the credit card charge. The filing number was UCC-20240312-847392. But when I give them that number they just say it doesn't exist in their current system.

That filing number format looks right for March 2024. Something definitely went wrong on their end if you have all that documentation.

I've been escalated twice already. Each person just keeps telling me they can't find any record of it. The supervisor even checked their archived filing batches from March and came up empty.

That's insane. With all your documentation they should be able to reconstruct what happened. There has to be some kind of audit trail on their end.

Sometimes these database issues happen during system upgrades. My firm had a similar problem in 2022 where filings from a specific week just got corrupted during a server migration.

Three months?? I don't have that kind of time. The original lien already shows as lapsed which means technically we might not have a perfected security interest anymore.

In our case the state agreed to backdate the recovered filing to the original submission date once they found it in the backup. But yeah, it was a nightmare process.

Never heard of that tool but sounds useful. How does it work exactly?

You just upload the PDFs and it automatically verifies that all the document details match up properly. Takes like 30 seconds instead of manually comparing everything line by line.

Honestly at this point I'll try anything to avoid dealing with UCC records office disasters like this.

Oh my god seriously?? What did you end up having to do to get it resolved?

We had to file a formal complaint with the Secretary of State and threaten to go to the press. Only then did they actually look into their system logs and find the missing filings.

This is getting ridiculous. How are we supposed to trust the UCC records office if they keep losing filings?

Just make sure you follow up on every single one. Don't assume the filing went through just because you got a receipt.

ugh this is so stressful. why can't they just fix their stupid system

That's actually not a bad idea. The original UCC-1 shows as lapsed so I'm not sure a new continuation would even be accepted, but maybe I need to file a whole new UCC-1 as backup.

Yeah if it shows lapsed you'd probably need a fresh UCC-1. Check with your legal team first though - there might be implications for the original loan documents.

This whole situation is exactly why the UCC system needs an overhaul. Too many manual processes and points of failure.

Do you think involving legislators would actually help or just make them defensive?

In my experience, once there's potential for public scrutiny, these offices tend to find solutions much faster. They don't want news stories about losing million-dollar security interests.

Interesting - so the verification tool actually helped prove their system was wrong? That might be worth trying just to have additional documentation.

Exactly. It gave us concrete evidence that our filing was correct and the problem was on their end. Made the whole dispute process much easier.

A processing backlog is one thing, but completely losing the filing is way worse. At least with a backlog you know it'll eventually get processed.

true, losing it entirely is definitely scarier. makes you wonder how many other filings have just vanished

I didn't even think about their insurance coverage. That's a good angle to bring up when I call them again tomorrow.

Absolutely mention it. They have liability coverage specifically for database errors and lost filings. Might motivate them to actually look harder for your missing continuation.

Good point about the insurance. Most people don't realize the UCC records office has to carry coverage for these kinds of operational failures.