Terms of service

SurplusNorth is for businesses in the United States and their team members, all at least 18 years old. It is not for personal, family or household use. You must give accurate information when you sign up and keep it up to date.

SurplusNorth provides surplus funds leads compiled from public records, a CRM, browser calling and texting, agreements with electronic signature, a client portal, a time clock and related tools. Features depend on your plan.

SurplusNorth is software and data. Surploom LLC is not a law firm, does not give legal advice, and is not a party to your agreements with claimants. Unless you choose Full Service or buy Managed Recovery, we do not act for you in any way, including as your agent or finder. We may improve, change or remove features; if a change takes away a core feature you pay for, we will tell you in advance.

Full Service and Managed Recovery, where our people work for your business, are also covered by our service terms, which you accept separately each time you choose one of them.

• You are responsible for everything done under your company’s account, for the people you invite, and for keeping passwords and 2-step verification devices safe. Owners and admins must use 2-step verification.
• Each person may have one account and belong to one company at a time. Accounts may not be shared, and creating extra accounts (for example with email aliases) to get more seats, offers or discounts is not allowed.
• Tell us right away at hello@surploom.com if you think your account was misused.

• Pro, Premium and Full Service are subscriptions billed monthly or yearly in advance, in US dollars, to the card you give Stripe. They renew automatically for the same period until you cancel. Prices are shown before you pay.
• Each plan includes a number of team seats; the account owner is free. Extra members are added as extra seats at the price shown in SurplusNorth and are billed (or credited) automatically, prorated, as members join or leave.
• Upgrades, downgrades and switches between monthly and yearly take effect right away. Stripe credits the unused part of the old plan and charges the difference on your next invoice.
• Promotional offers (such as the founding offer) apply only as described when you sign up, for the period stated, and cannot be combined or transferred.
• We may change plan prices. We will give you at least 30 days’ notice by email and in SurplusNorth; new prices apply from your next renewal after that notice. If you do not agree, cancel before then.
• Prices do not include taxes. Where tax applies, it is added to your invoice.

Card payments are processed by Stripe, Inc. You enter your card on Stripe’s secure page; Stripe stores it and charges it. SurplusNorth never sees or stores your full card number or security code, only the card brand, last four digits and expiry date so you can tell which card is on file. Stripe’s own terms and privacy policy also apply to payments.

You authorize us, through Stripe, to charge your card for your plan at each renewal, for extra seats, and for the lead packs and balance top-ups you choose. If a payment fails, Stripe tries again over several days. While a plan payment is unpaid, your team’s access to the app is paused (billing and support stay available) until the card is updated.

Use only a card you are authorized to use. To prevent fraud, sign-up may ask you to complete a short check that you are a person, and Stripe screens payments for fraud.

Chargebacks. If you think a charge is wrong, contact us first at hello@surploom.com; we fix billing errors quickly (see the refund policy). If a payment is disputed with your bank, or your card issuer reports it as fraud, we pause your company’s account right away, including lead downloads, until the dispute is resolved. Disputing a charge for leads or a plan you received is a breach of these terms: we will contest it, and you remain responsible for the amount and for the dispute fees we are charged. Withdrawing a dispute that was made by mistake lifts the pause.

You can cancel your plan at any time in Settings, Plan. Cancelling stops the next renewal; your team keeps full access until the end of the period already paid, and you can undo the cancellation until then. After that, the app is closed until you choose a plan again.

Plan fees already paid are not refunded, including for unused time on monthly or yearly plans, except as our refund policy says or the law requires. Your data stays saved after the plan ends, so you can come back; you can ask us to export or delete it (see “Your data”).

• A lead pack is a CSV file of vetted leads matching the states and counties you choose, priced as shown before you buy. You can download each pack again at any time while your account exists. You never receive the same lead in two packs.
• Leads are licensed to you for your own surplus funds recovery business. You may not resell, publish, share or give leads to anyone outside your company, or use them for any other purpose.
• Downloaded files contain a few seed records: made-up entries, unique to your purchase, that let us trace a file shared outside your company. They are extra rows that do not count toward the number of leads you paid for. Do not call or write to them; if you remove them, the license above still applies.
• Lead packs are delivered as soon as they are paid for and are not refundable, except as our refund policy says or the law requires.

Calls, texts, phone numbers, call recording and texting registration fees are paid from a prepaid usage balance at the prices shown in SurplusNorth, which may change with notice in SurplusNorth. You add funds by card. Calls and texts stop when the balance is empty; incoming calls still ring. The balance is not a bank account, does not earn interest, cannot be transferred and is not refundable except where the law requires otherwise. Registration fees for a texting registration that carriers reject are handled as described in SurplusNorth at the time you submit.

• Each person, and each company, can add a limited number of leads to the CRM per day; the limits are shown in SurplusNorth when reached.
• SurplusNorth records when team members open, copy, add or download clients’ contact details. Unusual activity (for example far more than a working day needs, or at night) is reported to your company’s admins, and activity that looks like copying the lead pool is reported to us.
• You are responsible for what your team members do with leads, including after they leave your company. We recommend confidentiality and non-solicitation agreements with everyone who uses SurplusNorth.

Leads are compiled from lists that counties, courts and state agencies publish, and from other public records and contact lookup services. Records can be incomplete, out of date or wrong, and amounts, owners, deadlines and rules can change. You must verify every claim with the official source before you contact anyone about it, sign an agreement or file a claim. We do not guarantee that any claim is valid, available or will be paid.

You are responsible for every call and text your team makes through SurplusNorth, and you agree to follow all laws that apply, including:

• If your calls are telemarketing under the Telemarketing Sales Rule, you must have your own National Do Not Call Registry subscription (Subscription Account Number) and keep your own internal do-not-call list.

• The Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, the National Do Not Call Registry, internal do-not-call requests and state calling-hour and telemarketing rules.
• Carrier messaging rules: text only people who gave consent, keep proof of that consent, honor STOP right away, and identify your business in your messages.
• Call recording laws. Some states require every person on the call to agree before it is recorded; if you turn recording on, you must tell callers and get consent where required.
• State laws on surplus funds recovery, including finder registration or certification, fee caps, waiting periods, required contract wording and limits on contacting owners.

To help, SurplusNorth by default stops calls outside calling hours in the claimant’s time zone (an admin can place one call anyway with a written reason, which is recorded), blocks numbers on the Do Not Call lists we have loaded and numbers marked do-not-call or opted out, and, on recorded calls with people in states that require everyone’s consent to recording, plays “This call may be recorded” to the other person first. These safeguards depend on the information we have, can be incomplete or wrong, and do not replace your own compliance.

Texting requires an approved US texting registration (A2P 10DLC) for your business, which we submit for you with the details you give us. Carriers decide whether to approve it and can take days or weeks. Message frequency varies by your use; message and data rates may apply to recipients, who can reply STOP to opt out or HELP for help.

Before you contact a claimant, send an agreement or file a claim, you must check, for that state and that case:

• the most you may charge (fee caps), and whether any fee is allowed at all;
• whether you or your company must be licensed, registered, certified or bonded (for example as a finder, locator or private investigator);
• waiting periods before you may contact owners or sign agreements, required contract wording, cancellation rights and notarization;
• who the funds may be paid to, and whether assignments or powers of attorney are allowed.

The state rules, fee percentages and deadlines shown in SurplusNorth (Golden Rules) are a starting point we compile from public sources. They can be incomplete, out of date or wrong, and they are not legal advice. SurplusNorth does not stop you from sending an agreement with a fee above a state’s cap or in a state where you are not licensed: making sure each agreement is lawful is entirely your responsibility. Ask a licensed attorney in the state when you are unsure.

You can send agreements to claimants to sign electronically. You decide what your agreements say and are responsible for making sure they meet the laws of each state where you work. SurplusNorth records each signature with the signer’s consent, time and details and produces a signed PDF and certificate, under the federal ESIGN Act and state electronic transaction laws. Some documents must be notarized or signed on paper; it is your job to know which.

Only the claimant (or their legal representative) may sign. Never sign or submit a document for a claimant. If an agreement is signed from the same internet connection a team member uses, SurplusNorth flags it to your admins.

When a claim is paid, you record who the county or court paid. Surplus should be paid to the claimant (or an attorney trust account) and your fee billed to them afterward, unless the law and your agreement allow otherwise. Payouts to your company or someone else, and fees above the signed percentage, are flagged to your admins.

• Send spam, text purchased or scraped lists, or harass or mislead anyone.
• Sign or submit anything for a claimant, or have funds paid to anyone other than the person entitled to them, unless the law and a valid agreement allow it.
• Use a card you are not authorized to use, or dispute charges you owe.
• Pretend to be a government agency, court or someone you are not.
• Copy, scrape, resell or redistribute SurplusNorth’s leads or software, or use them to build a competing product.
• Break or test the security of SurplusNorth, reach other companies’ data, or overload the service.
• Use SurplusNorth for anything unlawful.

We may pause calling or texting right away to protect recipients, carriers or the service (for example after spam or opt-out complaints). We pause an account right away when a payment is disputed or reported as fraud (see “Payments by card”), and may limit or pause lead access when activity looks like copying or sharing the lead list. We may suspend or close an account for a serious or repeated breach of these terms, unlawful use or unpaid fees. Where we reasonably can, we will tell you first and give you a chance to fix the problem.

You can reach us from Help & support in the app or from our contact page. To answer a ticket or fix a problem, authorized Surploom LLC support staff may open your company’s account and see it the way one of your team members does.

• Access is only for support, security or to meet a legal obligation.
• It is read-only unless a change is needed to fix the problem, and each session ends automatically within an hour.
• Support never calls or texts your claimants, sends or signs agreements, spends your balance or changes anyone’s password or 2-step verification.
• Every session is listed under Help & support and in your audit log, with who opened it, when and why.

You own the content you put into SurplusNorth: notes, documents, agreements, call and text history and your own contacts. You give us permission to host and process it only to provide, secure and support the service, as described in our privacy policy. You can ask us for an export of your data or to delete it at any time; we will do so within 30 days, except records we must keep by law (such as payment, consent and opt-out records).

SurplusNorth is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. We do not promise that the service will be uninterrupted or error-free, that leads are accurate or complete, that any claim will be paid, or that a carrier will approve a texting registration.

To the extent the law allows, Surploom LLC is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, claims or data, and its total liability for any claim about SurplusNorth is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose.

You will defend and hold Surploom LLC harmless from claims, fines and costs that come from your calls, texts, agreements, fees, claims work or other use of SurplusNorth that breaks these terms or the law, including claims under the TCPA, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, state finder and fee-cap laws, and claims by claimants about your agreements or the funds you recovered.

If you have a problem with SurplusNorth, contact us first at hello@surploom.com; most issues are solved quickly that way. If we cannot solve it within 30 days, either of us may bring a claim. These terms are governed by the laws of the state in which Surploom LLC is organized and by federal law, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules.

We may update these terms. We will post the new version here with a new effective date and, for important changes, tell account owners by email at least 30 days before they apply. Continuing to use SurplusNorth after that means you accept them. Questions: Surploom LLC, hello@surploom.com.