Signs an offer is not what it is being described as

Each item below is checkable in minutes and each one has a legitimate explanation available to a company that wants to give it. Ask for the explanation in writing and see what comes back.

Twenty minutes of checks, in order

1. Take the entity name from the contract, not from the website or the email signature, and search it at the Secretary of State where it claims to be organised.
2. Search the same name in your own state's UCC index to see whether it has filed against businesses like yours, and search your own business name while you are there.
3. Where your state registers providers or brokers, check the register. Several states file these registrations through the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System, which has a public lookup.
4. Check the address. A street address that turns out to be a mail drop is not conclusive and is worth knowing.
5. Read the ACH authorisation. Look for what it permits as to amount, frequency and re-presentment, and for language allowing debits for "any amounts owed" rather than the scheduled payment.
6. Read the signature blocks. Count how many separate documents you are being asked to sign and identify each one by name.

What two days actually costs

Urgency is the most effective pressure in this market because owners overestimate what waiting costs.

Illustrative only — if 50,000 of funding would earn your business a 12% annual return, two days of delay costs about 33. Even at three times that, the figure is small enough to write on a napkin. Set it against a fee you had not been told about, a personal guarantee you had not read, or a confession of judgment inside an attachment, and the arithmetic of slowing down is not close.

The only case where two days genuinely costs real money is a deadline outside the funding — a supplier's price, a closing date, a payroll run. If that is your situation, say so, and ask the funder to reissue the same terms in writing with a validity date. A real offer survives the question.

What to do with what you find

Slowing a deal down by two days has a real cost only if you were about to miss payroll, and even then the calculation is worth doing explicitly rather than by reflex. Ask your questions in one email so you have the answers in one place. Send the same three questions to a second funder and compare the responses; the difference between two companies' willingness to put numbers in writing is usually more informative than either answer alone.

If you conclude something is wrong, you can report it to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov and to your state attorney general, whether or not you lost money. Complaints are how patterns become visible.

This is general information, not legal advice. Whether a particular practice breaches a law, and what you could do about it, depends on the facts and on your state — a lawyer licensed in your state is the person to ask.