Sending it so it counts as served
Proof of delivery is worth nothing the week you send a letter and decides arguments months later. This is what each method proves, and what it does not.
Why bother
The receipt is for a conversation you are not having yet
Nobody disputes receipt of a letter in the week it arrives. The dispute comes later, in front of a third party, and it takes one form: we never got that.
A licensing board, a surety, a judge and an insurer all have to decide what a business knew and when. A mailing record answers that in a line. Without one, the answer is your account against theirs, and neither of you has anything to show.1
Five ways to send it
What each one actually proves
Certified mail with a return receipt
That an item was mailed on a date, and that somebody at the address signed for it. The signature comes back to you as a record you hold.
The limit. It proves an envelope arrived. It does not prove what was inside it, which is why the copy you keep matters as much as the receipt.
Registered mail
The same, with a tracked chain of custody at every handover. It is the slower, more heavily documented option.
The limit. The extra documentation is about the item's security in transit. For a letter, it answers a question nobody is asking.
A courier with a signature
Delivery to an address on a date, with a signature, and a scan of it where the carrier captures one. Couriers hold this record and will produce it on request.
The limit. Records are kept for a period the carrier sets. Download the proof when it is generated rather than assuming it will still be there later.
Email
That you sent it, and nothing else, unless the recipient replies. A reply quoting your message is the strongest thing on this page, because it proves receipt and content at once.
The limit. A read receipt is a request the recipient's software may decline, and most decline it silently. An unanswered email proves you typed.
Hand delivery
Nothing on its own. Handed over with a dated copy the recipient signs, it proves as much as certified mail and costs nothing.
The limit. Without a signature it is your word about a conversation, which is the position the letter existed to get you out of.
Two different bars
A letter is sent. A court filing is served.
Service is a procedural requirement attached to a court case. A court sets who may hand the papers over, what proof it will accept, and by when. Those rules apply to a filing and to nothing else.
A demand letter is correspondence. No court has any rule about how it travels, and the only question anybody will ever ask about it is whether you can show it arrived. Buying formal service for a letter answers a requirement the letter does not have.2
What your state requires for a small claims filing, and what its filing limit is, is on your state’s page.
What to keep
Five things, from the day you send it
- The letter itself, in the exact form you sent it
- The mailing receipt showing the date and the destination address
- The return receipt or signature record, downloaded rather than linked
- A dated note of what you sent and to which address
- Any reply, including an automated one naming a claims reference
Keep them as long as you might need them, which is longer than the dispute feels like it will run. A licensing complaint filed a year later opens with the same question this record answers, and the rest of the file is built the same way.
Disclosures
- 1.Satisfy is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. This page describes what common delivery methods record. It does not state the service requirements of any court, and nothing here should be read as telling you how to serve a filing.
- 2.Service rules, filing deadlines and what proof a court will accept are set by each state and often by each county. Nothing on this page states a rule, a period or a price, because none of the three is the same in any two places. Your state’s small claims page carries what we hold, with its source.