If I Stop Using And Paying For My Virtual Office Service, Is It Legal For Regus To Withhold My Mail?

One of the most common reasons why people sign up for a virtual office service is to be able to receive "business mail" at an address other than their home address. That makes the benefit of virtual office service seem more like a "want" than a "need."

Using Your Virtual Office Address To Receive Important Mail

But the reality is that, regardless of the initial reason why someone signs up for a virtual office service, once you start using that virtual office address for your business, it becomes interwoven with many other aspects of your business that are undoubtedly in the "need" column--and that the potential, sudden loss of your virtual office address troubling to consider.

For example, you might direct customers to send you checks to that virtual office address, to pay for a service you are providing to those customers. So, that virtual office address rises to a level of extreme importance, because it becomes part of the sequence for how your business gets paid.

Another example pertains to businesses who have to register an address for licensing or other legal or regulatory purposes. If you use your virtual office address for this purpose, then it becomes part of how you're complying with those licensing, legal, or other regulatory requirements. To suddenly lose that virtual office address, then, could put you in hot water with those licensing or regulatory boards--particularly if they were trying to communicate with you by sending you mail to that virtual office address and you were not receiving that mail.

Regus Threatens To Withhold Your Mail

Regus knows this. That is why, when you decide to end your relationship with Regus, and Regus suddenly starts sending you new bills and demands for additional payments from you, Regus uses language that tends to give people the impression that Regus is threatening to withhold their mail (if they do not cave into Regus's demands for additional payments).

In the email message depicted above, for example, Regus's threat is pretty clear:

Pay us, or we're going to hold your mail hostage.

For many small businesses, this threat might be scary enough to prompt your immediate acquiescence to Regus's demands, just because the withholding of your mail from you could cause so many other, bigger problems for your business. So, you bite the bullet, and pay the extortion demands.

But this scenario raises an important question...

Is it even legal for Regus to withhold a former virtual office client's mail in this way?

Short answer: almost certainly no. Here's why.