Frequently asked questions
What is Storno?
Storno is an AI-assisted app that reads your bills, invoices, receipts, and agreements and flags the fees and charges that a biller might reverse if you dispute them. For each one, it rates how strong a dispute would be and recommends how to raise it with the biller.
Who is Storno for?
Everyday people who don't have the time or patience to check every charge on every bill.
How does Storno work?
You upload a document, or on the Monitor plan connect your Gmail so Storno finds bills for you. AI reads every line item and picks out the fees and charges that may be disputable. On every plan, including Free, you see why each one may be disputable, a Case Strength score for how solid a dispute would be, and a checklist of any documents that would make your case stronger.
Paid plans add a step-by-step dispute plan: who to contact, what to say and ask for, call scripts, and ready-to-send emails and letters. The plan adapts as you report back what the biller said. See plans & pricing for what each plan includes.
What makes a charge disputable?
You can ask a biller to reverse almost any charge. Whether they do, and why, is up to them: some will waive a fee as a goodwill gesture, while others defend their charges hard. Storno's job is to give you the strongest case it can for asking, and to tell you honestly how strong that case is.
Does Storno guarantee I'll get a fee or charge reversed?
No. Storno makes no guarantees about any dispute, and it never claims or guarantees that a fee or charge is illegitimate. It's a tool that helps you try. A fee Storno flags as worth disputing may still be a valid charge.
You remain responsible for paying your bills under the terms you agreed to, including while a dispute is open. Storno's analysis is not a reason to withhold payment and can't be used as a defense for non-payment. Storno provides general self-advocacy information, not legal advice.
Why won't you analyze my medical bill or mortgage document on the regular plans?
Because doing these right requires more than a good fee analysis — it requires handling built around the special rules that govern these industries. Rather than give you a shallow answer on a high-stakes matter, we route them to our Pro plan (coming soon), which is being built specifically for them.
What makes medical bills complex?
- Protected health information. Medical bills and explanations of benefits contain PHI, the class of data protected by HIPAA. Handling it responsibly calls for heightened safeguards beyond what everyday receipts need, and we're building Pro to meet that bar before we touch a single medical document.
- A three-party billing maze. Provider, insurer, and you each hold different numbers for the same visit. A real dispute means reconciling the bill against the EOB, the plan's allowed amounts, and your deductible status — not just reading one document.
- Coding errors are the game. Charges ride on CPT/ICD procedure and diagnosis codes; upcoding, unbundling, and duplicate codes are where the money hides, and catching them takes deeper analysis than a standard fee review.
- Specific legal protections. The No Surprises Act, state balance-billing laws, and charity-care rules give patients real leverage — but only when invoked correctly, with the right process and deadlines.
What makes real-estate and lending matters complex?
- Federally regulated disclosures. Mortgage fees live inside a framework of federal law — TILA (Truth in Lending) and RESPA govern what lenders must disclose, which fees can change between the Loan Estimate and the Closing Disclosure, and by how much. Disputing them means auditing against those rules, not just spotting a suspicious line item.
- Servicing rules and escrow math. Escrow analyses, force-placed insurance, and late-fee pyramiding are governed by CFPB mortgage-servicing rules with their own error- resolution procedures (a “notice of error” letter has legal force — if it's done correctly).
- Large, compounding stakes. A wrongly calculated escrow shortage or misapplied payment compounds over a 30-year loan. High stakes deserve our most capable analysis, which is what Pro runs on.
What will the Pro plan do differently?
Pro ($99/month, coming soon) runs every analysis step on our most capable AI model, applies domain-specific playbooks (EOB reconciliation, TILA/RESPA fee audits), and layers on the compliance safeguards these documents deserve. Until it's ready, we decline complex matters rather than analyze them casually — your medical document is not analyzed or stored beyond the upload itself, and you can delete it anytime from Settings.
How is my data protected in the meantime?
Everything you upload is encrypted at rest, sensitive identifiers are masked before any AI analysis, we never train models on your data or sell it, and strict retention windows delete what we don't need. The details are in our Privacy Policy.
How do you handle Social Security numbers and other sensitive personal information?
Before anything from your document is stored or analyzed, we automatically scan it and remove Social Security numbers (including the last four digits), dates of birth, and card and bank account numbers. We never keep those anywhere — not even encrypted. If a company asks for them to verify your identity when you call, you give them directly; Storno never asks for them.
Your name and address are handled differently: because dispute letters need them, we save them in encrypted form, then replace them in the document with a placeholder like [YOUR NAME]. Our fee analysis only ever sees the placeholders. The one point where our AI reads a document before anything is removed is a photo or scanned page: it has no text until the AI reads the image and writes it out.
Account numbers are the one exception — we leave the account number your provider gave you visible in full, because you need it to reference your account when you call or write to dispute a fee.
We don't keep your original file. Once we've read it, we replace it with a redacted copy — every page turned into an image with the personal details blacked out, so nothing can be copied out from underneath. If we can't make a copy we can verify (a photo or a scanned page, for example), we delete the original and keep only the redacted text.
This automated redaction is a safety net, not a guarantee.
It reliably catches labeled fields (a printed “SSN:” or “Date of Birth:” line) and the name-and-address block bills are printed with, but it can miss information that isn't clearly labeled or laid out in an unusual way.
Please black out your Social Security number — and any other sensitive personal information — directly in the file before you upload it. Never rely on us to catch it. By uploading a document, you accept responsibility for anything it contains; see our Terms of Service.
Is this legal advice?
No. Storno provides general self-advocacy information and coaching, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. For legal questions about your specific situation, consult a licensed attorney.