- You book a Reverse Mortgage closing ($125)
- You receive the documents and notice that the document is larger than usual and there are trustee verbiage requirements. So, you contact the company and negotiate an increase to the rate ($75 more, $200 total)
- You go to the appointment and conduct the closing.
- The closing takes 5.5 hours because the signers are 90+ years old and have many difficulties signing documents. There is no table space, and for more than half of the closing you stand with documents in one hand and a flashlight in another to shine on the signature line so that the signer can see where to sign, all while he is siting in a recliner chair he canāt get out of. Because of this closing two other appointments had to get reschedule to other signing agents.
Would you ask for a higher fee and how would you go about doing it?
5 1/2 hoursā¦yikes! I would certainly contact hiring party and let them know what happened and that the time spent was WELL over norm and that you want to be adequately compensated @ $XX/hour for the excess time spent.
Couple questions & comments: One, was this the āfinalā (not Application)? If so, hiring party KNEW this was not going to be easy and did NOT adequately discuss the scope of the job with you. Two, as they generally try to send the same notary out on both the Appl. signing & the final, it āappearsā to me (IF THIS WAS THE FINAL) that the Appl. notary probablyā¦for good reasonā¦declined to do the final as s/he most likely was NOT adequately compensated. It is hard, but not impossible, to get the fee raised after the job is done. Also, while painful, it is not hiring partyās fault that you āchoseā to hang in there and turn back 2 other jobs, so you are going to have to throw yourself on their mercy and sense of fairness. (Good luck with that.)
Last, (hindsight is 20/20) upon realizing that this was going to be way over norm, I would have called hiring party from the signing, explained what was happening and that you have other commitments and suggest this be re-scheduled with a re-negotiated fee adequate for the time involved or they can agree RIGHT NOW to a higher feeāwhich, ime, they most definitely will do. FWIW, under similar ātoo-much-time-neededā circumstances, I got my fee doubledābut I called from the table. Regardless of what happens, take this as a learning experienceāwhich is all that you get when you arenāt paid enough.
3 Likes
I did call from the table, but there was no one there with any decision making authority. Plus, I didnāt really feel comfortable discussing this in front of the signers. Its not their fault, this is their situation. Finally, if I would have called and asked to re-schedule, the 2+ hours Iāve spent would have also been at a lower fee because the signing wouldnāt have been completed. There just were not any good optionsā¦
1 Like
You should of walked. Just tell the signing company there was not adequate signing space & adequate lighting. Hold flashlight to conduct signing is not going to happen. Tell them, need to reschedule with another notary. Pay print & travel.
Hopefully you didnāt loose future business from the other two signing companies.
If this happens again, you know what to due.
Donāt ever be scared to walk-away.
1 Like
It is not about being scared. If these people were young and unprepared. I would have walked away after 20-30 minutes. However, these were very old people at the very end what for them was a very grueling process. Sometimes it is not about the money, it was just the humane thing to do. I still donāt have an answer from the company if they will give me a higher feeā¦ They are at the mercy of the bank.
What is frustrating about this whole process is after talking to the rep who hired me, she looked at all the notes provided by the bank and they did not include any special instructions. So they ofcourse where under the same impression that I was about what type of closing this will be until I got there.
Working in this industry for some time, this is a common pattern where the LO/Bank doesnāt do a good enough job preparing the client and then we end up spending extra time filling stuff out at the table or making calls beacuse the signers donāt know what is going onā¦
1 Like
<<FWIW, under similar ātoo-much-time-neededā circumstances, I got my fee doubledābut I called from the table.>>
How did you manage to call from the table and explain all of what was going on with the signers sitting right there next to you, overhearing? Or did you excuse yourself, saying you had to get something from your car?
Oh, well, easy. Said I needed to āmake a call and my cell has poor reception hereā, so went outside & called hiring party. I wouldnāt have this kind of conversation in front of signers! But, āI need to get something from my carā is just as good an excuse to get out of anyoneās hearing for what is most likely going to be an āinteresting conversationā. FWIWā¦in the 25 years Iāve been doing this, Iāve had a really awkward situation just twice. Not bad odds.
1 Like
