I’m going to try and convey this tale as succinctly as possible, but there are a lot of moving parts, so bear with me. Interested to know how you would have handled it differently, if at all.
I took a signing from a new signing service (new to me, that is) the other day. I won’t name the service because I don’t want to drag them through the mud. They were kind, respectful, helpful, and have had my back the whole way.
A summary of the difficulties:
EVERY instance where the husband’s name appeared was misspelled. So that required a “how do you want me to proceed” phone call. Please strike, correct and initial. Fine. But that was probably 25 corrections at a minimum.
About 50% of the main signer’s signature spaces had HER name misspelled, as well. So more strike-correct-initialing to be done.
Some docs and therefore some dollar amounts were outdated and incorrect. This required the signer to call her lender. She also called 3 more times for documents she didn’t understand despite my explanation. She didn’t understand verbiage. She didn’t understand why they wanted her to fill wire instructions when she wanted a check. And by “didn’t understand,” I mean she was just being obstinate and wanted to know everything about every word in the documents.
She read EVERY. WORD. Deed of Trust? 20 minutes reading. Out loud. Universal Loan Application? She read every box. OUT. LOUD. Mind you, I had already given her the “I have another appointment, please remember you have 3 days to cancel, and you have a copy I have provided so you can read into these details later on” speech. TWICE.
I started emailing my signing service at the 2 hours of table time mark. At the 3 hour mark, I gave her a very stern (but respectful) “I. NEED. TO. LEAVE. You need to finish signing or I will have to take these documents with me and you’ll have to reschedule with your title company.”
She was so frustrated at this point by the errors that she was on her 5th phone call to her lender. I called my service again and declared that I needed to go. I wanted a verbal ok from someone that I could end the signing. Turns out the signer also wanted to end it because of her frustration. So at the 3.5 hour mark, I packed up the incomplete document and left. When I walked out, she was on her 6th phone call, and was actually YELLING at someone. Emailed my service with a written overview of the events for documentation’s / CYA sake. They were flabbergasted, apologized profusely, promised that I would still get paid, and that they would call Title / Escrow to handle it.
I got called 20 mins after I left. “She’s calmed down, ready to complete signing, can you go back?” I had already pushed my next appointment back an hour and had to rush to print and get over there. I ended up going back to this person’s house at 8pm. Service had sent me an amended ALTA with a higher notary cost, so I assume I’ll be getting a higher fee, but no one has actually told me what the increase will be yet. I sat down, and she began reading. Every word. AGAIN.
I took a deep breath and gave her the most diplomatic scolding I could muster: “Can I be brutally honest with you? I CANNOT sit here for 2 hours while you read every word before signing. I’ve already spent 6 hours on this job today. You had time today to read all these things and prepare for me to come back. I was told that you were ready to sign now. If you have further questions, we’re going to have to reschedule, or I’m going to have to ask that you sign as efficiently as you can so I can leave and get your documents out for shipping.”
She saw the higher notary fee on the ALTA and complained that she’d be paying it, and “it better not make my payments go up.”
In the end, I spent 1 hour there and finished up, and got it dropped off at FedEx. Today I get an email from title, cc’d to my service, that 2 signatures were missing. The exact wording was “get it fixed and overnight to me.”
I printed and ran over, got the 2 missing sigs, and once I scanned, I emailed with “I’ll await a FedEx shipping label and get it out as soon as I receive.” Mind you, I KNOW that typically ‘notary error’ means you pay for shipping. HOWEVER, overnight shipping in this case is $100, and, well, not to be crude, but F THAT.
I received another curt reply that said, “this was notary error. I will not be sending a shipping label.” I replied, “This ‘error’ was due to an uncooperative, unprepared signer, DOZENS of time consuming corrections of misspellings in the documents, (the husband’s name was misspelled in literally EVERY place he was required to sign) and the fact that this job took a total of 7 hours of my day, between printing, table time, and multiple trips to the signer’s home. I will not spend $100 of my own money shipping 2 pieces of paper overnight. I documented all of this in emails and phone calls on the day of signing.”
Received an email 30 minutes later: “Sorry you had to deal with that. See attached shipping label.”
Like I said, I will not name the signing agency, but the Title Co was WFG, henceforth to be known as “WTF.”