Disturbing Email from Professional Notary Services Inc

Signing Service 411
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Yesterday, I received this email from Professional Notary Services, Inc and was quite disappointed to hear of the lack of quality control and customer satisfaction on the part of some in this industry. Though, I have not gotten an assignment from them since March 1, I still find this disheartening. The email reads:

          **And Spring typically marks the start of the upswing of the housing market.**

Not this year.

The craziness and busyness of the past two years have ground to a halt. We know real estate to be cyclical. What goes up must come down. Right now, we are in the “up” stage: high rates, low inventory, supply chain delays, and shortage of goods, along with an exodus of people from the workforce. By all accounts, this is not going to be a short-term situation.

We are already starting to see the effects of our current economic situation. Companies no longer allow for overtime. Lenders, title companies, and attorneys are laying off. Mortgage applications are down, as are new home sales.

Why am I telling you this?

Because with the slowdown of work inevitably comes a slew of complaints. We have had multiple complaints daily for the past month.

  • Documents not printed on the appropriate size paper.
  • Documents are being cut off.
  • Signatures and dates missed.
  • Notarizations missed.
  • ID not returned in packages.
  • Notaries being excessively late for closings > than 30 minutes.
  • Closing times changed without approval.
  • Scans are not being done.
  • Packages are not being dropped promptly.
  • Funds are not being collected.
  • Instructions are not being followed.
  • Mistakes are not being corrected.

I had a paralegal today say, “If I get laid off, I will come work for you because your notaries are…terrible.”

That’s not what I want to hear from my customer, and that’s not what you want someone to say about you.

When it is slow, it is even more critical that we all do the best job we can. Customers have more time to be nit-picky. They are more inclined to cut fees because no money is coming. They consider using in-house notaries for in-person and RON closings. Please don’t give them a reason to take away our work.

Below are some articles that are relevant to the current environment.

As always, I appreciate all you do for us.

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I encourage you to read my previous post about “prepare for direct work.” and “scanbacks.” Your post only amplifies what I’ve recently learned and shared with the community here. If a client hires you through a SS Co, part of the SS Co’s job is to review before submitting to the client. The client didn’t hire you, they hired the SS Co, so the responsibility (outside of Notarial Acts) falls on them as far as the client is concerned. Others addressed their concerns about scanbacks… this is the primary purpose for them (usually SS Co’s requesting them), to catch mistakes before submitting back to the client. From what I am gathering from recent communications from TCo’s directly, the incredible high demand the last few years caused people to take shortcuts, things falling through the cracks and so on, costing everyone involved even more time and money in the long run trying to correct things (if it was correctable). Haste makes waste, and there is just way too many entities involved to narrow down blame when the finger pointing starts!

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As more people leave or get laid off from thier jobs they will be on YouTube and Facebook looking for ways to supplement their income and therefore be lulled into the promise of making 10k a month in this business.

Professionals who have been doing this for a long time or who have gone through the proper training would never make those types of mistakes.

SS need to shift their focus from who can they get to do the job the cheapest to who can they get to do the job correctly. Until they change their focus they ultimately will have to bare the responsibility of the errors. IMO

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so in translation…they tolerated the mistakes when they needed notaries but now you will be cut if you make an error.

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I suppose I look at this differently than those who replied. If you accept a signing (if you don’t like the rate, don’t accept it), do it correctly and if you make a mistake, fix it. This is what you would expect from any other contractor.

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Hey there Ron,

I’ve noticed the more folks that enter this business, the lower signing fees head south. To make up for a good profit margin with higher fees, some are following the old “stack’em deep and sell’em cheap”. They try to make up the difference with volume. I have Title Companies reaching out to me to fix Notarial Errors for the same or higher fees than what it cost Title the first time around.

While doing some research for one of my Tax Clients I discovered one of his recent property closing documents wasn’t stamped by the Notary. The Irony is the both the Title Office and Property Records office missed this detail.

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Unfortunately what SSs “should” do is not what they “are” doing. While I don’t take a lot of work from SSs, the alerts that I receive have LSA fees dropping. I would say I’m being offered $25-$35 less on buyers and refis than last summer and $15 less on seller closings. It doesn’t matter than my error rate is near zero and my package return time is very short.

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Amrock ( Quicken Loans ) how I made most of my income, Notary Signing Agent ( 12 yrs ) NO Notary errors, A 100% ,called me on March 30th,2022 and said they were ending my contract with them. I heard through the grape vine also read it on Yahoo Mortgage companies laying off over 400 people. The job has come to scrething ahult. Now what ? NO JOB NO INCOME, anyone else hearing this ? Thank you

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What? Oh no I’m confused now. I thought they are busy from what I can see. Ok, now I’m scared. I hope I don’t get one of those emails. Were you with them under NSA or SS? Maybe they don’t need to use SS? Would love to know what else is happening though.

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Yea it’s not looking good for Rocket

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Thanks for sharing this…

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I’ll take “companies that pay so low they only get bad notaries” for $1000, Alex…

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Wow ! look at this post…it now has 8 Likes. We’re in agreement. Oh Yea !

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WOW what kind of contract did you sign that they called you to end it - I would think they would just stop calling.

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JSMnotary got that email, not VIP - at least not yet

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Isn’t that the truth! Nothing is guaranteed that’s for sure.

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Don’t get discouraged. Amrock is primarily RON/Hybrid now. Like others who followed suit, they let go those who didn’t get a RON commission (for whatever the reason) right off the bat. It’s all hypothetical, as we don’t know the reasons/circumstances of the individual staff/NSA’s they let go. Think positive! Also, I’m sure error rate played a factor as well, as Amrock scores their notaries.

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well you get what you pay for.

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Please read the post carefully:).

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I love Amrock!!! :dancer::dancer::dancer::dancer::dancer:

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