I don’t envy your job and am trying to help everyone. Maybe there’s a good reason that you notify everyone within 100 miles (m/l), but it seems to me that the closest notary is more likely to accept the lowest offer. I would think that even if they counter, their fee is going to be far less than the notary 100 miles away. I’d also think you’d get it scheduled much faster if you don’t have to wait for a lot of high/distance counter-offers to pick from.
Reason I’m posting this is due to how many times I receive an offer for way too far (often 2 or 3 offers) and a while later, get an offer from another co. for the SAME job. Seems too many people are doing too much work for no results. I admit, I just don’t understand the logic involved. Perhaps someone can enlighten me?
It’s much easier for them to just blast an offer out there and let whoever wants the job to respond to it. The thinking is that notaries know the driving distance and if they still want the job that’s their business. It’s not the scheduler’s job to decide if the distance is too far. What bothers me a lot more than that is that the jobs are priced out at a flat fee, no matter the distance. It doesn’t matter if you’re 100 miles away or 1 block away. It’s the same fee. I understand that it would be impossible to price the job by the mile. It also doesn’t matter if there are scanbacks or no scanbacks. Same price either way. It doesn’t matter if the package is 20 pages or 200 pages. Same price. One signer or four signers…same price. Essentially, one price fits all.
I received a document pickup request that’s a total of 40 miles round trip including scans, a trip to FedEx, and an estimated 2.5 hours labor, all for
$30.
They don’t need it to be done any faster…as long as all job offers are accepted “as is” with no negotiation. The signing services go out of their way to make it harder and harder for notaries to negotiate. The less human interaction, the less negotiation. All it takes is one notary to accept their offer as is. They achieve that goal in almost all cases. The offers that are so ridiculous that no one bites on them are the ones you can counter on and maybe get your fee.
My suggestion for schedulers to consider:
…there is absolutely no benefit for you to send a request to update the closing status of the loan an hour before the appointment time.
…there is no benefit to sending a closing status request one hour after the appointment time (more often than not clients may still be signing, especially on packets 150+ pages, packets that have multiple signers, when we encounter a “reader”, when we encounter any issue requiring us/them to call title, or any myriad other issues we may encounter that are out of our control)
…it doesn’t matter that scans are due back to you 2 hrs after closing. There are many reasons why this is an impossible deadline to meet. Your sending us SMS messages, emails or voicemails and dancing around our appointment will not alter this situation.
…please recognize the ridiculousness of expecting us to make an appointment, have documents signed, scanned back and dropped for next day delivery for appointments scheduled after 3:00 pm, especially if you don’t send documents until 1-2 hours before appointment. With travel time, signing time, commute time during rush hour traffic, scanning time, by the time we get to shipping it is unlikely your package will make it before shipping cut-off. It doesn’t matter that you know the final hour of pick-up for corridor or cross-country delivery. Those times are “sorting station” and not “shipping location” hours. There is a difference. Those of us who have been doing this for awhile can calculate to the second what it’s going to take to get a job done end-to-end, and that’s always with the caveat, “providing. . .”
…pleas recognize that the distance you see for an assignment from vendor to client is “as the crow flies”. Street traffic and other commuting issues, such as ferries, is a whole different matter. Be assured, we know our streets, distance and travel times much better than your algorithms will ever be able to estimate.
No matter how many instructions, warnings or threats of reduced fees you throw at us, they will not mitigate these issues. And these are just a handful of issues you don’t have knowledge about when you “negotiate” with us. Trust us that WE are the experts in this matter.
@Tisino wish I could give this post a 5-star rating…outstanding points, Tisino. Thank you!!
As for the blast emails offering a trip of 100 miles (200 miles rt plus time/travel to FedEx drop after scanning) for $75 - I got them, read them and usually deleted them. I’m not traveling 230 miles for $75
I often wonder what’s the point of scanning if it has to make the carrier’s cutoff time and, therefore, the originals will be delivered the next morning?
Even dumber is requiring scans for late Friday signings, when no one will even see your scans before Monday morning, by which time the signed package will arrive.
IMO,…No scans & higher fees used to be the norm. Now scans & low fees are the norm. Only differences between then & now: Less business means less income so go with cheapest & make sure it’s done right because you get what you pay for.
Nothing annoys me more than being asked for scans (at no additional fee) just because the signing service wants to check your work before the title company finds errors or they just want scans in case Fedex or UPS has unexpected delays because of weather, incompetence, or whatever reason.
Yes! Back in the days of fax machines and Trans-Box (an overnight delivery service used by lenders), we used to get a whole bunch of stuff faxed at us (on thermal paper) and then we’d get it all again in originals the next morning via Trans-Box. It was just double the work to go through it all twice.
I have often wondered why I see assignments for a location nearly two hour away. It must be no one was available closer, or someone keyed in the wrong address on the signing order. Scheduling is volume business with some jobs going out to different companies where first to fill the offer gets the job. Like you say, we sometimes see the same job posted through different companies.
It feels like some title companies and scheduling companies have favorites. One local Title office in my area works nearly exclusively with one notary. They even print both copies of the documents for her!
I’ve seen her leaving with her arms loaded down with three or more signings. When there is no preferred notary the offer goes out on blast. Snapdocs starts with the nearest notaries then expands. Some notaries might be further away but have one or two in the area so they can add an additional one.
Just the last two weeks or so have shown an uptick in assignments. Now that there are more opportunities I tend to let the ones that are far-afield available for notaries who might be closer. I’ve tried working harder, now I’d like to work smarter. It is better for me to take a lesser-paying job close to my office than drive long distance for a better fee. Time, gas, wear and tear on me and my car more than makes up the difference.
