Scanbacks, as all of you know, take time and extra travel. Generally, when scanback is required, I drive right past the courier’s location to go home and scan the docs. Then it is time to drive back to the courier’s office to drop the docs.
Some of you may live close to the courier’s and the signer’s location; For some of us scanbacks add 20 or 30 additional miles to a closing.
I learned something last week. FedEx charged me $4 to pick up a package at my residence.
If Title/SS paid for the courier to pick up docs at notaries’ residences it would reduce the time and additional cost of dropping docs after scanning.
That way I could charge less for scanbacks and not have to deal with the extra travel cost and time.
Way back when I began, I always scheduled a pick up; nobody ever complained. Frankly, I doubt hiring party even noticed/knew. Scanning still takes time, so perhaps the pickup can provide a small profit-pocket to offset the low fees offered these days.
Usually scheduling a pickup means picking up the next business day after the signing. This means a package may arrive a day late for a scheduled closing in another city. If you’re going to schedule a pickup, make certain you know when the package will be delivered to the receivers and the TC agrees.
Here’s my suggestion, don’t reduce your scan back fees. Keep the extra profits to your self.
Good point… it could get dicey. When I used to schedule a pick up, I scheduled it very early and also KNEW they would never arrive before 6 PM. If you’re far from a pick up point, this option is certainly worth exploring and, no, wouldn’t reduce fees either. At least not until I had a lot of experience with just how reliable they are. Then a fee reduction just might get more work for you–or NOT. Worth thinking about.
Yes Riverpoint, you are correct. That is why I said Title/SS needs to schedule the pickup, in advance, when they create the courier label.
So many of our customers, (Yes,TC/SS are our customers, not the other way around) need to step up and pay the costs for our work. Expenses are being pushed down to the notary and as notaries we don’t have anyone to push expenses down to.
Using a mobile All In One Printer allows me to scan the documents just after completing the closing. Then, I drives directly from the closing location to the courier location avoiding going to home for documents scanning.
An investment on a scanner would pay itself. Additionally your business will be superior to notaries that do not have a mobile scanner. I use a mobile scanner Epson es-400II. Quick & clean scan backs. It can auto scan 100 letter & legal pages in about 2-3 minutes.
Epson WF-2950… it is small enough to be powered with the 120V outlet from my car, has an autofeeder for scanning documents black and color, WI-FI smartphone operated for sending the scanned to my cellphone or laptop… although is a ink-jet printer, all my closing documents are printed at home in my laser Brother MFC-L3770CDW but can be use as printer if needed… best of all was the price, LESS expensive than the cheaper regular document scanner in the market…
check out the Epson ES300W, I have no issues w/ legal or letter, it has a battery, or plug in and can connect wirelessly to my laptop; although I usually use the small cable to direct connect to my laptop (Phone for Hotspot, Laptop, scanner) I am rather new at this and I can’t see doing this job without this setup. I scan back and upload from the signing table A LOT… FYI, it can scan IDs no problem separate entry slot on the front.
