These folks have been sending me what appeared to be fake computer generated signing offers for a long time. Then I learned they were actually offers for work. I wondered why the same jobs were resent to me over a two week period at times.
I learned TIMIOS is a huge title company when I finally spoke with someone about their emails. Title companies that farm out cheap assignments like this are uncommon. A notary needs to think about why TIMIOS is dealing directly with notaries and what they offer in return for not having to pay a typical signing fee of $250 for the agency and notary.
When I’ve received title company offers in the past they don’t try to deny the notary the full $250 because they know you are experienced and won’t cause them problems, that sometimes bad agencies drop the ball for them and cause hassles. So I don’t expect a title company to be low balling me. The $115 offer ignores scan backs that can be time consuming! It also is $5 below the rate of inflation it should pay since the past 12 years $100 was the common fee agencies paid. Inflation means $120 should be the base for any refi loan fee in 2021.
Yesterday at 1:00 pm I turned down a TIMIOS phone call offer of a ReFi of $115 for scan back because my scan fee is $25. It was also a rush assignment for 7:00 pm on a Friday evening. (It was 135 pages for one signer). I then received another call hours later of their willingness to pay my fee of $150 for the urgent signing. I later learned from the signer that they had found a notary but she could only do 9:00 pm and so he asked for someone who could do the signing at 7:00 pm. That’s why they called me back 3 hours later.
So TIMIOS had many hours prior to a must signing and chose to wade through notaries low balling us until they found someone willing, yet it didn’t conform to the signer’s time request. All so they could avoid paying what all other title companies offer that’s an average of $250 in order to deny notary publics our fair share.
After I accepted the offer, they proceeded to send me multiple PDF’s that weren’t merged together. They urged me to send scans back immediately. After the signing I learned they were gone for the weekend and never responded. I had no one really assigned to me for things like passwords to help me log into their system. No one was there to help. I got an auto email that the person who sent me the docs would be"back in the morning". I have no response from anyone.
So this TIMIOS is a title company that deliberately seeks to deny notary publics the $250 fee they are supposed to provide to us they would otherwise pay to an agency that takes half the fee for itself. There were 12 signatures to notarize!! This is the common fee for notary signings by title companies. They’ve devised a system that is unhelpful to the notary with no one assigned to them for any signing issues, etc. They get an experienced notary like myself and tried to, not only low ball me at $115, but didn’t accommodate the signer’s need for 7:00 pm at the latest for his signing request.
They nearly lost the opportunity for a notary that evening in emergency mode finally giving in to the $150 fee request. They put the signing in jeopardy for failing to offer a realistic signing fee to a notary. They didn’t care about the borrower’s time frame for the appointment. They weren’t available to me whatsoever with any emergency numbers to reach them. They didn’t provide a password to get into their system to upload the scans. They didn’t care about the borrower’s confidentiality that they didn’t send secured documents by email.
They don’t do much for a notary. Title companies are usually more than happy to pay me $250 for this kind of a situation. The only good thing I can say about TIMIOS is their documents are well done and clean.