Many signing companies out there are very short sighted. They only care about getting someone fast who will do the job cheap. Whether or not the signing agents knows anything about notary work, documents or handling situations is generally not considered. Signing companies want you to be “familiar” with the documents. People who are “familiar” cannot answer questions about documents with any intelligence. They have seen the documents before, but cannot explain them. 123notary certified Notaries understand the documents 80-95%. Those who are merely “familiar” might be able to answer 40% of my questions on a good day. The serious types of mistakes Notaries normally make have nothing to do with being “familiar” with the documents but are Notary mistakes or handling situations incorrectly.
Error rates & damages
So, the question is, how much do signing companies lose when they hire bad signing agents? When you hire new agents the mistake rate might be anywhere from 1% to 12% realistically. Those odds are not good. I calculate that there might be a cleanup cost of a few hundred dollars per average mistake depending on what the mistake is. So, the average cost of damages per signing hiring bad signers might be $25 or $40 perhaps.
Will you lose your best Title company client?
However the price goes up when you consider all the Title company clients who dump you because you goofed on their precious work. If a Title company offers you $30,000 per month in jobs and you lose them because you saved $15 by hiring a dummy you found on Snapdocs or somewhere else, you might lose $1,000,000 in revenues over the next few years. Does that seem like a good exchange to you? Gain $15 and lose a million? Those are the odds you are playing with. Your profit on the million might only be $50,000. So, gain $15 and lose $50,000. Get the point?
What are the average damages per signing?
If you average it out on a job by job basis and consider the cleanup costs as well as the losing your best title company clients that you ever had and ever will have costs and put those two costs together, it might realistically be $25 per signing, or perhaps more that you lose on average due to hiring lousy signing agents.
So, why not hire good signing agents?
123notary went to a lot of trouble to filter out bad Notaries from our site. We also retested all of the people who have our certification icon. Our certified members are not perfect but far less risky than the average Notary. In my estimation, a 123notary certified member is ten times safer than hiring some random text addict on Snapdocs. But, don’t base your decision on my arbitrary guess — track signings for yourself and see if our certified members really are better and how much better.
How much extra is it worth to you to hire someone more knowledgeable and safer? I personally would pay a minimum of $20 extra to hire a 123notary certified member and $30 extra for an elite signer. What do you think signing companies?
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You might also like
Ken’s list of things Notaries goof or might goof on
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=19427
Goofing on the RTC
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=19612
Logic errors can cost you as a notary
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=20110
Notary fined $385 for botching a notarization
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=19941
