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January 2, 2013

Two-Faced… Duplexed

Filed under: Carmen Towles,Posts With Many Comments — admin @ 7:07 am

I get a call from a notary public that it is clear that she is rather upset. She is a new notary public / notary signing agent and she is trying to put forth her best effort. And, it is a challenge to say the least.

She gets her first call and she is so excited. I can remember how that feels. I am sure most of you old timers can as well. 🙂 She takes the assignment and all goes well from start to finish. She returns the documents and a few days later she gets the most dreaded phone call that we all have received at one time or another. The folks that hired her had called to say that she would have to go back to the borrowers house at her expense because she had printed the documents front and back (printer duplexes) and the lender had refused them. It seems that they wanted them printed on single sheets. I’m thinking someone dropped the ball on this one and I suspect I know who. But I need more information.

It was clear she was very upset because she had felt that she hadn’t don’t anything really wrong but was not sure. ONLY one thought came to mind and I asked only one question. Did they give you specific questions to NOT print front and back? Her answer was no. I asked was she positive, she was. So, I told her that although she would inevitably have to go back that this was not her fault and it should NOT be at her expense. I told her that if they hadn’t given her specific instructions NOT to print the documents front and back that that was on them not her. Some of our printers depending on the model (and once set up properly and if they have the duplex function as in this case) are going to print they way they were SENT. I told her to call them back and let them know that she had carefully checked her records and found no evidence that she was not to print this way (single sheets) and if thye had wanted them printed on single sheets they should have sent the PDF in single sheets. And last but not least, if they wanted her to reprint and go back then she would need to be compensated for both trips. (Keep in mind people that were are not mind readers. We are not here to play guessing games. We should be given specific instructions and then we need to follow them to letter.

What I believe happened is that the lender probably sent the documents with instructions how to print and then the information was sent to title and then to a signing service. Somewhere in there somebody dropped the ball. Which is why things get messed up so often. There are way to many people involved in these transactions.

But, in the end it is the notary public that gets blamed. It is unfortunate but true. So so often when they screw up they want the notary public to go back or fix something with no compensation…This is totally unacceptable. They do this because it eats into their profits. But if they got it right in the first place then things would go a whole lot smoother for them and for us.

Now I told our notary public what I felt she should do and so far I haven’t heard back…so I will assume no news is good news. If I hear anything new regarding this incident I will write another blog…. in the mean time please get and READ those instructions and ask questions if not sure. And get EVERYTHING in writing. It will save your you know what! 🙂

Until next time be safe!

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4 Comments »

  1. I must respectfully disagree. I have been doing this a long time. Never have I heard of doc being printed double sided. The obvious problem is that it is possible to have on a single physical sheet of paper the last page of the mortgage and the first page of the note. It is not possible for our hiring party to specify every single thing. I for one take offense at trite reminders of the obvious. “Don’t wear jeans, clean your fingernails, do not smoke, don’t park on their lawn, etc.” I have never received the directive to print “single sided” – ever. It’s assumed that a professional knows that. As the person in question did not, EVEN if the PDF was sent “duplex” – they need to print single sided. I often receive mis-scanned documents that call for european size paper. I simply deselect the common “use PDF for paper size” and force it to Legal size to not shrink the fonts. Duplex printing saves paper but is so far “out of industry standard” – this one is clearly “Notary Fault”.

    Comment by Kenneth A Edelstein — January 2, 2013 @ 12:13 pm

  2. I have never noticed that PDFs contain any setting for whether or not the document is printed on both sides; I thought this was up to the person doing the printing to choose.

    Comment by Dennis — January 2, 2013 @ 3:26 pm

  3. Ken, as you know I too have been doing this a long time. If my memory serves me correctly JP Morgan Chase and ING were documents that were sent two sided and they wanted them to print this way. So there has been times that duplexing was a standard for certain lenders….

    Comment by Carmen Towles — January 3, 2013 @ 12:22 am

  4. Carmen, I did not know that, and never had either a duplex request or a printer that would print duplex. I guess they could set up the PDF to avoid having critical documents on a single physical sheet of paper. If JP and ING wanted duplex printing they must have had a somewhat difficult time finding agents who had that ability. “Long Ago” duplex printers were very expensive. As you are “searching your memory” it’s probable that there are no current packages being sent with the intent of duplex printing. As to what is emailed to us: GIPO – we are expected to take Garbage IN and produce Perfect Out. My personal pet peeve is getting 15+ “attachments” often in various formats – .doc .docx .pdf .jpg .??? etc.

    Comment by Kenneth A Edelstein — January 3, 2013 @ 4:57 am

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