I agree 100%, Jan. And then they give us the argument that they "need to check with title" to see if they have any wiggle room on the fee they say they can pay. Translation: we're not willing to give up any of our portion of the fee, so we've negotiated away a portion of YOUR fees in order to get this account and unless title will add some more back in, we're going to find someone else who will do it for cheap. Even more likely (in areas like mine with lots of notaries), they're not going to even bother asking title, but will just go on down the list to find someone else who doesn't know any better.
Like Jan said, they potentially have the option of making up fee reductions with volume, but we only have so many hours in a day and there's a limit on how many signings we can do. Also, a major portion of our expenses are per assignment, so there's very few opportunities for economies of scale. Every fee reduction comes right out of profit for us. It wouldn't surprise me if some who are accepting the lowest fees are actually losing money on every assignment.
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