Posted by Tiffanie Mettayer on 4/13/11 1:04pm
Msg #379622

New Notary without References!

Hello all! I was wondering if any of you once upon a newbies had any advice for me. I've been doing signings for 6 months and am up to approx. 120 singings. The bulk of the singings have been for First American Signature Services. The amount of business I have received from them has dramatically dropped in the last couple months and I thought I would start applying to other companies. The issue is I have no "notary signing agent" references and First American, despite the fact that they even rate their notaries are not willing to be a reference as we are "independent contractors". Not nice First American. I have a ton of non-notary references, but I don't think that helps. What did you folks do in the past to get on board with other companies? I actually was referred to First American by another notary and must have got lucky with no experience at the time.
Thanks!

Reply by FlaNotary2 on 4/13/11 1:13pm
Msg #379623

What do you mean by "references"?

A signing service isn't going to ask you to fax them reference letters from title companies you've worked for. If anything they will ask how many signings you've done, and 120 is a good number. If you want to sign up, go to their website and sign up. I don't know that anyone here provides "references" for signing agent work. JMHO

Reply by HisHughness on 4/13/11 1:52pm
Msg #379637

Re: What do you mean by "references"?

Many companies ask for references and contact information for the reference. The surprising thing is that all do not, since requesting references is fairly standard business practice.

Reply by Linda_H/FL on 4/13/11 4:34pm
Msg #379663

Many companies ask for references when you sign

up with them. Do they call the companies? I have no idea. But I've been asked many times for references.

To the OP, be honest - just let those companies know you've only been doing this work for 6 months and have worked solely for FASS, who is unwilling to give you a reference....

Reply by James Dawson on 4/13/11 1:21pm
Msg #379626

As a NSA you must first do the work before you can establish "reference entitlement". I had a number of owners of SS provide letters of references for a court case I had but never for a job with a "competitor".

You earn your stripes as you go along and even that doesn't count for much in this industry. My .02

Reply by SharonMN on 4/13/11 1:50pm
Msg #379636

When I'm asked for references, I just list the last few companies I've worked for. Nobody ever asks for a letter or anything, so I don't ask the companies if they agree to be a reference. Note that I give signing services other signing services as a reference - I don't want them soliciting the title companies I work for directly.

Reply by MW/VA on 4/13/11 3:00pm
Msg #379649

WOW. IMO you've been very fortunate if one company was

giving you 20 signings a month. Biz has slowed all over, and many of us are trying to hang in there.
You obviously have experience, so how many references you can list don't matter all that much. In my experience, many of the large companies don't provide references. We are not employees, not it's a different criteria.

Reply by MW/VA on 4/13/11 3:01pm
Msg #379650

BTW, instead of "references", you might ask them if they

will write you a letter of recommendation based on their experience with your services.

Reply by LKT/CA on 4/13/11 6:42pm
Msg #379685

To get 120 signings in six months you must be accepting $50 per signing. That's the only way a company would continue to hire a newbie over and over.....lowball fees.

Reply by Grammyzoom on 4/14/11 12:27am
Msg #379705

To LKT,

Do not underestimate the value of a newbie if they have been well educated. They are often times much better Signing Agents than some of the people who have been around for a while. You should see how some of my "newbie" students are rocking it out! My name should be "Proud Mama"!

Reply by MW/VA on 4/14/11 9:57am
Msg #379730

Hopefully, you're not training them to take low-ball offers

& have a negative impact on the industry. I can't imagine you'd do that, but just saying.

Reply by NJDiva on 4/14/11 10:09am
Msg #379733

"To get 120 signings in six months you must be accepting $50 per signing."

Hmmm, I was thinking the same thing. It does seem a bit perplexing that someone that just started 6 months ago would already have 120 closings. ESPECIALLY since in the last month and a half to two months there hasn't been but MINIMAL signings available (they've been cut in HALF for me...I was doing 60-80 a month---NOT LOW BALLING).

As newbies please keep in mind that these companies are going to try to take advantage of you because they know you don't know better. Please don't accept anything less than $XXX. Because what it does is degrade the industry and affect us all. Believe me, I have very loyal clients that have no problem paying me my fee because they know that they can trust my work, that I'm good at what I do, and that I go above and beyond. They will try to call your bluff, but if you stick to you guns (if we ALL would), they will eventually realize it's not going to work.

Otherwise, just go ahead and tell them to keep their pay because your giving that away and MORE with the overhead you pay for. You supply the paper, toner, printers, auto (gas and maintenance), marketing, insurance, etc. etc.

I'm not SAYING you're only accepting $50 a closing but there are some out there (obviously) who are. It's easy to assume that that may be the case since there's practically little or minimal work out there and in 6 months you've acquired such experience. I tell those (dare I say fools?) uniformed notaries to think very hard that they are making half of what they should be making (spending much more in overhead at the very LEAST) by allowing the low life's to make suckers out of them.

Even if you're (third person) only doing it for extra money, just know that you deserve and can get much more than what the low baller's want you to believe you can get. Please don't let them get away with it. JMHO

Reply by Tiffanie Mettayer on 4/14/11 12:57pm
Msg #379779

Hello All,

Wow, thanks for those who provided useful suggestions to my question. For those of you wondering how I could have had so many it is truly my location. I live in the DC area where there is very concentrated population therefore more opportunity for more transactions. I have to admit when I started part time I may have unintentually taken less money than I should have, but it certainly not $50 with edocs. Now that I decided to do this full time and have done my due diligence and the math I understand my cost of doing business and take my job very seriously. And for the record the reason I want to start applying out to other companies is that my work stream has also significantly slowed down. I've only had two this week and though I may not be the most expensive notary out there I don't feel I am on the low baller end either. Initially it was worth it with the amount of volume I was receiving in a concentrated area. Not to many miles between appointment to appointment. I'm already looking at getting out of the gig full time, which is a shame, because I truly enjoy my work and am good at it, but welcome to the downturn enconomy. I appreciate the frustration of those who have been in the business for some time and are hurting by the lower volume and lower fees, but in MHO welcome to the recession. You are no different than all the real estate agents that were living the high life when the market was artificially inflated. Sadly this job may never be what it was and you need to decide for yourself if it's still worth doing. We live in a capitalist society and this is how things work. Don't get me wrong, I am not on the side of the companies that are truly taking trying to take advantage of hard working folks, but I think we might have to land somewhere in the middle.

Reply by MikeC/NY on 4/14/11 5:49am
Msg #379713

Rule of thumb

Never give an SS the name of any TC as a reference and vice versa - if they don't already know about each other, why make the introduction and possibly screw yourself in the process?

If you don't have any references or the one or two you do have refuse to provide a reference, go with your experience. 120 successfully completed signings is not insignificant. You could say that you're unable to provide a reference because the companies you work for are not willing to do that, but then point at your experience to show that you know what you're doing.

I think in most cases they don't bother to check references anyway because they see notaries as a commodity; maybe it's just something they read in a management book...