You bring up a great point about the usually unpaid administrative time - at least not directly paid. All that extra time should be accounted for when setting fees up front. It's all part of overhead and other costs-of-doing business which need to be covered somehow. (I wonder how many of those outfits hawking signing agent training with tons of promises bother mentioning that kind of business 101 stuff.)
The key point is that if someone wants to run a profitable enterprise, their fees need to cover more than just the actual variable costs of each assignment, e.g. printing and travel. What about other business supplies, equipment replacement, insurance, taxes (including self-employment, unless you have a pension, enough invested, or have already paid in enough to Social Security to generate a sustainable retirement), etc. etc.? Plus, the expertise we've acquired (and continue to acquire) is worth something, as is our time.
What we do isn't brain surgery but it does have value to those who need our services. That's partly why the $40, $50, etc. fees are outrageous, especially for a whole loan signing! You won't find any other service of any kind where a person will travel to someone's home for that kind of money, before they even begin work. (Even a handyman will charge way more than that, let alone an electrician, plumber, etc.)
To the OP, there have been many extremely valuable discussions about setting fees over the 2-decade long history of this site. You can try using the search feature, varying the choice of key words as much as possible. You could also go to Msg #630000, which also has a link to Msg # 33325, both of which are compilations of some of the most useful posts from the past. Bottom line is that if other notaries are charging fees that cause them to lose money (which they may not yet realize), that's not what you want to be using as a model!
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