Joan Bergstrom, who is busily -- and profitably -- churning out more dewey-eyed neophyte signing agents every week, bloviates (and disingenuously at that):
***Indiana (the state with most notaries per capita has 1,947 per 100,000 population) and CA (has 801 notaries per 100,000 population)***
As has been pointed out more than once in this forum, and to Joan herself, "notary public" is not synonymous to "signing agent." anymore than "carpenter" is synonymous with "homebuilder." If 800 of those 801 Californians are signing agents, and 194.7 of those 1,947 Hoosiers are signing agents, it is utterly academic how many notaries public each state boasts.
There are other factors which also impact those statistics: Whether the laws expand or contract the types of documents that need notarizing, what is considered a conflict of interest, the statutory fees that can be charged, the historic use or non-use of signing agents in a given area, and others.
Both Miz Berstrom and I have the same agenda: To protect our pocketbooks. She protects (and fills) hers by stamping out more and more doomed-to-be-disappointed signing agents, each of whom pays her a fee to earn their bitter disappointment. I protect mine by doing my best to see that the $40-signing-$20-edocs tadpoles spawned in Miz Bergstrom's habitat don't contaminate my pond.
And you know what? I can, with no guilt whatsover, look those newcomers in eye and tell them exactly what I'm doing, because I figure in the long run I'm probably doing them a favor. I doubt that Miz Bergstrom can -- or does -- do the same.
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