While some of the people at this company may be pleasant to deal with, jfilyaw (they didn't sign the email) isn't. We did a full search last week based on the address sent, the county GIS which gets its data from the other county offices indicated the address was one specific property. We were not given an owner's name or a map and parcel number, only an address.  On Monday, 12/29, we were informed it was the incorrect property and that they wanted us to search the property across the street for the cost of copies only. This would be an entirely new 40 year search with a completely different chain of title. We explained that we can not work for free and the mistake was not ours as we had verified which property went with the address they had sent, but we would be happy to put the new request in line and would be able to get to it after the holiday weekend. At 4:45 on 12/30 (the city and clerk's offices for this jurisdiction close at 4:30) jfilyaw sent an email giving us one hour to submit a full search on the property across the street from the one we originally searched.  They now claim we did not complete the request.

Even if it were possible to complete the new search on line (the records do not go back 40 years on line), I still wouldn't be able to complete it within an hour and there is the matter of not being able to check taxes until tomorrow. To complete a 40 year search correctly takes time even when all the records are available by remote access and that is not the case for the jurisdiction where this property is located. The jurisdiction is roughly an hour away from my office and they are only open half a day tomorrow, so there is no way we could possibly complete the work and return it before Monday evening at the earliest.

I have now received a cancellation of order notice that implies I won't be paid for the original work that we did. Keep in mind that before the GIS was put in place, the people at the county offices often could not verify which tax parcel went with a specific address in this county. Also keep in mind that all we were given was an address, no name and/or map and parcel number accompanied the original request. We entered the address into the GIS and completed a search on the property it indicated matched that address. We had no way to cross check the information. In this jurisdiction, the county GIS is the one used to pull source deed, assessment, and tax information.

The only reason I took the request for this search is that people on Source of Title said that they paid and were reasonable. I guess we got to deal with the one unreasonable person on their staff.