As both a vendor and a client, I can empathize with both sides of this scenario.  From the vendor's prospective, I am hamstrung by my clients and my supervisors as far as being able to accommodate the vendor's request for an increased fee.  If the requirements of the search dictate that the order type be changed, I think everyone should get paid for that.

From the client's side, certain clients have extremely different requirements than the standard searches and we're being forced to put the round peg through the square hole.  If all I need is a search for a specific mortgage, and I'll I've been provided is the borrower name and the mortgage amount, this does walk a fine line between search and retrieval.  While I can concede that there is some searching that will be involved, I also ask my vendors to recognize the fact that this does not constitute a current owner search by any means.

More often than not, when it comes to situations like these, I end up paying the abstractor what they want/need and take the hit from the client, and it happens much more than you'd think.