I'd like to say that not all middle-men companies are the same.  Lumping us all in with someone whose business practices are questionable isn't fair to companies like ours, Wanda's and others who respect the work you do and actually understand various facets of the industry because of their own experience - AND WHO PAY YOU.  

I'm sure you're all aware there are independents who are not like you who go MIA, who have no experience, don't respect that we're accountable to our clients., don't read one bit of the order.  It wouldn't be fair of me to put you all in the same category.

I personally find it loathesome to ask someone to reduce their livelihood in order to increase my income -  not to mention it's an uncomfortable call to make.  We don't ask independents to reduce their prices when we're expanding our coverage - we ask what they charge;  however if they're pricing themselves out of their local competition and we get the call later asking why we haven't sent anything, I'll be truthful -  then it's their choice what they want to charge.  We work something out or part congenially. This isn't to say we always work with the cheapest person in a county - you pay for experience and knowledge in most cases.  Being easy to work with and being friendly and accommodating (and accessible) go a long way too.  Asking someone to be the cheapest isn't going to get your orders prioritized.  Not paying your searchers is not going to have that effect either.  We have loyalty to many abstractors even if we get offers of lower pricing.  Just because we are the same types of businesses doesn't mean you're dealing with the same types of people... and this business is still about people!

Your insinuation that the middle-men do nothing is not accurate. Do we need you?  Of course.  Can you live without us, sure but you may be cheating yourself of the relationships we've spent the time, technology and money to build with nationwide companies who don't want to find each of you themselves and who still prefer to work with American companies.  They don't want to have to deal with sending out 400 $40 checks each month, they don't want the headache of remembering who does which county, having to pore over SOT listings and if it's a remote county, trying to hunt down someone at the courthouse. They can call us, or Wanda, or Anthony or whomever it is they deal with and they know who they're talking to immediately.  The middle-men have spent the time making the 1000's of calls to find the right people in the counties.  And if they're smart they have researched and found the clients they CHOOSE to work with rather than take every offer dangled in front of them only to find later they're never going to be paid. 

The in-between has a unique perspective and some of you disparage us the way you do the big national guys and I usually silently look on and occassionally laugh when I see a thread that starts this way.  We certainly don't set the prices and I know I personally can't tell a multi-million dollar title company I want to be paid on MY schedule. To the big guys, we're just as pipsqueak as you. Sure, they must respect we need to be paid and to honor the general 30-60 day time frame but I can't demand they pay in a week.

To some of you, we're all about lining our pockets for doing nothing and for some, that certainly seems to be revealing itself.  For others here, you've seen the value of working with the Tweeners.   Being in the middle is chaotic and the crap rolls up and down in each direction - toward US in the middle.  We try to keep a happy medium.  Some days this office is like Boiler Room.  All day we're fielding calls, following up, doing oddball 'favors' for clients, researching things above and beyond the norm all across the country, retyping the reports that look like a 3rd grader wrote them .   Being the middle-man is not all bad by any means and can be fun but you certainly have to be able to engage with both independents, clients and maintain a sense of humor above all. 

Just please don't throw us all on the fire because of a few bad ones out there.