So true.   My post was a description of this slow slide into "We-dont-care-ville".  There is always a reason for this sort of behaviour and it boils down to the risk vs rewards ratios that the company is willing to gamble their shareholders interests on.  My wife and I are vested shareholders of First American and BofA and we don't like this from any angle.  As we are both in the title industry, she internal to it  and I with 25 years and running my own abstract firm, this is something we've both seen coming for  a very long time.  It is insane, stupid, and nigh criminal on the part of the mid- and upper- level administrators of title companies, because it is self-enrichment.  They increase profit margin by cutting costs up-front in order to give themselves hefty bonuses.  When the s#$!& comes down on the other end, they still get their bonuses, having done a good job of paying claims so that the insurance commissioners don't fine the firm  while writing off the claims losses as a cost of doing business.  Employees are screwed, shareholders lose out, and the customer gets only grief.  The winners are admin, as always in a corporate system and it falls to customers to sue, shareholders to take their usual inaction, and employees to go the way of the dinosaur, and everything continues as if normal.