Our prices are based on travel time and mileage. We are two people covering 11 jurisdictions in mostly rural Virginia. If it takes us more than an hour to reach a courthouse just to retrieve a copy, I have to pass that cost on to the client. Quite frankly, I frequently lose money on these requests unless I can bundle them with a search or recording.

We tried to include the cost as a separate trip fee, but our clients objected because they were unable to plan the fee ahead of time because we could not predict if we would have to go to the courthouse or not when we accepted their request. Many of them didn't understand why an update for a draw, that had to be completed at the courthouse, cost so much more than an update that could be completed online from the office. Because of this problem, we had to set the fees for these far flung jurisdictions to automatically include the trip fee on every search.