J T:

In your case it seems only to be a breakdown of communication between the signing agent and your company resulting from some confusion in your relocation. It seems to have been resolved in an equitable, mature and amicable manner.

However, as to the other companies that share a similarity of name in states other than New York, this may not be the case. I recently performed closings in Connecticut for two out of state companies with almost identicle names and whose offices were located only a stone's throw from each other. One paid its bill on time and without a problem. The other company was another story. Needless to say I successfully enforced payment in full. There is much the abstractors could learn from the signing agents.

The signing agents are a much more pugnacious group than the abstractors, and far less tolerant of companies who are consistently late with payment and look for minor problems to withhold or reduce payment. Most of the successful signing agents will not sign contracts with the signing services/title companies that provide for reductions in fees.

If the signing service/title company records the mortgage without such a contractual requirement, and the mortgage bears the notary's/attorney's signature on the acknowledgement, the notary's/attorney's work has been accepted.  Payment in full is then required. If there have been any minor defects of performance, they have been waived. How serious could they have been if the mortgage successfully funded and was recorded? The internal quality control people at the title company make the judgment call as to record or not record the mortgage. Most of the time the complaints of minor problems are a pretext for non- payment.Those demanding a reduction in the signing agent's fee quickly back off if the mortgage in question has been recorded.

Often the problems of which the signing agents complain relate to the signing services performance rather than the title companies, and these show up in the form of complaints on sites like Notary Rotary and Gomobilenotary. The complaints generally concern issues of non-payment, late payment or being requested to unethically (and illegally) back date documents so that the loan can fund on time, and the loan officer and/or title company can get paid. No notary is going to risk losing his/her license to accomodate some incompetent or overworked loan officer/signing service/title company which has failed to properly prepare or email the document package. Why should he?

One of the prime concerns of the signing agents is the abuse of a web site to pretextually black ball signing agents who were successful in enforcing payment in full for their work, or refused to put their license at risk when asked to do so by a signing service or title company.

One of the signing agents recently indicated that he turned down work from a problematic signing service due to some unfortunate prior business dealings either between it and the signing agent or one of the other signing agents. It was a company with which I was familiar, and based on my experience I was more inclined to believe the signing agent. When the signing agent declined the work he was told that he would be black balled. Personally I am looking forward to providing a lot of legal representation for black balled signing agents.

Several months ago there was some discussion on this forum about use of its rating service to alert abstractors about slow pay/no pay clients. There was a long dialogue on the potential use of the system for unfounded retaliatory rating posts against the abstractor. There were in fact one or two postings on this forum by people that had experienced this problem. The only recourse they had was to try to work out the problem directly with the party posting the retaliatory rating.

I think you can begin to see the concern for unwarranted black balling. In Connecticut their are legal remedies for this...suits for slander...libel...contract breach...unjust enrichment...and my personal favorite unfair trade practices. I have been toying with the thought of enforcing clients' claims through a civil suit under RICO. However, RICO has become a legal quagmire in recent years very often relating to its definition of racketeering and the requirement of the use of interstate wire or U S mail serices. The wide scale use of the internet (interstate wire service) to transmit document packages may alleviate part of the problem. I am still toying with the idea.