Maybe the Cleveland office was used to dealing with progressive states like Illinois, Utah, Florida, etc. where you just subscribe online and can get everything you need in minutes.  We were doing that back in IL in the '90s.
^{The East Coast is SOOOOO behind the times!}

I guess what you could have told the woman is that your area is still on book and page and you have to actually go to that dustly ol' vault and pick up REAL books and find the info.  And, that if she wanted you to drop everything to do that, you would, but she needed to IMMEDIATELY send you $400 via PayPal and as soon as you had confirmation of the funds, you'd be out the door lickety split.  

BTW, we do business in 45 states - so, I am finding that more and more, it is a requirement to prepay for the searches (which I have NO problem with, because we make whoever is ordering the title, prepay  when it is required by the searcher).

The great thing with PayPal is now you don't HAVE to have an account with them to send funds.  So anyone can use their check, credit card, etc. to fund payment.  So, noooooo more excuses.

I do this when investors working with short sales and pre-foreclosures want a Report on Title, for the "if it looks good, I'll buy the property" deals.  That way I don't get stuck for search costs on the fall through deals.