The law is that there must be a break down of costs. If title company is getting work from an abstractor they must show what the search fee is and what the copy fee is.

The copy fee is what they paid for the copies not necessarily the county fee to the person whom retrieved them. If I as abstractor go into county and get copies the receipt if any I receive is mine. What I turn around and charge for those copies is their receipt for copies a break down to them for fee search and copy fee is needed.

These larger copies are trying to state they need copy fee from county. Well if they were to go in any of my counties and ask them to retrieve copies they would be paying a lot more then what we charge. One example of a county fee is $2.00 for the first few pages and then $1.50 per page after that per document. No they do not take credit cards. And if you want them mailed they have to receive payment and it must clear before your request even gets put in the pile. You could wait 3 weeks before your order is even processed. So our additional fees for additional copies has always been warranted.

The search process is increased by time and money being put out for additional costs. A search with just a deed say could take 15 minutes to write/type, scan, put together and send. A search with 200 pages could take an hour or hours to put together. Time is our service and every minute is valuable and has a price. Companies always state they will only pay county copy fees however every company we work for that states that pays us our fee without any problems. They get away with it with those willing to give in to this ridiculous request to do a service for free. They make a much much larger % on their effort they we do. Do not hesitate to stand firm on your costs for your efforts. You deserve to be paid for your time just like they do.