"The process has been well received by all of our vendors" -- bull!  Well now that you've objected, and the policy is obvioulsy no longer well received by all vendors anymore, do you suppose that they will review the policy?

I guess it's pretty easy to pretend that one's policies are "well received" once one views any correspondence regarding those policies as "unnecessary phone calls and e-mails" and just ignores them.

Our policy on auto pay is very simple.... the first time it's wrong, everything stops until a check is cut to correct it....the second time it's wrong... everything stops again....amazing how fast the "corrective' check goes out..oh yeah..by FedEx as we request... the third time...we're off it.

Just increase your current fees by 20% and then offer them a 10% break- but that will be added back if the auto pay system causes any problems.That should be "well received"
Reducing our fees now will just set us up for another round of fee reductions in the future. I just don't think it is a wise move to cut our prices now-especially with the slow down that we all are experiencing. And of course, there is always the problem of anyone increasing the title fees without adding any basic "core title " information , which is a violation of section 8 of  Respa.

Steve Meinecke

The only sane way to deal with auto pay is to offer a flat fee, including copies.  You are never going to win an argument against a computer.

First, you find the average cost of document copies for any particular type of search.  Add it to the price of your search.  Then, add 10% to the price of your search.  Then reduce the price of your search by 10%, so your customer can enjoy the discount.

You will win some and you will lose some by offering a rate that includes copies.  But it should pretty much even out, and you will be able to get to the business of running your business - not counting copies and chasing copy fees.

I, um, like auto pay ... am I the only one that has had good experiences with it?  We have several clients that pay what we bill through an autopay system that directly deposits into our company checking account.  When there is a mistake, it is addressed and corrected.  It is automated and easy and saves time and money for us and them.

We have also experienced the problems that you illustrate - those folks are definitly out there, but fighting against autopay in favor of invoices seems kinda like fighting against cell phones in favor of pagers.

Am I the lone voice in the wilderness on this topic?  Is it just me?

Auto-pay may work great if you are just doing current owner for an all inclusive fee (including copies).  But, with some of our counties charging $2 per page for copies, we just can't give an all inclusive fee.  And it seems that anytime you charge anything "extra" they still only pay that base rate.  The biggest problem we have is when we call them with problems, they want to know the order number of the search that they didn't pay.  When you bill several searches on an invoice and you get a check that is short, it is a real pain to figure out which searches they shorted.  They, of course, always show that the search was paid because they never added in the additional copy charges.

And, it was worse with this particular client because we mainly do commercial work for them.  There is no way to give a base price for commercial work.  I woudln't even attempt to.

I don't know why these companies have a problem with getting a monthly itemized invoice.  As I mentioned, each search we return has the fee clearly marked on the first page.  So, they know what to expect when they get the invoice.  In my opinion, the only reason to use auto-pay is to screw the abstractor out of additional expenses.  They seem to know that they can get away with shorting the checks and the abstractors won't go through the hassle of trying to collect it.

I have experienced extreme attempts to intimidate me and cheat me out of money lately.  The few times this has happened I have returned emails to the aggressor telling them if their email is correct then they are to never send another order to us because we will not process their orders from this day forward.  I end with "Please find another source for Alaska.

If they show a willingness to compromise and reverse their inhouse programs which we do not support nor will we ever agree too then we continue to do business with them.  If not we drop them like a hot potato.   There seems to be this "entitlement" attitude from the big corporatons that they should get FREEBIES and DISCOUNTS.  Not with my company it isn't going to happen.

If I succeed or have the unfortunate experience of going belly up its gonna be my way not their way.  Why should I work according to their ideas that are specifically designed to screw the abstractor.  ME?

I do have some really great clients who have autopay that actually do pay my fee although when it comes to copies they seem to forget or drag payment out.  But, they are good clients so I don't kick them in the butt for it.

Are we in business to make a living and profit or do we exist to give contributions of our time and money to help support large corporations?  If were not profiting why would we want to work?  WE are not employees.  We are filed in the state in good standing to do business in Alaska as a corporation.  We provide title related services for OUR FEES!   Not their fees, OUR FEES.

As I told one client who claimed our fees were higher than Alabama, I said; "Well your in Alaska now and it cost lots of money to do business in Alaska."

I don't want to pick on Alabama but really give me a break!  Does Alaska sound like its anywhere near Alabama in cost of living or cost of doing business?

  I too hate autopay.  While we've vowed never again to have costs for copies since going digital with high resolution (8 megapixel or higher) cameras, thus obviating the need to charge ANY cost for copies of documents or maps ever again, we don't like the attitude of some clients when problems occur.  The "stop work" idea is great if the client provides sufficiently high volume for your work-stoppage to be effective, but it does also call your ethics into question in doing so.  You accept a project from that same client knowing fully ahead of time that work stoppage on this project will impact your client's current customer based on the fact that your client failed to pay you for one of their prior customer's work.  I find that to be dubious at best.

  The autopay that generates a billing invoice to it's own firm?  The role of my business-to-business contract is for me to provide a  bill signed by my own hand for the work that my firm has delivered.  This goes out with each and every one of our projects as they are delivered and not in some monthly or bi-monthly manner.  My plumber does not say "meh, I'll bill you at the end of the month just in case youts gets anotha leak or somethin'...".  He hands me the bill and I need to pay it.  Same with my clients. 

  Why not just have a billing template you send out with a project and track payment?  That is what running a business is about (at least in part).  Otherwise, go and get a job in cube land, I'd certainly advise.

I love the new line that they require a 10% discount.  I would love to tell my vendors that things are bad and I will only be paying 90% of what the want for their services. One of our Tttle Companies also requested a 10% reduction in fees. I replied that that would be fine but...... they were presently receiving a volume discount and since they no longer were ordering the required number of searches we would return to their original pricing and then give them a 10% discount. There new search price would be more expensive so they had the choice of remaining at the current price or take there 10% discount. You guessed it they are no longer ordering from us.

Dave Vogeler

I thought I should chime in here since my company built one of the first auto-pay systems I know of. We have used it since around 2003 and do not have any more billing discrepensies than we used to have. Many auto-pay systems where designed in a way that does not account for all the copy fee variations that exist in the country. For example, in x county it is $3 for the first page and then $1 for each additional page. In Y county mortgages cost $1 per page, while judgments cost $.25 and so on and so on and so on. We spent a lot of time trying to detail a system that would account for this and finally concluded it was too complicated to automate.  Instead, we decided to just let the abstractor tell us what the copy fee is on our order form and we pay it as is unless there was a document not asked for or needed. For example, if we asked for pertinant pages to open mortgages and they send a full copy we will count up the pages we asked for and pay for that but not the others. There is nothing unfair about that. Our order form states very clearly what copies we are requesting. We added a field on the front of or order page for the abstractor to tell us the search fee, copy fee and total fee due. In most cases the search fee matches what our computer system shows and if not we call and ask why not.  If there is room to think that we made a mistake or where unclear then we take responsibility and pay the additional fee or try to compromise if we think the vendor also had a significant part in the mistake. So long as people treat each other the same way they would like to be treated auto-pay can and does work and does save time. We also do a full audit of auto-pay every month before the checks are cut and we make corrections before sending payment. One of our senior people pulls up every single order and verifies that auto-pay is going to pay correctly, especially looking at copy fees. They look at the total fee on our order form that they abstractor hand wrote, the agreed upon fees with the abstractor that we have in writing prior to sending the search and look to see what the computer is going to pay. It is as acurate as the people who enter the data (not perfect) and that is why we audit. Each month we finds mistakes and adjusts them, some in our favor but just as many in the favor of the abstractor and we do . Usually it is a wash for us but the payment is more acurate this way. Overall, we still save time with billing.

Auto-pay does not work well for Commercial work unless you have a fixed commercial total fee which is practically unheard of. On all our commercial work we ask for a quote up front from the abstractor and this is what we enter into our system. If there are going to be additional fees beyond what was agreed to it needs to be agreed to again by both parties before it is too late to say no. This respects everyone's free will. If we make an agreement stick to it. IF it needs to change after we agree then tell the other party so they still have free will to agree or disagree with the new terms. Our goal is to work with the same abstractor for as long as possible and to do that we have to be a client that abstractors like to work with. I know we probably fall short sometimes but we try very hard to be fair and reasonable.

I guess we have a hybrid system. It is auto-pay but our production folks can override it very easily and add additional fees as needed and this is why I think it works better than some of the others out there. We are not perfect but we do try to treat vendors like they are clients because we rely on them as much as they rely on us. Without good abstractors we could not keep a single client happy.  

Patrick: That's EXACTLY what we've done for the last 2-3 years.  It works for us, too.

Alix

Dan,

I am with you on this, personally I LOVE auto pay!!

I have only had problems once with copies in Wisconsin $2.00 for the first page and $1.00 for every page thereafter, I was being paid $1.00 per page,  but my client came up with a great solution which we have implemented and no more problem getting paid the correct copy fee's. And I am being paid for the missed pages on all prior searches.

In NJ and NY I normally charge a flat rate for a current owner search and if full copies are required on certain orders, my flat rate takes that into consideration.

So no you are not the lone voice in the wilderness on this topic.