It's not fear; it's just impractical. There are a couple of reasons for this: first, most companies don't have business credit cards that the "little people" who place orders with the abstractors can use. (Back when I was a legal secretary, no one we worked with expected to be paid up front: not process servers, not office supply people.) We have actually gotten around that with risky clients by having them use Pay Pal where they can dump money into Pay Pal any way they can and then Pay Pal transfers that to OUR account. (At least one of the Michigan counties uses Pay Pal for on-line copy payments. Pay Pal tacks on a 2 cent charge on every copy; the Reg. of Deeds is happy because she doesn't have to deal with it; the abstractors are happy because it is such a small amount, no one cares [the copies are charged to credit cards]; and Pay Pal is happy because everything is automated and those 2 cents add up really quickly.)

The other reason is is that mortgage and title companies don't get up-front money either. They're not going to want to front money until they have at least some expectation of being reimbursed themselves. Now statistically speaking, we all know that most of the orders we run will probably never be completed on their end, but the mortgage/title companies at least want the opportunity to collect before they pay out.

Alix

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