Sorry I offended you Robert but you have posted alot of gripes lately and I still say  that it is not going to help anything.  Everyone just needs to price their services based on what they need to make - profit and all and stop worrying about everyone elses prices.  You all know that most of the time they come back to you when they find out the other undercutting abstractor has no experience and makes a mess of their work and orders.  In addition, a lot of abstractors are going out of business!

As far as my pricing, I keep my pricing and am actually going to increase mine soon.  I also have minimums for all my counties except my 2 main counties like David does.  If a 20.00 order comes in and my minimum is 50.00 for that county - they want it bad enough they will pay it and a lot of times they will.  You have to do that with smaller counties - and actually I am raising my minimum - I can't run to a county for one order when my costs have increased so much.  Companies are the ones that changed what kinds of orders come our way and how much - now we have to adjust to the change - and the answer is not going down and out of business.  It is saying "okay you changed the order criteria, now I have to change my pricing." 

You know by the orders you are getting or not getting which companies are only using you for ones they cannot do themselves (and again I am referring to that "they"  think they can - not the real truth of the matter).  I sure can do it but things have changed - it will cost $100.00 to do that order for you.  Because you know it is going to be off the computer, or a very difficult search and every time.  Not a great loss if they go elsewhere would it be - and hopefully the next person will say - that will be $150.00 - and by the time they stop calling perhaps they would have wished they took your price.  I prefer to not be the laughing stock of the industry, as I believe we are being viewed as right now - like these companies would go down on their premiums, etc. or decrease their profit line - okay - we must have been born yesterday right?  We are only adjusting our pricing according to what the companies did to us.  If you put that in context and make your client understand that they are the ones that made the changes that have prompted our necessity to change our pricing structure instead of them making you feel like you owe it to them to not make any rate changes.  I mean come on you all - get real! 

Me personally, I would rather not gripe about it, rather not do a venting session - it doesn't do anyone any good.  As several SOT members know me personally and know that I will help direct them in ways I have been thinking about changing my business success and theirs - because that is the best thing I can do for myself and this industry.  I am gearing my business in a direction that I can take more control over my profit etc - we need to get out of the way of thinking that VM and title companies are the way to go.  We need to head in a complete different direction and there are ways of doing it.

As far as pricing in your state won't hurt pricing in another - that is a crock of crap.  You are talking national companies.  Once one company gets a few to go down in a state, then they go to another state and say we have a few that have gone down.  How in the heck did anyone go down in the first place?  Was anyone making so much money that they thought this was an option as their gas was going up, their E&O was going up, their car insurance was going up, the cost of office supplies were going up, medical going up?  Someone give me an example of any other business that went down in pricing - other than running specials every once in awhile? 

Also, sometimes new abstractors call a company in another state and play as if they are a customer to get pricing - then bring that pricing schedule over to their state which is one way the undercutting gets put into place - inexperience and stupidity - not understanding pricing differences from state to state based on cost of living

Like I said THEY changed our industry and what work we get and we must be strong enough and smart enough to change our business accordingly.