I have read all the post regarding Nationwide, with great interest.  I am one of those people, who try to get into this forum as often as I can & read all the postings, but I rarely post myself.  Not from lack on interest, mostly lack of time.  Sometimes it is because there is just nothing left to say.  That is probably the case here, but I was compelled to put in my two cents anyway.
First of all I think that ALL of you are correct in what you have posted.  I worked for VM companies for 16+ years. I was in middle management.  I do abstract work for some now.  I have many friends still working for VMs.  I am sure that there are searchers, who have never had problems & there some who have had nothing but problems from the same client.  It is true that the people that you usually deal with on the phone, are doing what they have been told to do.  However in some case these people have been instructed and trained to treat abstractors as a necessary evil.  They are told that they have to keep at abstractors all the time, most of the abstractors don't know what they are doing.  Abstractors are lazy, their work is easy, they won't meet your turn times if you don't keep after them.  If you can't keep your abstractors in line, you could lose your job.  Of course the people that are telling them this, in most cases have never been to a court house in their life.  And while it is also true that they are just doing their job, some people take that to a different level.  There are ways of doing your job that don't involve demeaning or angering the person you have to deal with (this works both ways).  I have trained many people throughout my career and never have I ever condoned any of my employees mistreating any of our business partners. 
As far as Pricing & asking searchers to lower their fees, all of us understand profit margins.  Your bring in money & you pay the bills, hopefully there is something left over.  What do we do when it doesn't.  We try to cut our expenses.  In my experience with the VM's they do this by laying people off, and cutting vendors fees.  The BIG difference is that in some cases the reason that the VM's are in trouble is that they have over extended themselves, paid REALLY BIG bonuses to the REALLY IMPORTANT people, and reveled in the PERKS of Corporate America.  (We have ENRON's in our industry too).  They may still have a good profit margin, but they aren't getting as big a bonus as they are used to.  I know someone in a VM company whose Bonus is determined on how many Abstractors she can get to lower their fees.  This is her sole, full time job.  How many times have we seen the principals from a company, close that company, put all their employees out of work & then open another company & start all over again. 
Not all VM's companies are the same, just as not all Abstractors are the same.  But as for lowering my fees,  ABSOLUTLY NOT!!!!!  Maybe I will lose some of their work, but as far as I am concerned abstractors are already underpaid.  If I lower my fees, I will have to let some of my people go, and I haven't had a bonus in years!!!!!

Wanda Steudel
AccuSearch