Dear Donna - I'm glad you brought this up as I was just thinking this past week about these document retrievals and what amount of time they ultimately entail from start to finish.  #1 too many of us are charging the same for a mortgage retrieval only as for a mort/assign retrieval requests.  To answer your question before I get it - no I don't charge the same but alot of abstractors do.  You should have never gone down to the price you did no matter how many requests you received for.  You think this is easy, and it may be, but it is as you say very time consuming to complete. 

Current Owner searches don't require much time after you complete the information report as the deed is the only other copy to send which is rarely over 2 pages.  With gas prices the way the are and the time we need to invest, or in Robert's case the price of the equipment isn't cheap, as I am sure the upkeep isn't either, document retrieval prices have to come up.  There have been price reductions not increases in the last 6 years that I am aware of - how stupid are we anyway. 

Here in Texas we use to charge a fee plus a per copy fee that was slightly higher that the copy fee we paid at the courthouse.  Some companies have now said they will not pay higher than the courthouse.  Well, the slightly higher fee was a very fair way of pricing as money was made on each page which covered our long distance fax, if that was the case, and the time it took to send the copy;.  Obviously, a document retrieval of 2 pages is much less time consuming than one of 40 pages.  Companies argued that we were getting our service fee - which was true and that should have been for the information we provided not obtaining copies too.  Here in Dallas we have to stand in lines - for an hour sometimes to get copies.  I have felt with the increase in gas prices, email service prices, scanner prices, etc. if they don't want us to charge a little more per page then we all need to increase the prices upward.  This is one service that I felt people were not considering all the time involved. 

For your information, alot of us have a tier pricing system on retrievals, 1-10 is this price, 11-20 is this price, 21-30 this price - some don't reduce after that - you have to at least make so much.  But each tier only 1-2 is given off each order with the first 10 being your full stated price.  From what I can see as your pricing as you stated above, your beginning price may be the lowest price alot of us will reduce to.

I personally liked the additional extra .50 per page price over the stated fee for information as I think it was fairer to their individual client as to what each order entailed.  But me personally, I think that if we are to do these for a flat fee in which no variance from a 2 page retrieval to a 40 page retrieval - all prices need to come up to 25.00 at least to cover our time, expensive equipment and travel expenses.  And remember this is severely affecting your cash flow too - you are holding costs for these clients.  I have abstractor friends that will not do these large order retrievals without cost deposits.  Informational retrievals could be priced lower - I love information only retrievals.  Anyone have thoughts on this?