Title Professionals Group

I am in receipt of your letter dated May 21 with the complaint from (one of) Sellers attached thereto.

The customer was understandably unsatisfied with the fact that my title examiner missed the fact that a mortgage which he did not initially find in the public record (because his name was misindexed by the ***s office) was released. My examiner should have found the release, no question, and for that reason and the inconvenience that it caused, my office manager offered them $100 off their fees.

As is sometimes the case, seller’s lender was not very fast about providing a mortgage payoff; we suggested that if the seller was a part of the phone conversation with us and lender it might be able to move faster and that is what happened.

I suppose the definition of “makes a long list of excuses” is subjective. My employees tried to explain to seller what had happened and why, and that apparently took longer than he appreciated. The fact that we did not have a mortgage payoff from seller’s lender when he came to sign (which was the only thing lacking, contrary to the complaint), had no bearing whatsoever on when his home sale could occur. It is true that our ability to obtain a timely payoff was hampered by the missed mortgage, but again that delay did not have an effect on his transaction. We could have and would have sent him a new settlement statement that reflected his payoff amount prior to the closing, and he would not have had to come to the office or take any time off to sign the revised settlement statement.

I can sympathize with seller’s frustration at the fact that the sale was delayed. However, the reason for the delay was entirely due to complications arising from the sale of the buyer’s house, which we had no control over as another title company was handling that transaction. The buyers’ sale resulted in their receiving significantly less proceeds than anticipated, which resulted in a delay while they acquired additional funding needed to complete this purchase, which resulted in a delay in their loan funding from their lender, which resulted in our having no funds to disburse to seller until the very end of the day on the 22nd (arriving on the 23rd). None of these matters had anything to do with us or were anything that we can effect in any way. Once the complications were resolved, we immediately proceeded with the closing of this transaction.

As to the disputed amount: Seller was contractually obligated via the purchase price with buyer to pay for certain items. The amounts he paid to my company for its services totaled just over $1,300; other amounts may have been paid to us but were only deposited in our escrow account on their way to pay other parties. Of that amount that was for our services, approximately half was for seller’s portion of the title insurance policy and that charge would have been exactly the same at every title agency in the state, and that was a charge that seller agreed to pay in their purchase agreement. That brings the amount he paid our company down to around $650 for its services, after the $100 credit we gave them for the inconvenience regarding their mortgage. I consider that a fair charge.

Although my employees’ work on this transaction did not meet seller’s approval, the disapproval was not for lack of effort, professionalism or competence. Although I regret the initial error we made regarding the missed mortgage, seller’s overall dissatisfaction appears to be based much more on ignorance of the closing process and unreasonable expectations than on an impartial evaluation of our work. Had seller kept the complaint factual and discussed this with me, perhaps I would have offered something additional to compensate for his perceived inconvenience. However, after reading the exaggerations, accusations, and fabrications in seller’s complaint, the only offer I can make is to not do business with them again. I’m sure they will happily agree to that arrangement.

The customer already received a refund of $100 for the one error my employee made that cost them any time. We made no other errors, and as I explained in my previous answer the delay was solely the result of the buyer’s sale of another property which we had no involvement in. There will be no further refund or offer from my company under any circumstance.