Sorting mobile notary complaints into three kinds and how to handle each

Complaints in this trade arrive in three shapes, and they need three different responses. Treat them all as customer service and you will eventually apologize for something you should not have apologized for, or offer a refund in a matter that is not about money at all.

This page sorts them first and then gives a handling process for each.

What to take away

The three categories

The third row is the one to recognize early. A complaint that starts as the recorder sent it back is not a service complaint, even when the client raises it in the same breath as the parking.

Handling a service complaint

Step five saves more relationships than generosity does. A gesture chosen under pressure sets a precedent you did not intend and cannot apply consistently.

Handling a fee complaint

Almost every fee complaint is a quoting failure rather than a pricing one. The client did not know about the waiting charge, the extra act, or the distance band, because it was not stated before you traveled.

So the process is short: put the quote and the invoice side by side, identify the line that was not agreed in advance, and honor the quote. Then fix the quote so the same line is stated next time, which usually means adding an allowance rather than adding a charge.

One line is different from all the others. Where the complaint concerns the fee charged for the notarial act itself, that is a matter governed by your state's statute rather than by your commercial judgment, and you should check the provision before responding at all.

Handling a complaint about the act

This one changes the process entirely.

Preserve everything as it stands. Do not amend the journal, do not re-execute a certificate to make the record tidier, and do not agree to reissue anything before you understand what happened. A record altered after a complaint is far harder to defend than an original that contains a mistake.

Establish what is actually alleged: that the act was performed incorrectly, that the signer was not properly identified, that the certificate was defective, or that the document was rejected for a reason unrelated to the act.

Then take advice. Your commissioning office can say how it expects a deficiency to be handled, and an attorney can advise on anything with legal exposure. A complainant is entitled to raise a matter with the commissioning office, and that is the system working as designed rather than an escalation to be headed off.

What you must not do is tell the client what their options are or what the document means. That is advice, and the fact that you are being complained about does not change the limit. The full picture of what governs the act is in why acceptance by the receiving party is the real measure.

Complaints that appear in public

A negative review is a service complaint with an audience. Two rules.

Answer briefly and factually, and disclose nothing about the appointment. You may not confirm that a person was a client, what document was involved, or who else was present. A reply that defends you by describing the job is a worse outcome than the review.

And be careful about how you gather positive reviews to sit alongside it. Soliciting, incentivizing and displaying reviews is subject to rules, and the Federal Trade Commission sets out what is expected in its guidance on soliciting and paying for online reviews. Burying a complaint under reviews you paid for is a second problem rather than a solution.

The record a complaint should leave

Date received, category, what was alleged, what the record showed, what was done, and what changed as a result. Keep it as an ordinary business record, in the way the IRS describes in its guidance on what a business should keep.

Keep it entirely separate from your notarial journal. The journal contains what your state requires and nothing else, and it is not a place for commentary about a client or an incident.

Reading the pattern rather than the incident

One complaint is an event. Three of the same kind is a defect, and the defect is almost always upstream of where the complaint landed.

Repeated lateness is a scheduling defect, and repeated fee surprises are a quoting defect. Repeated document queries are a check-at-the-table defect; the remedy is the page-level check in the check made before you leave the table.

Repeated confusion about what you were going to do is a standards defect. The drafting method in how to write standards that survive being read by someone else addresses it.

Complaints in an unfamiliar area

Working somewhere new brings a burst of complaints that are orientation problems. Windows sized for the wrong drive times, unfamiliar access rules at a facility, and receiving parties with requirements you have not met before.

Expect that and review weekly rather than monthly for the first two months. Check the local signals in how to read a local market with checkable signals before committing further.

The same caution applies to a wider service area generally, which is the subject of what expansion actually involves.

Common questions

Should I refund a fee when a client is unhappy?

Decide from a written policy, and decide separately for the act fee, which your state governs, and the service charges, which you set. Refunding reflexively teaches everyone the wrong lesson.

A client threatens to report me to the state. What do I do?

Take it seriously, keep the record intact, and get advice. Nothing you say in the moment improves your position, and the record is what will actually be looked at.

Can I ask a client to remove a review?

You can ask, once, politely, and you should be prepared for the answer to be no. Pressuring a client over a review is its own problem and it usually becomes public.

How long should I keep complaint records?

At least as long as you keep other business records, and longer where the matter touched an act, since questions about a notarization can arrive years later.