Abstractor WatchDog - Who Watches Out For Us?

As the mortgage industry continues to struggle, small independent abstractors - those title professionals that perform the majority of title searchers in over 10,000 counties across the country, are struggling to stay in business.
In a highly competitive industry, abstractors are the blue-collar workers, the per-diem workers who drive to numerous courthouses each day to search real estate records for various title and settlement companies located thousands of miles away. As independent contractors, we don't have contracts or employment agreements, therefore, companies can stop sending work whenever they want to, as they frequently do when they owe hundreds or even thousands of dollars to us.
The bitter irony of this business is that title companies are demanding that title searches be completed in 24-48 hours so they can get their clients a completed title policy within 72-96 hours. However, they won't pay the abstractor for 30-60 days. When a large settlement company operates in a county or state, they may have dozens of searches needed each day, quickly running up a bill with an abstractor or few other title examiners. Too many times, the settlement company will simply stop sending work, move on to other independent abstractors and the original searcher will spend months trying to collect the balance.
Due to the competitive nature of the business, most abstractors do NOT talk about clients with other abstractors, a fact the title companies depend on. Therefore the pattern can be repeated hundreds of times a week, across the country with little or no recourse for the little guy in the courthouses.
Now, Abstractor Watchdog has been created to give us a single place to voice our concerns about bad clients and specifically list poor paying settlement companies. We can also give proper credit to those companies that really value our service and pay for the quick, professional product we give them. we don't have to worry anymore about large companies pitting one abstractor against another. We have a resource that has been created for us, by one of us, to protect us all.