Notaries and the BBB

Signing companies depend on notaries to carry out business. In an effort to lessen misunderstandings, many companies have placed procedures and notary resources online. Disputes, however, still occur; many of them involve payment.

Notary Beware, for example, was created “to provide Notaries with a ‘one stop’ web site to voice THEIR opinion” about companies who do not engage in fair and ethical payment practices.

“I do not have time to log in to every notary web site and read all comments on a particular company,” Linda Kauffman, the author of the site writes, “hence the creation of this web site.”

Notary Rotary and GoMobileNotary offer discussions of companies who don’t pay or don’t pay on time that one can access by running a search of their forums with code words like “no-no” and “avoid”.

Still, notary boards and awareness sites can only do so much, which is why many notaries have turned to the Better Business Bureau to arbitrate their disputes. The BBB, which was founded in 1912, is an organization based in the United States and Canada that provides company reliability reports and offers complaint resolution between consumers and companies through arbitration and mediation.

Although BBB often refrain from dealing with employer-employee disputes and disputes concerning fees where no misrepresentation is involved, the Los Angeles bureau does take complaints from notaries.

“We take their complaints all the time,” says Gary Almond, Vice President of the Los Angeles Bureau. “The LABBB handles notaries because they don’t have the benefit of the Labor Board. The way it’s handled varies from state to state and bureau to bureau, but we do handle them here.”

To place a complaint, customers must refer to the bureau in the area of the company about which they are complaining. Notaries are advised to work with reliable signing companies and check whether the bureau in their area accepts notary complaints. To find a bureau, access the main BBB site’s city and state search engine at: http://lookup.bbb.org