Where the Hell Are the Notaries?

Tue, 2006-10-24 22:41 — willfe

This afternoon I had a document that needed to be notarized. Fortunately it’s not a big deal and there’s no massive rush for it; it’s a good thing, too, because I couldn’t find a damned notary in this dinky little town. It annoys me mightily.

I went to a pharmacist (on someone’s recommendation). I went to two banks (you have to be an account holder or they won’t even talk to you; what happened to just paying for a notary’s service instead of assigning the task of notary to the minions working your local bank branch?). I went to a packing & shipping store (they always had notaries in Colorado). I even pestered the vehicle registration and clerk of courts offices (handily, I found forms there that may be necessary in a few weeks), and they didn’t have public notary services either.

The only actual “success” I encountered today was in getting a referral from the shipping store clerk for a mobile notary. This inspires an interesting business idea, actually — since there don’t seem to be any notaries around, I could just snag a notary license and charge a convenience fee for driving around like that mobile notary does. Doesn’t seem bad — $10 per page, and, say, $10 per location. So if I notarize ten sheets of paper for five clients, I’d make $150 in a day. Not bad money.

The lack of these already in existence (I know of one) tells me there isn’t much call for such services, though. That, or it’s just not very well advertised.

One thing I want to vent about though is the irritating tendency of banks to offer notary services, but only to their customers. It takes about two minutes to actually perform a notarization and you can charge ten bucks a sheet for it; why the hell do banks do this for free for their customers but turn away people willing to pay for it?

It’s a “perk” of doing business with a given bank, sure, but these are the same companies that make money hand-over-fist off the money their customers deposit. The notion of a bank ever charging anything to its customers for normal banking activity (writing checks, making deposits/withdrawals, etc.) is so assinine I don’t even know where to begin, but banks do it. You see ads all the time now for “Free Checking!” as if it’s a new idea. It’s not; it’s how it’s supposed to work. A bank makes money by investing what you deposit with it. It shouldn’t be charging you for writing checks, for having more than X transactions per month, for using competing banks’ ATMs, etc.

Bleh. I’m done ranting about it now; I’m doing everything I can about the problem — whining about it publicly where hopefully one person notices and agrees, and not doing business with any of those banks.

Guess tomorrow I’ll work on finding a local notary Smiling