The limits of technology

Sometimes the advantages of the evolution of technology don't get you any closer to the twentyfirst century. On Friday afternoon, I took a call from a company that arranges for my services for closings and was asked if I did e-closings. I hadn't but didn't really feel like it was something we couldn't do. So I spent the next two hours on line watching information about the process, signing up for the program, and arranging for the closing on Monday. After two hours of preparation for the closing.

Early Monday morning, Kate and I got in her car and drove down to the borrower's home in Upatoi, north and east of Columbus. We arrived on time and worked our way through the closing, despite losing the telephone signal at least four times during the process. After almost an hour, we were back in the car, on our way to the office. When we arrived at the office, Kate took the paper part of the closing package and placed it all in a fedex envelope and later deposited it in the fedex box in town. Everything seemed taken care of satisfactorily.

Meanwhile, we were waiting for the cryouts for foreclosure day for Tuesday. As the day headed into the early evening, we finally received some of the cryouts with information of a large number of others that might go the next morning. Meanwhile, they promised we would have the rest of the cryouts the next morning by 9:30.

At the same time, Kate had developed a fever and didn't look like she could participate the next day. We scrambled to try to find a substitute, because it appeared that we could need at least three people crying out on the next day. At the same time, we knew that we had at least one cryout in Whitfield County, near the Tennessee border. So at that time, I knew that I would have to leave early the next morning to start the cryouts in North Georgia in Dalton.

The next morning, I awoke early and showered and dressed to drive to Dalton. I gassed the car up and headed up towards Dalton. I got there around 10:30 and spoke with Patti. I was informed that we still didn't have the totality of cryouts and wouldn't have them until 10:30. I completed my cryout at the courthouse in Dalton and headed south toward Cartersville, which was the next one I knew I had to complete. At this point, I didn't have the faxed cryout for Bartow County, but suggested to Patti to tell the folks who sent them to email it to my laptop and I would read it off the computer. Meanwhile, she informed me that she had one more in Whitfield County, but that would mean back-tracking to Dalton and returning to Cartersville afterward. It would also mean two more hours which I didn't have.

So I drove into Cartersville and pulled my laptop out. I walked over to the front of the courthouse and opened it up, attached the wifi card and pulled up the email which contained the foreclosure cryout. At that point, I was crying out a foreclosure from off the screen of my computer. Again, I was dipping my toe into the twentyfirst century.

The rest of the day, I cryed out in different counties. I got to cry one more out off my computer in Dawsonville. By the end of the day, I was in Cleveland, trying to work my way back to Griffin. I made it by 4:30.

At this point, I found out that some of the paper documents from my closing on Monday had not been received by the lender. So they wanted me to return to Columbus (Upatoi) and get the borrowers to sign the new documents.

So I was resolved to return to Muscogee County; however, I still couldn't figure out how we left anything out of the package. I spoke with Kate, who had prepared the package. I spoke with Patti, who couldn't find anything left in the file folder from the closing. This morning, I opened the email with the documents they wanted to have signed. At this point, I realized that the new documents had never been sent to us. So they were sending me back to Columbus because they forgot to send the documents the first time.

At this point, a little frustration set in. I was driving back to Columbus and they weren't expecting to pay me for the extra trip, even though they were the cause of my second trip. I met with the husband at 1:00 and couldn't meet with the wife until 3:00. I ate lunch at a local restaurant and wasted some time driving and walking around Columbus. I took some pictures with the phone on my camera. I now have several pictures of houses which had once been the residence of J. C. Pemberton, the inventor of Coca Cola. I also got a picture of a house owned by the Woodruff family, who later owned Coca Cola.

I drove down to the Riverwalk and watched a couple of guys in a fishing boat trying to catch fish. I saw several people fishing from the bank on the Alabama side of the Chattahoochee. I watched some people repainting the metal handrails. I even looked over the shoulder of the statue of an artist drawing the falls and area upriver from where the statute peered out from the top of the riverwalk.

The sky was overcast, but there was an early Fall breeze and it wasn't too hot. One of the city workers suggested that it was a good day to be out fishing on the river. I had to agree. If I wasn't in need of being in my office, trying to send out bills and taking care of the business which was waiting for me while I walked indolently around the river banks above the Chattahoochee in Columbus.

Finally time arose for me to go out to meet with the wife borrower and I followed the husband out to her place of business. I made it back to Griffin by 5:00 and picked up Cindy and went to my office again to prepare the package for mailing to Kansas, but soon found that the information on the borrower's driver's licenses was missing. So I had to wait to get that information.

So, now it is after 12:00 midnight on Thursdayand I will have to send the package back to the lender by fax and by overnight mail. I will also need to negotiate with the lender to see if they will pay me for the extra trip. We shall see. They were saying that the extra trip was my fault. But I know we didn't get the extra pages until early this morning. So no matter how evolved you get with technology, the eternal verities remain. The ultimate lesson remains: When something goes wrong, everyone will look for someone to blame.