Robin's Ruminations

Sounds good to me. I've tried to stay professional, even when I have Washington outfits try to get me to lean a little to the unprofessional. I have lost customers because I will not lie. So thank God this is my hobby and not a requireent to live.................TMG

We need more process servers who, like you, are willing to lose a customer instead of their honor.

I agree with this Robin. As commented above, I have lost clients because I refuse to let our servers do unlawful service for them. I will continue to be professional so that our industry can grow professionally and hopefully we can have the legistlature on our side when it comes to further regulations.

Peggy Brevik

Cascade Legal Support Services, Inc.

Earlier this week I got a couple of Affidavits of Service back from an agency in another state. As I was closing the jobs out in our system, I realized that the affidavits had been mailed back to us unsigned; I immediately jumped on the phone and called the agency. Of course no one picked up on the other end and I was forced to leave a message, in which I started by thanking the agency for completing the work and sending back the affidavits and then explained the situation of them being unsigned. After hanging up I made a note to myself about the phone call, set the jobs to the side of my desk, and prepared to wait.

The next morning I received a phone call from the agency. They started by apologizing for sending back the affidavits in an incomplete manner and then things got a little interesting. The individual I was speaking to stated that if I was okay with doing it, he would give me permission to scribble a line on the bottom of both affidavits giving them the appearance of having been signed. He then stated that if I was not okay with that he would print and sign new copies and get them out in that days mail. I immediately responded that though a tempting offer, I was not okay with “signing” these affidavits and asked that he send new ones.

A couple of days later the client started asking about his affidavits and my office manager explained that the original set had been sent unsigned and that we were waiting for a signed set to arrive in the mail. Not five minutes later the mail was delivered, with the new set of signed affidavits in it. The client was informed that the affidavits had arrived and they were mailed out that day to him.

It was after this whole process was complete that I began to think about what has been occurring in New York and I realized just how easy these mistakes would be to make. When he gave me permission to sign those affidavits; I was honest when I said it was a tempting offer, even though it is one that I would never agree to. But it did make me stop and think about just how easy it would be for someone else to agree to it. We start thinking about get things back to clients and keeping them happy and we start telling ourselves that no will find out this one time, but New York has just proved that one time turns can turn into all the time and somebody always finds out.

There are so many temptations for process servers to take shortcuts in service. As a process serving software provider, I cringe as some of my customers demand stored signature images and notary images to just automatically appear on the proofs of service so they dont have to take the time to notarize it themselves or have the server sign it.

A process server's affidavit is their product.

You dilute your product at your peril.

Rob

Robert Dayton

LoyalDog Software

PO Box 350604

Jamaica, NY 11435

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