What are all these fees about?!

In today’s economy, we see a lot of businesses trying to do more with less. Fewer staff and fewer resources are becoming all too common. Unfortunately, this is not limited to just the private business sector. We are seeing a lot of county and state governments being hit as well. Shorter work days and fewer staff seem to have become the “norm” in these sectors. Some schools no longer have staff in the registrar’s office and many businesses are also short-staffed in human resources departments.

With this trend of budget cuts, we do see a lot of state and county governments trying to obtain revenue in other ways. One way they are obtaining it is to charge a fee to access their records. Some states have minimal fees, then you have the other end of the spectrum – the state of New York has increased their fees to $68.00 per search. It is actually cheaper to search some foreign countries than it is to search the state of New York.

Many colleges and universities have also taken huge personnel cuts, with a lot of those cuts being in the records department and registrar’s offices. Being shorthanded in this department means they must outsource their records to companies that specialize in that. Those companies don’t do the work for free – so there is another fee. Many companies have staff cuts in human resources and personnel. They are outsourcing their records to various services as well, which means another fee.

So next time you see all these fees starting to add up, please be assured MBI does our due diligence to find easier, more cost efficient ways to doing searches for you. As always, we are more than willing to answer any questions regarding fees you see.