Fidelity National TItle

I just spent over a week dealing with this office for one request: A copy of my original closing statement. I spoke to two different people telling me they would follow up to get me the statement. The second person I spoke to in the office was very rude while giving me excuses and promising me that she would follow up with the manager right after the call and would have the statement sent to me the same day. I didn’t receive it, nor did I get a call back. Don’t waste your time with this office as they don’t follow through on their promises and you will find yourself chasing after them to get what you need. Finally I called the Petaluma office and the person, Laura who answered the phone, told me that she would find someone who could get the statement to me. Sure enough she followed up with a phone call to me and she asked the manager in the Mill Valley office to print me out a copy of the statement. In 1 day I received the copy of the closing statement with an apology on the difficulty I experienced. So, bottom line, my recommendation is if you need help in Sonoma go to the Petaluma office and in Marin, go to the Mill Valley office. Avoid the Larkspur office if you are looking for a Title Company who values customer service and treats their customers with respect and professionalism.

If you are a buyer looking to purchase a home in Marin County, you have a choice of different companies to use for title insurance. Most people just go with whomever their real estate agent recommends. If your agent recommends these guys, send him/​her to my review and pick someone else. This office is so poorly managed it is a wonder they are still in business. Here’s what happened to me.
I was selling my home in Corte Madera, so the buyer is the one who selected Fidelity. Nine days before our close date, we were contacted by an escrow officer to get the process started. We gave her all of the information she asked for and were then sent an e-​doc of the title to sign. She had listed me as the buyer and my husband as the seller. Everyone makes mistakes, but this caused the title to need to be reissued and we were told this takes time. So, instead of signing our documents on Monday evening as originally planned, our signing was moved to Wednesday evening. Since we had movers coming at 9 am Thursday morning, this was less convenient, but we had no other choice. I was later told by this person’s manager that this should not have caused a delay and is not sure why we were told that, but that’s another story.
Wednesday evening, the notary arrives with our paperwork. We begin signing and realize that both our names are misspelled. And not in the same way — my middle initial is wrong, his last name is wrong. Inexplicably, since the title where I was listed as the buyer is spelled correctly. And not just in the signature blocks, but throughout the body of the document. The notary, my husband and I had to painstakingly go through every page to locate any place where our names appeared, draw a line through what was wrong, rewrite it correctly, and then we had to initial each change. 56 times. The signing took over an hour because of this mistake.
The next day, the escrow officer called to apologize. We accepted the apology and moved on to the specifics of the closing. We explained that we needed the check sent overnight via fed ex. This was one of the options we had to choose from — we weren’t asking for anything special. They agreed to send us the check so that it would arrive on Saturday. Do you think this happened? Of course not. Disbursement of funds is kind of important — how do you simply forget to cut a check after closing?
But it gets worse. Saturday morning when we still had not received confirmation of close or fed ex tracking number, we emailed the escrow officer (since the number we had for her was office and it was closed on Saturday). About an hour and a half later, the escrow officer left a fairly nonchalant voice mail on my husband’s phone stating that she made «a little goof» yesterday when she sent the check out. She forgot to check Saturday delivery, so we wouldn’t receive the check until Monday. She was sorry and hoped it wasn’t a problem, and if we had any questions we could call her at the office on Monday. Didn’t leave a cell number to contact her over the weekend.
Roughly 30 minutes after this, she called my husband back; this time she was much more apologetic. I don’t know if it was my scathing email to her or our realtor contacting her manager that prompted this call, but either way she was compelled to send a scanned copy of the check with the tracking info. At this point, it was clear that she lied on the first voice mail about sending the check Friday but forgetting to mark it for Saturday delivery, as the fed ex receipt was dated Saturday.
I understand people make mistakes. I am more concerned about lying about sending the check out on Friday. If she is dishonest, this is very troubling as she has access to lots of sensitive information (social security numbers, banking info, etc.). I also think the best course of action she could have taken when she realized the mistake was to contact us, let us know that she forgot to send the check, and ask us what we would prefer her to do, as opposed to trying to cover her tracks and leaving us with no way to contact her until Monday. I also learned that her manager was aware that she did not cut the check on Friday, and she also made no attempt to call us, take responsibility for the mistake and see what we wanted her to do (Fed Ex has same day delivery). The manager did call to apologize on Monday and waived the doc prep fee, but didn’t really take any responsibility in the matter even though she had been warned by our realtor before the close that we were having problems with the transaction and she could have overseen the close.