Why It Took Me So Long To Get You the Paperwork
Reasons why I write this blog:
1. I love to write.
2. So you will read my stuff and because of my humorously comfortable and conversational writing style feel like we are BFFs and when you have a housing need you will call me to help you handle it because please, we’re BFFs.
3. So that when ridiculous or humiliating things happen to me and no one is around to see them I have a place to go and complain/confess. Because if a tree gets wedding bridesmaid makeup that makes her look like a hooker-clown and then falls down in a forest and no one is around to see it, did it really happen?
Just so as we’re clear. Onto my latest complaint.
I’m really happy so far at my new brokerage. The people are really fun and nice and the distinct lack of rules and red tape simply for the sake of rules and red tape makes me giddy. Plus the heftier paychecks without ridiculous ‘franchise fees’ do not suck either.
The switch is not without its drawbacks, however. (I’m not saying the drawbacks aren’t worth it; but drawbacks they remain.)
I’ve written before about my hate/hate relationship with my fax machine. I’m not going to recap that here, but let’s just say it’s been contentious from the start. Now that I’m with a brokerage that is only ‘virtual’ in an office sense, I am completely on my own with regard to office supplies and equipment. My office at my other brokerage was a good 35 miles from my home, so I didn’t visit there very often anyway, but I still had it as a back-up if I absolutely needed it. Now my only backup is Kinkos. Which charges $1/page or something ridiculous for scanning and faxing.
Here’s my latest battle: Getting the listing paperwork scanned into the computer.
You’d think this wouldn’t be that big of an issue because:
1. I use Docusign, which lets me have people sign documents on the computer with eSignatures.
2. My fax machine is also a scanner.
You’d be wrong because:
1. My esigned contracts are being rejected more and more often by idiot banks and government institutions, who hate trees and the environment and want to kill baby dolphins. In 1 out of 2 transactions I’ve tried to use esigs on recently I’ve been forced to print the docs and have my clients resign with real signatures (because those are totally impossible to fake, you know).
2. My fax machine is actually just a giant paperweight that does nothing else productive in the slightest.
Saturday morning I got up with the intention of getting my new listing all gussied up and online and the paperwork disbursed to the various people who needed it (copies to the owner of the house, to my broker, etc).
I immediately hit a brick wall when I tried to feed my 19 pages through my scanner and only have them spit out an error. After 3 attempts I got my husband (AKA: the technical mind in our family) involved. He then proceeded to spend 4 hours (yes, I exaggerate often, but I swear here I am not. FOUR HOURS.) locked in the office with only occasional eruptions of, ‘Damn it!’ and ‘Stupid scanner!’ (which prompted the Bad Word Police to announce, “Daddy said a bad word. He said, ‘stupid’. It’s a bad word.” Jonas doesn’t yet know that ‘shit’ is a bad word, though, so we’re free to use it without reprimand. ‘Stupid’ and ‘shut up’ however, are on the list, even when used ironically or simply for emphasis like Elaine on Seinfeld.). Jason eventually emerged after having gleaned that our internet provider has made some security changes that no longer allow the scanner to send multiple page documents to my email. I can, however, send a single page scan to myself. No one knows why this works and not 2 pages. It’s one of the great mysteries of life.
Apparently what I have to do is scan each of my 19 pages individually and then reassemble them into one PDF once they are emailed to me. The process will take approximately 8 times as long, but it’s still doable.
Of course after Jason had spent infinity messing with the stupid (BAD WORD) thing the settings were all screwed up and the first three people who tried to call us after that were interrupted by the screeching of the fax machine in their ear. Plus, when I went to try to scan my 19 pages individually I couldn’t even get one to work anymore due to a different error.
Finally, as of this morning the whole system was back to where it had been before I tried anything Saturday morning and I was ready to scan individual pages. So at 8:02 AM I began the process. With each page I fed it in, pushed the Scan to Email button, selected the correct email address, hit start button, fed the sheet through and waited for the little ‘COMPLETED!’ message to pop up. This took almost 20 minutes.
After completing this already laborious task, I sat down at my computer and hit the Send/Receive button to get my 19 emails with my 19 individual PDFs to begin assembling the complete PDF to disburse. Sadly, I did not recieve 19 emails. No, I received THREE EMAILS: page 2, page 5 and page 7.
Apparently when you scan multiple docs in one right after another, they arrive in your inbox at random times over the next several hours in a totally non-sequential order. It’s like a real-estate themed time-sucking puzzle you have to put together with every document. It’s 10:03 AM now and I have approximately 60% of the document pieced together. Oh look, page 17 just made its way into my inbox.
Maybe Kinko’s is worth the $19.