ServiceLink RON platform is terrible and will delay your real estate transaction causing extreme frustration for your customers
The process of doing a remote online closing, also know as RON, with ServiceLink, is literally the worst experience of my life. In order to begin the process, you will need to verify your identity which is great. I'm all for protecting people and making sure there is no real estate fraud but they have to do a better job of wording the questions so that the real people that are trying to use the service can complete the identity verification and then complete their real estate transactions in a reasonable amount of time. I am on my 3rd attempt to complete my closing (at $125 per attempt) and the amount of stress I am under to try to answer these poorly worded questions is insane. Each time you don't "pass" the identity screening you are locked out for 24 hours.
Here's the process....after you scan your DL or passport, they give you 2 minutes to answer 5 questions pulled from your credit report or other public data sources. The questions are worded in a way that leads me to believe they are written by someone not from the USA or ServiceLink is intentionally trying to trick you so you get the questions wrong. Here is one of the questions that I find to be very confusing and this is verbatim. "According to our records, you currently own/lease, or have owned/leased within the past year, one of the following vehicles. Please select the vehicle that you purchased or leased prior to March 2018 from the following choices" Then they list 4 choices or none of the above. I had to read that question a few times to understand it and then made my selection, but the clock is ticking (only 2 minutes total) and you have 4 more questions to answer. I failed once and we were locked out for 24 hours. On the next attempt, I passed by my co-signer failed and we were again locked out for 24 hours. We are now on our 3rd attempt.
ServiceLink....there has to be a better way to verify a person's identity online and/or to only lock someone out for a few hours while a new attempt is setup and then ask new questions. At this point, we are 3 days beyond my original scheduled closing date and all of the contents of my home are in storage. I am sleeping on an air mattress in my old apartment with no wifi. There are so many other plans that had to be delayed because we still have not been able to close on this transaction. It's been an absolute mess and I'm still not even close to being done. If we fail on this 3rd attempt, we are pulling the plug on the RON process and going to try a conventional closing but that will take at least 2 days because wires have to be sent back to lender and then a new wire issued to title company, then papers have to be overnighted between multiple states and it all just takes time.
I am beyond frustrated by this experience with ServiceLink and I highly recommend you find another service that has this process streamlined so your customers attempting to do a RON can actually get it completed, close on their new home and move in.
