Complaints

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• Initial Complaint

  Date:03/10/2025

  Type:Billing Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  I had a piece of non high risk property I 50/50 jointly tenancy in common owned which was completely paid off with someone else & wanted to give my half away because the other owner would waste the time & resources of the Missouri highway patrol & the local police by calling them on me every time I showed up to gain entry. The property wasn't worth hardly anything & I simply grew tired of the nonsense so I went to the Trenton Abstract & Title Company to fill out paperwork to give it away to two other people I know who wanted it. I waited over two months for 'the paperwork to get done' only to find out that they had been lying to me the entire time. Both ********* * *** from the that office admitted to me that an in-law of the person I owned the property with told them not to allow me to do the title transfer -this person was a local lawyer named **** ******. They also lied to my now ex wife over ten times, telling her at first that they were going to send her the documents to sign in the mail. Then after a few weeks went by, she called them directly & was told they were going to email it. Over and over this was relayed to her for days on end. But in reality, they never sent anything. After nearly three months, I drove to their office after work & confronted both ********* * *** about these unfair business practices & that they no right to do that to me & also pointed out the fact that the in-law lawyer wasn't an owning party of the property so she had zero say -I was escorted out. They deliberately acted both illegally & unprofessionally by allowing a third party dictate what I could or couldn't do with my property. I had to spend even more money than they were going to charge to get a lawyer & have the title transfer work done. I made a formal complaint later on at another Abstract & Title Company office that is owned by the same Lisa Dowell in another county and was told, "you'll get a call about how this is going to be resolved" -but I have yet to get a call.

  Business Response

  Date: 03/14/2025

  To Whom it
  May Concern
  
  Regarding
  said complaint, *** ********* does (or did) own a piece of property jointly
  with other individuals. *** ********* came into our office on the 16th of January, 2024. Giving his half away was more complicated than just a simple
  Quit Claim Deed from himself to the Grantees he had requested. This was due to
  the remaining marital interest of his ex-wife from before the dissolution of
  the marriage. He disclosed he had owned said property while he was married and that
  there was no mention of said property being addressed in the divorce decree. We
  asked for her information in order to complete a Quit Claim Deed resolving any
  marital interest she may have in the property, and *** ********* provided us
  with contact information for his ex-wife. On December 17th, all
  documents required to transfer were completed and ready for signatures. These
  dates and times can be verified and proven by the time-stamped and dated
  tracking in our document preparation system. At the same time we were working
  to resolve the order that *** ********* had placed for said Quit Claim Deed, we
  received a phone call from a concerned individual that was also a vested owner
  in the property to be transferred. They informed us that *** ********* had been
  breaking into said property cutting locks and causing the Highway patrol to be
  called. We remained positive and worked to be a helpful and neutral entity in
  the transference of the land. *** ********* stated several times he just wanted
  $5,000.00 from the vested owners of the property separate of himself. We DO NOT
  handle any funds on the type of transaction he was requesting- a Quit Claim
  Deed. We succeeded in making contact with said ex-wife of *** ********* who was
  in turn curious about the worth of said property and wondered why it was not
  mentioned in the divorce proceedings. We explained to her we had no answer for
  that, but we needed her to deed out of her remaining marital interest. I cannot
  force someone to sign a deed if they are not willing, nor would I. I did, in
  fact, contact our attorney for the company as a matter of ensuring that I was
  taking the right steps in resolving this matter. This same attorney is one we
  work with, as a company, consistently. The Quit Claim Deed in question was
  emailed to the ex-wife of *** ********* for signature- again, as a means of
  resolving any remaining marital interest she may have in the property that Mr.
  Carpenter was requesting be transferred. Now I will address the incident which
  *** ********* mentioned in his complaint. *** ********* did come into Trenton
  Abstract. At the time, I was in a closing in my office. I heard raised voices
  coming from our lobby area, so I excused myself and went to attempt to address
  the situation. I began by asking what was going on trying to calm the situation;
  when calmly trying to talk to him was to no avail, I POLITELY asked him to
  leave. At that point he grew more agitated, and I again stated I would like him
  to leave. *** ********* continued to be aggressive and loud. For my safety and
  the safety of the others in the office, I did suggest he leave the building
  before I had to call the police and have him removed.  The couple in my office for their home closing
  happened to be a United States Marine and had grown so concerned with the
  raised voices and agitation coming from *** ********* that he stepped into our
  lobby and asked if he could help. It’s unfortunate, in my opinion, that Mr.
  Carpenter is unable to control his habits before entering a business and could
  not handle himself in an adult manner.
  After *** ********* left, I immediately called my manager and explained the situation and
  the events that had transpired in the office. It was at that point we sent an
  email to our other offices because his behavior raised safety concerns. Several
  months later, *** ********* entered another one of our offices. He did, in
  fact, place a formal complaint against me with the employees in that office.
  What he failed to mention in his complaint filed with the Better Business
  Bureau, however, is that he also managed to make the women who worked in that
  office uncomfortable; he mentioned owning “tons” of guns to them, and overall
  they were left very uneasy by his behavior before they ever even knew his name.
  After he eventually gave the employees of the office his name, they made sure
  to diffuse the situation as they had been warned of his behavior, and then
  called their manager to let them know exactly what had happened. They did not
  tell him with 100% certainty that upper management would give him a call, they informed
  him that they would escalate it to upper management and that upper management
  would do as they saw fit to resolve the situation.
  
  ********* *****

  Customer Answer

  Date: 03/27/2025

  Who knew that a complaint to the Better Business Bureau about a business who purposefully, deliberately, and unethically denied you of your right to transfer your property to whomever you saw fit would result in now also becoming the victim of defamatory speech by being pummeled with repeated lies on a public forum?!
  
  After serving 20 years in the United States military, completing seven tours to Iraq and Afghanistan, and retiring honorably it is absolutely stupefying that a manager and/or employees from multiple offices would collude together and attempt to viciously assassinate my character with a plethora of lies of this magnitude. Let's examine several of these hyperbolic and exaggerated lies in greater detail in delve into actual truths and end with a final closing for future thought of those at the Abstract Title company to chew on.
  
  1) When my ex-wife and I mutually reached limited agreements regarding our financial/property situations, these documents were not only reviewed but approved by a judge as fair a few months before we legally got divorced. Additionally, we both waived the requirement to repeatedly disclose any continued updates or to changes of both our financial/property situations as the divorce neared closure and we continued on with our soon to be separate lives amicably. That is why my ex-wife was not listed in the divorce decree or why she was not listed as a vested owner on the deed -and that is completely legal. My ex-wife was never "curious about the worth of the property" or "wondered why it was not mentioned in the divorce proceedings", as she owns her own property and land. In fact, quite opposite. When I asked for her help, I told her everything that the other 50/50 owner was doing to me by calling both local and state law enforcement on me (falsely claiming to both that she was being burglarized every time I went there), that in-laws of ***** **** would show up who openly carry firearms and bring country thugs with them to command a menacing presence forcing me away, and that I needed her help to get rid of the property. She was more than willing of her own volition to help me simply wash my hands of it and get away from troublesome people like these. You weren't "forcing someone (implicatively my ex-wife) to sign a deed", she wanted to sign it. Just like now, where she's more than willing to swear to an affidavit about how many times she both called and emailed this business requesting deed documents be sent to her so she could sign them, yet the manager ********* and/or **** never sent them. Repeated lies.
  
  2) "you received a phone call from a concerned individual that was also a vested owner in the property... that I was breaking into said property cutting locks and causing the Highway Patrol to be called" The implicative here is that the other owner (the only other "vested owner") ***** **** called you. And you know just as well I do (it was relayed to me several times by local law enforcement from Sullivan County that Megan called falsely stating that she was being burglarized by me -over and over again) that she has numerous cameras on this property. I never took anything from the property (opposite of what "the lawyer you consistently work" with knowingly and wrongfully claimed to my lawyer) and only ever put things into the property, as legally I'm entitled to do. You as a manager (who one would expect to be at least reasonably educated in numerous aspects about your job) should know, or at least should have been told by "the attorney for your company that you and your employees consistently work with" that "breaking into a property you own" is not a crime. In fact, I even sought my own private legal counsel before I started such endeavors because the other owner would lock me out, despite numerous attempts to agree on community locks to the front door of the house from the other vested owner. Additionally, whenever either local law enforcement and/or the Highway Patrol would show up, I would show them a copy of my deed showing them I was a 50/50 owner and it always ended with them saying "nothing we can do, it's your house" and "have a nice day *** *********". ********* or **** did not in any way "work to be helpful and neutral entity" in the "transference of the property". I know how small towns work, and I only voiced that all I wanted was to be bought out for the exact same amount that I jointly bought the property for, because I knew it would get back around to the other 50/50 owner, which I have no contact with because they have refused to answer a call or text in over a year. I have always been well aware that they (Abstract Title) don't handle funds for a quit claim deeds. Further contortions of the truth.
  
  3) Remember, both ********* *** *** admitted to me on the phone that an in-law lawyer of ***** **** (**** ******) told them not to allow me to do the title transfer and that she had also instructed that my desire for the property ownership transfer to be delayed as long as possible. It was only after nearly two months of waiting for the "title transfer paperwork to get done" and repeated calls checking on the status of the aforementioned that they gave it all to another coworker named *****. I spoke to ***** on the phone and she too admitted to me that there were numerous sticky notes on my paperwork which said "waiting on ****". Once again, ****** who seemed to be the only person working there with integrity said, 'I don't know why these documents would be waiting on her because there's nothing about the property or this title transfer that would require a lawyer.' ***** said she would work on my paperwork and I proceeded to entrust that finally now my property transfer would be done in a timely and efficient manner and above all else, with integrity. Eventually I received a call from **** where she said my paperwork was ready to pick up. I drove from Kansas City to the Trenton office and was presented with incomplete paperwork by **** that they wanted to charge me for. I said, "you're going to charge me for paperwork that still needs to be filled out and notarized by multiple parties when I've already waited months from you're lying and deliberate delaying of this title transfer, that doesn't even make sense" and "paying after everything is done and you've actually transferred the property to the new owners makes sense, how do I know that even after I get all of this paperwork completed and pay for your services that you're not just going to sit on it even longer with everything that's already happened?" I said every word of this in a normal conversation voice and nothing about it was in a "raised voice". Alli's response was something to the effect of "you're going to have to speak to ********* about that". The manager ********* who was in the back room with other clients did come out almost immediately after that and I proceeded to address my issues with the paperwork and re-quote exactly what I'd told **** only to have ********* disrespectfully and rudely attempt to speak over and silence me "that I never told you on the phone that we were waiting on **** and neither did *****" to finish my property transfer to address. Nothing about her demeaner constituted calm or polite, it was the purest form of badgering you could receive when you catch someone in a lie and they don't have the intestinal fortitude to own their mistake or even attempt to make it right with candor. I once again asked, "how can you not see that what you've done is unethical treating customers like this?", "it is unethical to allow third parties who are not vested owners to dictate to you what the actual owners want to do with their property", and "you can't just prevent people you don't like from conducting business about their property the way they see fit". I was told to leave the office and I immediately did just that, leaving without further word or issue. This exaggeration that the manager "suggested I leave the building before she had to call the police and have me removed", "for her safety and the safety of others in the office", and that "*** ********* continued to be aggressive and loud", and that "a United States Marine had grown so concerned with the raised voices... that he stepped into the lobby asking if he could help" are all warped imputations of misconduct that never happened.
  
  4) Several months later, my property title transfer paperwork was completed by my lawyer. I took copies to the Sullivan County recorder's office, and once complete there I stopped by and gave a copy to the deputy on shift (****** ****), speaking to him briefly that I'd given the property away to new owners. I then walked across the street to the ***** ******** ***** office and met with ****** *******. We both greeted each other, I sat down in the chair in front of her desk, she took immediately took my name, and I informed her that I wanted to make a formal complaint about the Trenton Abstract office's unprofessional business conduct towards me entailing literally everything word for word up until this point. Interpersonal communications between Hannah during the entirety of the time were both polite and professional and she both took notes on numerous key points and asked questions which I answered for clarity. Remember, where I covered "that in-laws of ***** **** would show up who openly carry firearms and bring country thugs with them to command a menacing presence forcing me away" yea, I conveyed that to Hannah. Yet now, ********* is once again fraudulently claiming that I "mentioned owning tons of guns", and implicatively as a result "he managed to make the women who worked in that office uncomfortable" and "they were left very uneasy by his behavior before they ever even knew his name". Wretched and unadulterated lies. I was told by Hannah that 1) this complaint would be escalated to upper management and 2) that I would get a call from someone in management. I have zero faith that upper management has done anything to rectify this situation. I mean, look where you've brought us to, bashing a war veteran with egregious slanderous lies and attempting to malign his character because he brought light to and confronted you about your poor work ethics.
  
  In closing,
  ********* and anyone else who colluded together to assembly this miscellany of outright lies should be ashamed of yourself/themselves for the amount of vehemently deceptive claims you've made during the entirety of your initial response. What is unfortunate, in my opinion, is that both ********* and Alli, and quite possibly numerous other employees working for Lisa Dowell at least the Trenton Abstract Title if not several other branches, have zero concept of what integrity or couth is. That their answer for being confronted about detestable customer service skills is to attempt to publicly defame the person, which is hardly adultlike. I still hold that these two if not many more need to undergo degree of ethics and trust violations in business training so that incidents like this do not happen to future customers who blindly walk into any of your offices expecting to be treated with dignity and fairness. ********* and quite possibly **** have obviously learned nothing from intentionally and repeatedly attempting to bully me around -that's against the law. You might've gotten away with it before with other people who do not know their rights, the law, or how businesses should strive to provide services that are riddled with nothing more than ethical and integrity filled excellence. *********'s extraordinarily monstrous attempts at contorting and misrepresenting the truth of these events as they actually happened are repulsive and only further proves of her loathful untrustworthiness. I can't tell you how glad I am for numerous reasons; That my ex-wife, still disgusted with your lies and also wasting her time would be more than willing to swear to an affidavit about how many times you lied to her and that you never sent her anything. And that immediately after I finished my complaint at the ***** ******** office I made a full account of the events word for word as they actually occurred & as proximate to what is contained herein to both the Director of the Missouri Department of Highway Patrol (which also included misconduct by the Sheriff of Milan County (Scott Frazier) for threatening to arrest the newly appointed and elderly joint owners of the property with unlawful arrest for walking their dog down a public roadway), the Attorney General's Office Consumer Protection Division of Missouri, and the U.S. Supreme Court of Missouri (about the lawyer's unethical misconduct your company consistently works with (**** ******)), and a the Interim Director of a Civil Rights Enforcement Agency. Lastly, what you should ask yourself is 'if a person was actually guilty of anything that we've conspiratorially conjured up to besmirch him, would he really go through such lengths informing people who are in actual positions of power to bring light to his case? -the answer is clearly, obviously, and unequivocally no. You can rest assured that continued instances of horrendously untrue insinuations on public forums could quite possibly be met with legal action for libel slander in civil court. All I really wanted from the beginning was an apology about how ********* and her assistant **** repetitively lied to me in their place of business, and it is at least *********'s continued reckless behavior that has brought us to this point. 
  
  
  
  Sincerely,
  
  ****** *********