I've surpried recently with the upsurge of cranky escrow officers, and title people, especially from the Southern California area where title and escrow are separate.  They no longer want to go out of their way for you and in fact, don't even seem like the want to do their job these days.  I realize many title and escrow companies have vanished along with our economy, so you'd think that the remaining ones would be more than happy to do what's necessary to keep the clients and us going forward on our files, but my experience is that they are indifferent to the issues that come up delaying the closing of the escrows.  Maybe I'm wrong, maybe they are just flat out over worked, but then wouldn't you expect that the heads of the title and escrow companies would gear up their staff to handle the volume if that was the reason for the problems that we've all been experiencing. Love to hear your views and experiences.