Keep Bailing

From Pencils to Pagers to Blogs

If you have kids, you’ve heard them giggle, “You didn’t even have cell phones when you were a kid! Did you have electricity?” As I prepared to launch the Keep Bailing blog, I realized how lucky Greg and I are to have modern tools that Greg’s dad, Cal Rynerson, never even dreamed of when he started his bail bond business almost 40 years ago.

Cal Rynerson, became a licensed California bail agent in 1969 and started Rynerson Bail Bonds in 1971 (the same year Roy Tomlinson sent the first email). That was before personal computers, before fax machines, before cell phones, before websites. Cal did business the old fashioned way, with pens, paper, and face-to-face personal interaction. (Imagine that?)

With an office located directly across the street from the Santa Ana jail, he regularly had walk-in customers. He wrote 95% of his bonds for the local jail, often handling 10 or more bonds each day. Ten bonds may not sound like a lot, but each one requires a bail bond interview, paperwork, and a trip to the jail. At the time, the average Southern California bail bond was around $500.

Now, the average bail in So Cal is around $20,000. We’d be lucky to write ten bonds in a week! With the proliferation of internet and the glut of competition, Greg and I need to write bonds all over California. There’s no way we could do business the way Cal did 30 years ago.

By the time he retired in the mid-80′s, the bail bond industry was beginning to change. Cal had conveniences like a pager and a fax machine. Some bail bond agents were starting to get what were then called “car phones.” They were big, clunky contraptions that plugged into the car’s cigarette lighter. (Now, we each carry two web-enabled cell phones.)

We do business in ways that bail bondsmen couldn’t imagine 30 years ago. We rely on e-mail and faxes almost exclusively now, but in the 80′s, fax machines were usually only found in large business offices. Not many people were inclined to send and receive bail bond paperwork at their jobs and faxed signatures were certainly of question and doubt!

The Internet and email have also changed how clients find us and interact with us. Most people find us through the bail bond website at 888BailBonds.com. We provide a complete description of the bail bond process, explain about how bail bonds work, and have information about our experience in the industry. After visiting our site, clients usually understand the basic process and have an expectation of us as individuals by the time they call. This is good for business because an educated consumer is a better customer. They understand the process and the responsibility they’re taking on when guaranteeing a bond. Of course, the internet gives potential clients the ability to shop around, too. Competition is tough, but we think we build a trust and offer insight right out of the gate.

Cal dealt with clients who weren’t at all familiar with bail bonds. They were worried and upset (as, of course, are our customers), and he often had to not only take time getting them to focus on the paperwork and their responsibilities, but also gain a rapport with them. Cal faced the same bondsmen stereotypes we do. He sat in a store-front with a neon sign in a line of other neon signs offering bail bonds. The office space where we write bail bonds today is shared with attorneys and other legal professionals.

In bail, the technology and tools may have changed, but our basic job has stayed the same: to help clients during a very stressful time, work with them to make sure they can afford the financial responsibility of the bail bond they’re taking while assessing the likelihood of the defendant returning to court without problems (i.e. skipping out on bail), and making sure we limit our own risk.