Genealogy Chat

the only reson i will not use local offices is for the fact they often copy out the certs not give you the original

The ONS/GRO is great if you live outside the uk,,but i personally dont bother with it,,,I get much better service from the relevent register office and if my info is in doubt they ring me to verify and also check 5 years either side of the date at no extra cost.

Well Gary I have ordered online (using the £7 service) where the page number was illegible - I've given them the possible page numbers as a note in the Ref Checks box (with a note explaining that the index was not clear), and they've always managed to find it OK. I guess that it depends a lot on who picks up your order and how helpful they are feeling on the day!

''Is this the level of service that is the norm in the UK?'' I feel your generalisation is unfair, GRO deal with a vast amout of requests daily, the error was yours and I, like the other's above, would just be annoyed with myself for making the mistake

I'm sorry but I fail to see how you can complain about the GRO when you fully admit it was your error. I always triple check all the details before I click order. If you read the FAQ you will see that once ordered certs cannot be cancelled. Its an automated system. Learn from your mistakes and make sure next time. Margaret

though this does seem bad, the reson you give the exact referance number is for them to find it straight away, and not have to search around for it, a service they charge extra for, if they did not take this line what would the point of charging a lower fee for a gro ref no, people who did not no the exact date would guess at it and hope the gro found it, i can see they were right to have charged you. i have had one this week that on 1837 the page number was unreadable and i guessed at the number, and got charged £3, its not there fault, i should have asked for the costlyer service for them to search

Me too, put down the wrong quarter, just meant I double double check when ordering now as I stupidly didn't that time for whatever reason and when I got the message I tried to tell them it was the next quarter to no avail. I live in England!! I also rang and ordered a cert once thinking it would be quicker but the one I ordered over the net a day later came well before it, work that one out. Elaine

Last week I ordered a marriage certificate on line – nothing unusual about that. Then, last night I got an email from the ONS saying that they couldn’t find the person on the date requested so were refunding GBP4. Fair enough, I had asked for Mar Q when I should have asked for Sep Q (strange in itself as the marriage was in February according to the PR’s). I immediately emailed them back and asked them to show mercy and look it up for me in the Sep Q. I even suggested, light-heartedly, that it was nearly Xmas. Their reply, from a person who clearly doesn’t celebraterate Xmas, was that their system is fully computerised and doesn’t allow change. Is this the level of service that is the norm in the UK? Most companies that I deal with in NZ would bend over backwards to help. It’s not as though they had already credited the money back to me, it came through 16 hours later – and I have to wait until 14th before they issue the cert. I realise that the error is my fault, but I expect a higher level of customer service – all I got was non-service. Peter