Genealogy Chat

I ordered 11 certificates online, but they only sent me 3 (2 of them were the wrong ones)! Obviously, there was a mix-up with another customer's order... :(

You didn't get one for William Booth by any chance? Mine never turned up at all!!

Nah, they were a death and marriage for a Mrs Ryan. I've sent them back...

Hey talking about William Booth I have ordered one for him also! Lisa

Lisa, if you get a birth cert for a William Booth from Staffordshire (or could be marriage cert, to Sarah Lymer - It's been that long I can't remember what I ordered!) please let me know....mines disappeared into a black hole! Sam

Are you looking for THE William Booth. The guy who founded the Salvation Army.

I wish I was!! I don't think my William had anything to do with that unfortunately. None of my family have done anything noteable - not that I have found yet anyway! Sam

It's my guess the GRO have a bunch of students working for them, who don't care about the job.

Linda (AKA Mad Alice) It seems that the page you wanted had been transcribed twice. Unfortunately the page number has been recored incorrectly in one instance. Can you see the likeness between 483 & 488 ? It's just a shame the records office didn't pick up on this and tell you, thus saving you some money :( Sioux

Perhaps some of you have more spare cash than me but why not order certificates one at a time for a particular event. If the GRO shows up 2 possible births for example, you know one of them is going to be wrong so why not wait to see if the other one is right before ordering again.

Hi If the certificates are definitely for the same person - indeed, especially if they are actually identical, you should be able to get a refund by sending one back. If there are discrepancies between the two it may be more problematic. I know because I had a double reference where there was a revised name in the last column, so there was one ref for the initial registration and one for the updated name - but it was the same cert. They normally check if all the certs are sent out in one go, but because the certs were sent out in two instalments to get them out as quickly as poss, they had no means of comparison. Once they had the info, and the returned cert, there was no problem about getting a refund. Christine

I agree totally with you Gwyneth, Why are people ordering so many certs at once? it would save money and time to order less and verify them. If you think the GRO in Stockport do not care you want to deal with the Irish equivelent of the GRO! they would make your head spin. The GRO whenever I have had to ring them have been nothing but helpful and apologetic when they make mistakes. If so many people are ordering so many certs they are obviously inundated and mistakes are bound to happen. Pat x

i have been ordering a lot of certs on line latley in batchs of 10, they always sent 1 within 3 days and the rest follow, i think they must have performance targets to meet, so they send one out straight away and tick you off as sorted on time. the thing that annoys me is any index that is a bit faded and a 8 looks like a 3, so say 484 lookes like 434 and order 434, they say the person is non listed, they dont use common sense and look else ware they charge you £3 and tell youn the person you want is not there, i have emailed them scans from 1837 online saying well they do exsist here is the proof, the image you have sold 1837, watch ordering off freebmd a lot of faded entries have been wrongly listed and you get no cert, i always get the image from 1837, you only get what you pay for.

the other point is the people who cant understand why you would order so many certs at once, my answer to this is with 3 certs for each relly b d m x 500 = 1500 certs for my lot ordered at 1 a week i will be dead 100 years before they all arrived, if you are serious about your research you can not be without them they give you so many leads and info you would not get any where else, i never wanted to order any at the cost, but havig spent £400 on certs and took my tree from 100 people to 700, i dont know how you would not order any i am increasing my orders to 20 a month. seems if you want to do this right it is a very expensive hobby. but a lot of people who come on here want to spend as little as possable.

Sorry to add more confusion to this but you don't always have to use the GRO to get certificates. It might be worth using the actual Register Office that the B/M/D was registered with. It isn't always possible to do this, some of London offices are too busy to cope with demand and so won't help if it's just for genealogical purposes. My own experience is just with Halifax GRO and they are brilliant. I fire off a letter just giving them all the details I have. Normally just the quarter and year that the event happened (that I found out from searching FreeBMD), the people invloved (those being born, dying or getting wed) and any sundry info that I have (father's names etc). I always add that please can they send me the certificate even if the details that I have given are incorrect. I just enclose a sae and a cheque for £7. They normally send the cetificate back by return of post. I sent off a letter on Thurday and got the certificate this morning (Saturday). The difference between the GRO and local offices are that GRO certificates are copies of the original (which sometimes makes it very hard to read) and local offices are rewritten cetrficates, with the transcriber copying word for word from the original. This does mean however there could be transcription errors. If anyone wants to know the address of the local offices, GENUKI has them all. It's always best to ring the office first, just to make sure that they will take send certficates out to you. Sorry again for droning on! Rachel

Hi I've ordered certs where the reference has been unclear, like the 3 & 8 problem. I put one number in the box, and ask for the other to be ref check. If you have several people with the same name, place and quarter reference, Southport will find you the right one, if you have further info, ie Father's name, exact date, but you need to do if over the phone. It takes 3 weeks and costs £11.50. Helen

Pat going round in circles. Do you mean the GRO in Southport and not Stockport. If you do mean Stockport, could you give me the address or phone number. Thanks Ann dizzy with it.

I always check Freebmd with either the 1837 on line or when I am in London if I am going. They are very happy to help, I had ordered a marriage certificate sometime ago, when I cross referenced there were two different page numbers, but all the other information was correct. Decided to go with the husbands page number as no one had an answer back came a cheque for 3.5. So I sent them an email putting it all down with both page numbers this time. Had an email back within a few days, saying they were sorry and yes I was right they would be correcting the indexing (which I haven't checked yet to see if its done) and they sent me a copy of the marriage. Not bad for £3.5 But I wouldn't have known that unless I had the wife's name so it is important to get a birth certificate first just to confirm the maiden of the wife. Irnee

Like Rachel, I always order certificates from the district register offices, unless it's a marriage and they can't always supply them if they have to search through dozens of registers. The births and deaths though are always on one index, so that's not a problem, but now lots of disrict offices have their marriages on one index too. There's more than one advantage to doing it this way. It takes less time, the staff are really helpful, you always get a full refund if the certificte you want doesn't match up to what you give them. I usually ring them first, and the smaller offices will often look it up for you, sometimes while you wait or ask you to ring back. Some take orders by CCard over the phone, put the cert in the post that day and bingo, it's on the doorstep in the morning. Not all, but it's worth a try. I asked one office if they could find me a death certificate for a woman who I had a very rough date for, but that I'd found half a dozen possibles, all in different areas, just wasn't sure which was her. I told the registrar all about how she was supposed to have been depressed, was an alcoholic, gone awol and was found drowned a few months later.She got so absorbed in the story that rather than wait for me to send the cheque, she took my number and rang me back an hour later to say she'd found it - drowned in the canal; a vagrant and drunk. Very sad story I admit, but the GRO staff wouldn't have done that and if I'd ordered them one by one from Southport I could have ended up £15 out of pocket, cos knowing my luck it would have been the last one that was mine. Cazza

Cazza What a nice story. Well to me that is what getting certs are about knowing who the people are making sure they are yours and not other people's involving others, adding to your ancestry WOW Nice one Cazza. One or two certs at a time, like me I don't think I could find 10 people to order certs for at one time I really do not understand how others do it??? oh and I PAY for all my info Ancestry, 1837 I never ask others to pay for my lookups. I take exception to anyone thinking I sponge off others. I do not think I will ever be ordering anything near 1,000 certs. Pat x