Genealogy Chat

Hi
I wonder if anyone could advise me on the best way to buy birth certificates please. Is it cheaper to buy from one particular place, is there a discount for buying more than one at a time etc
Thank you
Christine

For England & Wales, buy from the official site, you wont find anywhere else cheaper

you can order them online but you have to register.


http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/

They cost £9-25, and no its not cheaper if you buy more than one.


George

George

Thank you very much

Christine

You can also order them direct from some county register offices and I have found that they arrive a little quicker this way
You cannot order on line but have to use the mail service or telephone.

I think they charge £9 for each certificate but there may be a fee for using a credit card if you look on the ukbmd web site it will tell you.
You also do not need to know the volume and page number of the record as you do with GRO

I know that Lancashire and Staffordshire offer this service but to find out which other counties also offer this service then go to
www.ukbmd.org.uk.

I hope this helps
Kath

Kath
Thanks for that.
The site George recommended charges £9.25 per certificate and there is no charge for paying by credit card. The delivery is within 5 working days.
Christine

i always order from the GRO :-D

GRO - Its estimated that the *dispatch* date is 5 working days from the day of ordering, if before 1600hrs.

After 1600 hours on a Friday or over the weekend, the counting starts as if it were ordered on the Monday. Eg one ordered on a Saturday is currently expected to be dispatched on Friday.

2nd class delivery for GB, but airmail for overseas.

Once you get to the 'Checkout' page of GRO, it tells you there when the EDD will be -sometimes quicker, some times longer depending on how busy they are.

Why is there always so much emphasis on the length of delivery time.

This can throw newbies right at the start as suddenly it appears important to ge these certificates as quickly as possible risking pushing the buyers right into the hands of site owners who guarantee "Express Delivery" at an awful price.

Then of course, we may have the purchaser coming on GR complaining about how much certificates cost and we will all jump in to warn them about the rippoffs, albeit a touch too late. :-S :-D

Our ancestors will have been born, married or died years ago and are certainly not going anywhere soon.

Take it easy and stick with the GRO, unless it's of vital importance that you have that certificate within 48 hours or some similar timespan which may going to cost you dearly

Do make sure you click on the official site............

http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/

..........as you can find them from £13.99 upwards and here's one I found earlier for the unwary..

Standard - 10 Business Day Despatch £26.90
Express - 4 Business Day Despatch £41.45

Remember one week is only seven days. ;-) ;-) :-D :-D :-S :-S

If you order from the GRO without the index reference, it takes up to a month. Well worth the wait when you get the cert you have been looking for for several years.....!

someone in the United States told me a while back that they had been able to order a digital scan of an English certificate from Ancestry without buying the certificate itself ... and the cost was lower than a certificate from the GRO

this is all we need in most cases, we don't need the certification

I haven't ordered any certificates since then so I never looked into it more

I can't find this information at Ancestry, is anyone familiar with this ?


edit I found what that person said

'Apparently for $8 I can order a scan of the original license emailed to me'

( that is the US spelling of 'licence' and he did mean 'certificate' :-) )

?

$8 is something like £5 I think

Essentially, there are only 2 places you can buy a B or D.cert.
You can buy it from the local office that holds the original register, or you can buy it from the GRO who hold a copy of that register. Their basic price is fixed by law, although they can charge for some extras. If you pay a company like Ancestry or GR to place your order for you, the total cost usually more than doubles over placing the order yourself.

You can order M.certs thru the 2 above sources or, if its in the current church register, from the church. Again the basic price is fixed by law.

The original old m.regos are usually deposited in the county archive, and that is another place one may get an image. A while back, the London archive (LMA) was the only archive with images available on Ancestry. Maybe Chrissiex's correspondent bought credits to get an image of these regos. The only local office that issues images of its regos is Birmingham, so far as I know (although SP images are normally of their local regos, but that's Scotland).

All the newbies have to do now is contact Ancestry and ask for their scans of available certificates at a cost of $8.00. :-D

I trust that details of this offer will be forthcoming on this post.

not sure what that means Frank 06

when you order a certificate from Ancestry ( at its exorbitant price ) it also emails you a digital scan of the certificate before the certificate itself is received in the post

it doesn't seem completely improbable to me that it would offer that as a stand alone service, a digital scan without the paper certificate

the person who told me this was a regular at a genealogy discussion forum relating mainly to the United States and did not seem to be making it up ........ but could possibly have been referring to something that can be accessed at the Ancestry site, although since I'm sure she has a sub that might not make sense ........

anyway I have sent her a PM at the other site to enquire whether she remembers

:-)

Do a look up on Ancestry's BMD index, and click on the shopping basket - here's what you will find they charge for certs

Price
Standard (up to 16 working days) - £22.99 ?
Express (up to 6 working days) - £39.99

Would you like to receive a Digital Copy?
Yes, email me a copy - £2.50 ?
[NB - it's not possible to order a digital copy without ordering a paper copy - this is an extra copy]

Additional copies will be charged at £10.00 per copy for the standard service and £23.50 per copy for the express service.

and I have received a reply from the poster at the other forum confirming that :-)



You get the choice:
Would you like to receive a Digital Copy?
Yes, email me a copy - US$8.00 ?
Standard Airmail (up to 28 working days) - US$38.00 ?
Express Airmail (up to 16 working days) - US$76.00

But now that I look at it, there is no choice to ONLY get the digital copy. Dang! That is all I need, I don't need a hard copy. But I guess it is cheaper to go through http://www.freebmd.org.uk / and from there order through the GRO.



so yes indeed the poster had misinterpreted the options :-)

( I had directed the poster who is in the US to the GRO for ordering certificates and also to freebmd for free searching and freebmd has links to ordering from the GRO )

maybe one day Ancestry or someone ... or even the GRO, that would be excellent ... will offer this option, it really would be a good one, the way the National Archives does for getting digital images of things there

I guess Ancestry would have to buy up the full inventory of certificates from the GRO in order to do that, he heh

for Australian certificates ( which are terribly expensive ) there are transcription services like Joy Murrin, maybe somebody in England should start one too !

It isn't possible for the GRO to do this at the moment without a change to the law. This is one reason (apart from the budget running out) that the digitization program was put on hold.

Copying of physical certificates by third parties is not prohibited but there are rules to be observed.

"Not sure what that means Frank 06 ??"

All that I meant was that you have made a statement about a cut price deal apparently available from Ancestry for digital copies.
Anyone interested would of course be looking for details which would hopefully appear on the thread where it originated, namely here.

If as now appears to be the case, the deal no longer exists then that point should also be made here.

No malice intended, just straight forward facts.

actually Frank 06 the statement I made was that someone in the USA ( using ancestry.com ) had told me something and I asked whether anyone knew anything about it

in response to the mockery I did contact the person who had told me that and I have posted here that the person has realised she was mistaken

I do apologise for being so foolish and ill-informed

No malice intended, just straight forward facts.

No mockery either.