Genealogy Chat

As I stated earlier, cost from an RO has now gone up to £10 and depending on the RO they can be other charges too.

So even if ordering from the UK, currently, the GRO is cheaper.

grannyfranny

the cost from an RO is about £9.50 or so plus p&p, IN THE UK ................ and that is somewhat comparable to the cost from GRO of £9.25 including p&p

I think the delivery time is also comparable.


It does not apply to those of us who live overseas, and have to pay for money orders in UK sterling (including conversion charges), plus £1 per certificate ordered, as well as the extra cost of having to buy special size envelopes because our countries do not have A4 stationery!


It should also be noted that more and more ROs are no longer supplying certificates for genealogical purposes because of the time such orders take.

I have just purchased copies of my parents marriage cert, and a long form of my birth cert, as I only have a short one, as I have to prove my parentage for a project.
I ordered them from local RO's, Preston and Carlisle, over the phone, and it was very nice to speak to pleasant people at the other end. I paid a bit more than £9.25, probably includes postage. One cert came next day first class.

Jax

you wouldn't know!

Just as I did not know that getting certificates from the Local Registry Office using forms printed from freebmd would be a very expensive way fro someone living outside the UK to get certificates.


It was doing it and then reading on GR about GRO that taught me otherwise


It is also why I post my experience with Registry Offices that leads me to post about the cost whenever I see a thread where someone in the UK says that ROs are (or were!) a good alternative place to buy.


NOT if it costs almost twice the cost!

It is interesting that I have never yet seen someone from the UK recommending using the Local Registry Office adding the caution "but not if you live overseas" :-D

The only reason I mentioned Somerset house was because my gran went there in the 60s to get a birth cert so she could apply for a passport.

There was no reason for me to know that it had shut down, I have not been interested in family history since a child...just the last 4 years.

I bet if I ask my mum or dad where would you get a replacement cert from, they would probably say the same.

So what I am saying is why should I know Ancestry was not the place to get certs from, as that was the 1st site I used?

For those who are interested, the GRO indexes were moved from Somerset House in 1970.....!

Ok

I started doing this in Jan 2010.....I used Ancestry at first and bought some credits....I was looking for my grandfathers birth and couldn't find one...so I thought I would purchase grandparents marriage cert to see if that would help....as you know it comes up 'Order a marriage cert for xxxx'..... Now how was I to know that ancestry were charging over the top prices?

Yes as I said I had heard of Somerset house as I believe my gran got her birth cert there.....but I was not going to travel there and at that time I was not very computer literate....google was not something I did back then

After I received this marriage cert I then signed up for GR as a paying member and found out where I should have been buying them...I think they went up from £7 to £9.25 during this month.

Nitpicking - I just said that I knew where to go. It never occurred to me that there were other places to get them from.

The first I ordered from the GRO, I think I was redirected online to there from my query about St. Catherines House (I took a friend there many years ago so she could get a copy of her birth cert.).

Certs from Local RO's now cost £10.

Some charge postage on top, others require you to send them an SAE. Others also charge extra if you pay by credit card, an additional £1 in the case of our local RO.

I've posted comments similar to this several times .............. but it might be worth re-posting, especially for those members who live overseas ......................


I bought my first certificates from the local Registry Office ................ getting the information on how to do so from freebmd, and following all their instructions.

I thought that was the way to do it ................ but it turned out to be horribly expensive from overseas!

.....................

........... Had to buy a money order for the cost of the certificates + £1 each certificate for p&p from the bank ....... + service charge

.......... Had to buy 2 special sized envelopes, one to be self-addressed, because we don't use the size specified

.......... Then had to pay extortionate Canadian postage to mail it.

I think the cost in the end was more than double what I would have paid had I lived in the UK!

I bought 3 certificates that first time


Then I saw a mention about GRO on GR, checked it out ............. same price in the UK as overseas (£9.25), no extra handling charges, order online, and charge it to the credit card!

I've since ordered every other certificate I've bought from GRO

I thought you said you always knew the GRO was the place to purchase certs DC?

I also am from London and the only place I had heard of for getting certs was Somerset house.....not that I wanted any at that time

edit

If you google St Catherines House

St Catherine's House - Official Certificate Replacements?

Adwww.vitalcertificates.co.uk/?




Order Now. Only £24.95


Is that not even more expensive than Ancestry :-S

I suppose living in London I just knew about St. Catherines House (at the time) so knew that was where you went for copies of certificates.

Something I didn't know, and learnt from a NA podcast, is that the GRO will handwrite/type a certificate if information is missing from the original.

The example given was, if the copies of the marriages that made it to the GRO didn't have the name of the Church, This could happen if the encumbant only wrote it on the first page so the rest of the entries were to be taken as read. The GRO cannot scan and copy it and then add bits in as that would be altering a certified copy however what they can do is handwrite/type a certificate adding in the missing info.

I think it was this podcast...
http://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/introduction-to-family-history/

Chris

Yes there are various places to go to get certs, information etc.

My first 'bunch' of certs for my grandparents were all purchased from the GRO. I don't know why I used them - or even knew I could use them - especially as I would have known I could go and get them all from the one RO covering the area they were all born. Perhaps I just decided to do it all online. I know I was just trying to establish certain information which would be on the Birth Certs.

Since then I have discovered a great deal of useful information from reading these Boards and also been given useful information and advice on my threads. Most of mine are London BMDs - the few who were not moved to London, so I have only had to look, for the majority , in a limited area. After my one RO purchase I decided GRO was best for me, but obviously errors can slip in anywhere - when I see the writing on some of my certs it does make sense that some may be too old, faint, in poor condition, etc to do the 'copy/cut and paste' I am used to on my other GRO issued certs.

J-A

For marriages that were in church, if you just want the information, you know the parish involved and the information is on line, then it can be much cheaper to have a premium subscription to Ancestry or FMP as appropriate for the particlar area involved. Or to a site such as SEAX (for Essex).

The information is the same as on a certificate, subject to human copying errors.

For some places, such as Cornwall, you don't even need a subscription.

How can one know where to get certificates when one starts out?

If ancestry says that you can buy them that way, why would you assume they were rip-off merchants?

Lots of people on here ask for advice as to where to get certificates - so they do not know.

If ancestry supply certificates then enough people must use the service - otherwise they would stop.

When I started out the local office was far better then the GRO. No question.

Services and circumstances change over time.

I have a wide variety of certificates.

Added:
None of my family come from London, so I was amazed at what was available when I started looking at online records.

I also assumed the local office would be more accurate as less likely for errors to creep in.

At £9.25 all in ordering from the GRO is the cheapest way of getting hold of and BMDs.

Some local registrars offices are no longer providing historic BMDs (not many). The local RO can charge £9.25 - £9.50 + p&p.

I would never consider buying from any other source, least of all through Ancestry.

Even when I started out, I knew that the GRO was the place to go, not from experience just did. And once I found out how expensive it could be to go through any middle man, well that was it. GRO every time.

Most of my family, well all gt grandparents married in London so have got all the marriages from Ancestry.

My gran was a collector of family certs and she had the original marriage cert for her parents from 1882 and I would say it is more or less identical to the one on ancestry.

Yes the marriage cert I purchased via ancestry was all in the same handwriting.....as were the other three I purchased from GRO

Jax and MarieCeleste

Until now all of my ordered certs have been - or so it appears to me - to be the cut and pasted variety mentioned by MarieCeleste, because the surrounding information - registration district / date of issue of my requested certs is obviously typed but the central certificate information is handwritten - various styles and clarity. Plus there is often 'shading' behind the text, the sort that can occur when copying from a bound ledger (awkward)

For example, I am fortunate (?) to have purchased a marriage certificate of a 1901 London marriage (great grandparents) and subsequently (about 7 years later) downloaded a copy of the same marriage from Ancestry. I can clearly see the handwriting on the purchased copy is all one person's writing, whereas the downloaded one shows the different handwriting of the curate, bride, groom and witnesses on their signatures (much the same as from SEAX I imagine).

Also apparent on the downloaded one is the 'border' around each separate entry - the 'border' is also clearly reproduced on my purchased copy which is why I believe them to be a photocopy of the register entry submitted to GRO.

I can agree with Shirley~ 's suggestion of lack of clarity as a reason because on my purchased copy of the marriage the house number of the street of bride's residence is blank - on the downloaded one it is clearly shown.

I am just considering whether the suggestion of a lack of clarity of the register is the reason for typing it out - is it possible that it is transcribed with an error!

EDIT: Just seen MGNV's explanation - thank you

I don't think I was a spendthrift mgnv...just didn't know any different until I started using these boards

But as I have only ever bought 4 certs one at 20 quid is not too bad :-D