I’m trying to order a copy of my birth certificate from the General Records Office Scotland.
1) If I order through their pisspoor (apparently public-private partnership) ugly branded website, there is a fee. How much is that fee? Oh, simples, it’s…
Access to the wills and testaments index and the coats of arms index is free of charge. Viewing full-colour, digital images of an original will, testament or inventory costs 5GBP per document, regardless of length. Viewing a full-colour, digital images of a coat of arms costs 10GBP per document, regardless of length.
Access to statutory, OPR, Catholic parish register and census indexes costs 7GBP. For this fee, you will receive 30 “page credits” which are valid for 1 full year. Viewing a page of index results costs 1 credit and each page will contain up to 25 search results. Viewing an image costs 5 credits (equivalent to 1.17GBP). Your session begins when payment has been authorised and additional credits may be purchased in 7GBP increments. The session will restart with each new credit purchase.
Great. Meanwhile, Leaflet S2 from GRO Scotland (which is, of course, not the same as Form SU3 – lol! – even though everyone that would use Form SU3 to order would need to know the price so it would make sense to put the price on the form or combine the forms, at least online) says that the same service costs GBP10.
2) If you don’t/can’t order through the Scotlandspeople website, you can always just order through the GRO Scotland using Form SU3.
2a) Of course, if you order using Form SU3, you’ll pay a fiver more.
2b) Oh, but you can only use Form SU3 if you go in person or send it by fax/post. You can’t order online. There’s not a secure form to place orders, let alone anything allowing an automatic download.
2c) But if you phone up, it’s no more expensive than a fax order. In other words, the punter can’t do their own data entry and instead they pay someone to sit around and answer the phone and type stuff into a form.
3) And if you email them with a question, they reply with an email that says “Thank you for contacting New Register House. This is an automatic reply which is sent to all emails. Please be assured that we check our Inbox at least once
a day Monday to Friday, and that we do read all emails sent to us.”
Gosh! Once a day! Genius! (Spankers).
