new price for GRO certs

[Rah1980]

Am I being stupid (probably!) but I thought £6,627,000 was like 6 million 6 hundred and 27 thousand pound and that 6 thousand 6 hundred and 27 pounds is £6,627?

Yep only that is thousands ie 6627 thousand ie £6,627,000

[andycand]

Hi

Account documents are often rounded off and don't show all the zero's. In the case of the GRO the figures are rounded and the top of the column shows how many zero's are dropped ie ('000) in the case of the GRO.

GRO 2008-09 has

Total Income  18,733   ie 18,733,000
Total Expenditure 25,360  ie 25,360,000   
Loss 6,627 ie 6,627,000


Andy

[teaurn]

Ouch, seems like poor administration, aprivate company would not show such high losses

[andycand]

Ouch, seems like poor administration, aprivate company would not show such high losses

A private company wouldn't be constricted by pricing regulation that a government department is and would no doubt have increased rates some time ago to ensure they didn't make a loss, nor would they be subject to the same red tape as a government department.

You can purchase certificates through a large organisation for 19.99 GDP (other commercial sites are dearer)  they pay 7 GDP to aquire the certificate from the GRO and then forward it to you making a healthy profit. It does make you wonder how much a private company would charge if they had the contract and prices were not regulated

Andy

[poolqwizrd]

so last year they lost £6.6 million and year b4 they lost £5.9 million, but they arent going to put that down to bad management are they! no just put prices up, thats the way it works now.

think il protest with my feet or in this case my order cert button

[richarde1979]

Exactly, the reason they make losses is because they are poorly run. We are being penalised for that with these price rises. I say give it to a private company, twenty pounds a certificate, no, I'd say in private hands we'd long ago have fully digitised indexes and be paying a lot less indeed.

[onefortheroad]

And within a year or two, it'd be owned by the French, Spanish, etc...

Just look at what's happened to our utility companies since they were privatised.

Do you really want that?

David

[Plummiegirl]

I know that in future I will probably try to order from Local R.O's, but in some cases it is not so easy.  Some councils (Wandsworth - my pet hate!!) do not make it easy.

Luckily I am now ordering less & less, especially since so many of older the London records are on Ancestry.

[les_looking]

personally speaking have always been happy with the service the GRO gives and in many years never an issue,
as far as i know the certificate side is self-financing, it's all the other services connected that cost the money,
not sure if the family records centre etc are also part of the finances,

i can't imagine the huge costs to run all these departments/buildings and if they have to increase prices so be it,
and my days on this planet i am not going to stress over a couple of quid extra if i want a record of someone 100+ years etc is a small cost (again my own opinion)

never seen many people kicking up a stink over Ancestry charging £20 a pop and another £10 for a 2nd copy of same certificate, so if you click on buy record on their site for 3 certs, a nice £60 (£90 if you want 2 of each)
and i would hate to think the amount of people that do it because they don't know otherwise.

I still think at nearly £10 a certificate is vfm, can't think of many things in 7 years ish that havn't jumped in price, excluding thing like electrical items that have dropped due to technology and demand, and we have to remember that family history is still for the minority. People in Australia etc pay exactly the same price as us for the same service, do we penalise them for for living elsewhere, my own opinion no.

The majority of British people will never have a clue about prices of certificates, never visit family record centres, or the National Archives etc etc and probably don't care, again the cost to run and hold and maintain all these records must be VERY high, so if it helps in the slightest way to keep our history then i am happy it is done.