ScotlandsPeople (New website now live).

[Gadget]

SP never responded to my email Re Worldpay but I figured it out for myself.
3d secure means that the name on the billing page MUST now match to the exact name on the Credit Card.

My billing page defaulted to as it has aways been.... Anne XXX
My CC shows Mrs A XXX

It was never flagged before but... I'll know in future !

That's not my problem Anne as it goes into a loop before it gets to the CC page. As I said, I got around it by creating a new account. They've not solved it yet but did give me 20 credits while they do!

Annie - I think we have all been sending e-mails about the problems (also via Facebook and twitter). They seem to have been overwhelmed.

Gadget


Added - Latest from SP:

[rosie17]

Not sure if it has been mentioned so far but the 1881 LDS Census transcriptions are free to view.
ev

Were they not free before EV ?
Rosie

No, they weren't free to view but were reduced to 2 units I believe. They were a transcript not an original image.

Monica

Thanks Monica it was the transcript that I viewed but that was a long time age probably round about 2002 /3 ..
Rosie

[Forfarian]

I think they are probably cutting off their nose to spite their face. Consider this hypothetical but perfectly possible scenario. Note that these people are entirely invented for purposes of illustration.

Suppose that I have learned from a gravestone that my ancestor Alexander Macdonald died in 1920, aged 60.

I go to SP and search for m*donald, alex*, death in 1920, aged 60, and I find a result. So I order the certificate. From it I learn the names of his parents, and I note that his death was registered by J Smith, sister, residing in a tenement in Glasgow.

Using the IGI I find his date and place of birth, and also that he had a sister Jean, born in 1870. I am now curious to know about Jean Macdonald or Smith.

Under the old system I would search for m*donald, j*, other surname smith, date range 1920 to 1980, birth year 1870 plus or minus 3 years. Under the old system, I would get a manageable number of results, from which I would find the right certificate, possibly using several batches of credits to do so.

If I try the same search in the new system, I cannot include the year of death, only her age, which I would enter as from 50. This produces 12,978 results. It seems that the search is returning "m*donald OR smith" instead of "m*donald AND smith". Even if I restrict it to Lanarkshire, it returns 3,092 results. At this point I give up, and I use no credits.

So whereas the old system would encourage me to look at some certificates, the new system discourages me altogether, and my expediture actually goes down. I am also a dissatisfied customer because I know that the information exists and I cannot get at it.

On the brighter side, I see from their technical stuff page that they are looking into bringing back the year of birth range for death searches, which will be a great help.

[Archivos]

The other surname part of the search does appear to be searching incorrectly, and using OR instead of AND.  I wonder if that has been flagged up to them?

[Forfarian]

I wonder if that has been flagged up to them?

I have a long letter lying here waiting to be posted to them, flagging up this and several other issues.

Of course we should all write to them. The more feedback they get the more chance of them doing something about it.

[Archivos]

I wonder if that has been flagged up to them?

I have a long letter lying here waiting to be posted to them, flagging up this and several other issues.

Of course we should all write to them. The more feedback they get the more chance of them doing something about it.

Very true. 

What I find quite confusing is when I did a search for a married woman's death, using the other surname option, the search tip states that the search cannot distinguish between the married name and the other surname.  It says:

"The index cannot distinguish between name types, for example, a search for a married woman named Brown with maiden surname Smith returns entries for a married woman Smith with maiden surname Brown."

But what it's actually doing is showing up people with married surname Brown, married surname Smith, AND other surname Smith for the entire period searched for.  Not good!

[Forfarian]

If you search for a death of Smith, other surname Brown, you get all deaths of people surnamed Smith and all deaths of people surnamed Brown for whatever period you select. From 1855 to 1865 this amounts to 21,327 results. Not clever.

[Archivos]

If you search for a death of Smith, other surname Brown, you get all deaths of people surnamed Smith and all deaths of people surnamed Brown for whatever period you select. From 1855 to 1865 this amounts to 21,327 results. Not clever.

No, it is not.

I've used the contact form on the website for this, as so far it's the only issue I've (personally) had while searching.  It's really frustrating!  Hopefully it's something simple enough to fix, like changing a value in the backend somewhere from true to false.  Fingers crossed!

[Forfarian]

Hopefully it's something simple enough to fix, like changing a value in the backend somewhere from true to false.

Yes, it could be as simple as that. But what they seem to have done is gone back to the in-house search, which always did this, but without the button to move to the previous year or following year that was never a feature of the online search.