Should I be expecting a long wait for my wills? Has anyone had delivery of a recent order?
If their order numbers are sequential (they appear to be) then I reckon they had about 5500
orders between the morning of the 13th and midnight last night.
But one order can include multiple Will requests (I don't know if there is an upper limit, but I did 10 at a time), so the actual number of Wills requested could be much higher.
Some of those will be digital already, so not as much work as the others. But I get the feeling there will be a service message posted soon saying that it will take longer than normal for orders to be completed.
I was a bit surprised the system didn't go down completely at some point yesterday. I guess the current maintenance is to change things to reflect the new charges... I last looked at the site around 1am and it was still only charging £1.50 per Will then.
Thinking about it, the government claims the cost of each request is something like £16, therefore that's what the new charge will be. But documents which have already been digitised and are therefore available immediately won't require as much work, so for them £16 seems a bit of a rip-off.
In particular, the soldier's wills (that don't contain much info anyway) seem expensive for £16, and charging so much for families trying to reconnect with relatives who gave everything for their country seems a bit off. But I guess this just reflects the modern approach to government.
