probatesearch website

[ele002]

I think it's only fair that despite their many faults with this service and poor, or even non-existent, customer service, I should give them credit where credit's due.

The 4 wills that I mentioned, that I ordered on 1 May were received today, at the crack of dawn. In fact, the first arrived shortly before 7 this morning! All appear to be 100% complete.

It seems they can deliver when things run right, but if many orders can't be made, then they will be able to provide a quick turnaround for the lucky few that get through.

[Deirdre784]

Modern ones, not sure how recent, maybe post 2010, come by return! One appeared in my ‘orders’ before i’d left the page. Guessing it’s to do with digitisation 🤔

[dawnsh]

The later entries after 1996 where you don't get to see calendar images were scanned and digitised as they were probated.

And a late addition to the thread in case it hasn't been mentioned:

Back in the day when the closure of the probate dept at Holborn was announced, it was mentioned then that as the pages of the calendars were being scanned and digitised, only the first 3 digits of the surnames on the page were indexed because that was how the pages in the huge books in the rooms there were indexed.

[ele002]

Deirdre - I had heard something along those lines.

The ones I ordered were a mix - 1873, 1948, 1999 & 2000. Who knows? Like everything else with these faceless, nameless people, a complete mystery.

Eric.

[Darnity]

[...]  All went well until I tried to place the order/make payment, when I was met with a message telling me to " contact your administrator". [...]

I am still in a protracted email correspondence with them about the "contact your administrator" problem I get when I sometimes, but not always, try to buy.

I last reported this error to them on 22nd April and on 29th April I received the following reply (from hmctswills@ironmountain.co.uk):

Dear Customer,

We are sorry to hear about your issues with paying for your orders.

We are aware that the issue is with our payment provider which is Barclaycard who are having a few issues at present.

If this message has come through to you, and you haven't received an order number back, then it means the order hasn't properly gone through the system to enable us to find and service your order details.

Barclaycard are currently aware of the situation and are aiming to fix the issue as quickly as possible.

In the meantime if you have been overcharged for your order(s) then we will need to investigate this further for you.

Please provide us with the following information:

The Full Name of the person who placed the order(s).

The Email Address you used to place the order(s).

The date and time that you placed the order(s).

And Proof Of Payment.

Once we receive the above we will investigate and refund any monies outstanding.

We are sorry for the inconvenience this is causing.

Please get back to us if you require any further assistance.

Kind Regards,

HMCTS Wills Helpdesk

I'm also still waiting for a reply to a different problem I reported to them on Saturday, 5 Mar, 22 At 15:28

And also the first time I had the "contact your administrator" problem on Thursday, 10 Feb, 22.

I'm keeping a list of all the problem ones I've tried to order to try again when they've fixed things - well I can live in hope!

cservices@ironmountain.co.uk seems to be a better email address to address queries to than hmctswills@ironmountain.co.uk - I have had a reply to another ordering problem from a human at cservices rather than the standard replies hmctswills seems to send out.

[dawnsh]

Interesting HMCTS ask for proof of payment.

I raised that recently with them.

I've placed a couple of orders and you don't get one now, and as there is no VAT, they do not have to provide it.

[ele002]

This gets more bizarre.

Yesterday I tried a few dummy orders. The ones that didn't need a Folio No. got to the payment stage. The ones that needed one didn't get that far. I got the same contact administrator message. I tried the same ones today and they got to the payment stage.

I was then able to order the Will that I originally attempted to order.

As for receipts. I received an e-mail saying "order receipt". However you have to follow a link which then tells you to download the actual receipt to your device. The mind boggles.

Either someone is having a laugh that's got out of hand or someone's continued employment or sanity should be seriously questioned.

[AngelaR]

This gets more bizarre.

Yesterday I tried a few dummy orders. The ones that didn't need a Folio No. got to the payment stage. The ones that needed one didn't get that far. I got the same contact administrator message. I tried the same ones today and they got to the payment stage.

I was then able to order the Will that I originally attempted to order.

As for receipts. I received an e-mail saying "order receipt". However you have to follow a link which then tells you to download the actual receipt to your device. The mind boggles.

Either someone is having a laugh that's got out of hand or someone's continued employment or sanity should be seriously questioned.

That is very interesting, Eric - thanks for sharing that! I'm glad that you were able to order the will you've been trying to get originally and it encourages me to think I might be able to get the one I tried weeks and weeks back (if I can remember which one it was  )

However, I'm not ordering anything until I get a reply about the one they claim to have delivered and haven't.

I daren't comment on the way this "upgrade" has been handled as I'm sure I would be breaking the site rules on appropriate user behaviour........

[histbak]

This is one mega thread ! forgive me if this has been bought up before -

My order will/probate - Found the record using the sites search no problem and placed the order - also no problem -

 I have not received an email to say my documents are ready to download - however logging in and looking under 'My Orders' I can see two 'document 'Download Links'  one for Grant Document and one for the Will Document...Yippeee I thought! However -

When I click on the Download Link for the Grant Document I receive a PDF document - all good !
When I click on the Download Link for the Will Document - nothing happens.!

I then sent an email to ironmountain (a week ago) requesting an update...but alas no response as yet.

Anyone have a similar issue - where one document like the Grant document can be downloaded but the Will document does not?!