National Archives fail

[lethargic_man]

Estimate for sending me, on paper, the naturalisation certificates, of one great-great-grandfather and the brother of a second: £2.60. (A couple of pages each.)

Estimate for emailing me the naturalisation certificate of my patrilineal great-great-grandfather: £99.60. (27 A3 sheets to be copied, 10 A4 sheets, and a charge for burning to a CD-ROM.)

I don't think so.

(I really want to see that document: this is the great-great-grandfather that (according to his daughter in her old age) stole someone else's surname. The naturalisation certificate will give me his parents' forenames, their surname, which ought to prove the case one way or t'other, and may tell me whether the family was settled in Constantinople for more than a single generation.)

Comments

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

Sheesh. Can you go there and copy the damn things yourself?

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Yes, but that involves a higher cost, both in transport and time. I'd prefer to get it sorted out remotely first, if I can. (Besides, what if I lived in Aberystwyth?)

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

Then why are you graunching about it costing less than it would cost you to do it yourself? Just for the pleasure of graunching?

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

No, I'm saying it should cost less than it would cost me to do it myself, were I charged the expected pound or two rather than a hundred.

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

I expect I'm biased. I encounter a lot of people who think I should charge them peanuts for a thirty-second task, without appreciating that it's the fiddling about before and after those thirty seconds that takes a couple of hours and merits me charging accordingly.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Except that they have charged me peanuts for two other jobs that should be pretty much identical.

The money they're charging me will also not be their only source of income; they're .gov.uk, so they're probably receiving taxpayer money too.

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

That's the thing - you think it should be identical, but maybe they aren't. You're thinking like a geek and not like an office worker.

That is to say. If the photocopier's set up for A4 - that's pretty normal - then setting it up for A3 takes time. Setting it back to A4 again afterwards takes time. Scanning takes time, specially given that usually there's only one person in the office who knows how to use the scanner and the CD writer and they're usually a higher grade so their time is more valuable. Finding the CDs from the stock cupboard takes time. Quite possibly not all the computers have CD writers, so arranging matters so the person who knows how to burn CDs and the computer capable of it united - takes time. Burning a CD - takes time. Packaging up CDs and A3 paper takes more time than whacking A4 paper into an A4 envelope.

Charging a serious amount of money means that people aren't going to request such things frivolously, as people are so wont to do.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

That's not the issue. The issue is they're charging me for copying 37 pages, plus a CD (when I'd asked to be emailed the results), not copying two pages.

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

Oh well I didn't get that. Anyway, emailing the results still involves the scanner.

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

And scanning the results probably involves copying them first. And possibly they aren't set up to email large files (office policies, etc).

[bluepork.livejournal.com]

You should ask them to justify that cost.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Naturally. I sent them an email last night.