Problems with the probate website

I was back on the Probate Registry site today - the good news is that the order box now pops up for pre-1996 wills, and some of my history has been restored.

Of concern though is that the indexes seem to be different to the ones on Ancestry - search for Edward Harley WELSH who died in 1987 on Ancestry and the Probate Registry site to see what I mean. Also, I had to zoom out to 60% to even see the full page on the Probate Registry site - there are no scroll bars. On my (reasonably sized laptop) the text was then too small to read to be able to place an order - I've submitted this as feedback to them.

The main thing I wanted to mention here though is that there's just one 'download' buttons with orders - yet as experience shows us, the grant and will are often delivered as two separate documents. Last week I had an order delivered instantly, but I only got the Letters of Administration when I clicked download - the ADMON said the Will was available from the Court but it wasn't attached to my order. At the time I assumed - wrongly, I now find - that because it was Letters of Administration the Will wasn't included.

The only reason I realised my mistake was because today I downloaded one of my two orders that had disappeared in the changeover - I got the Will, but not the Grant of Probate. I also got an error message and the system didn't mark my order as viewed either, so to see whether the status would change if I tried a second time - this time I got the Grant of Probate! The penny then dropped on the other order and when I clicked the download button again lo and behold this time I got the Will.

So, if you place an order and don't get everything you expect to, try a second download. I've fed this back to the Probate Registry too ... the word 'shambles' was used more than once!

 

I have tried three times now to download the copy of a will that should be there, but each time I simply get two copies of the grant, I have emailed them to tell them this but it seems they must be a week behind dealing with the flood of complaints they must be getting as I got an reply to an email I sent them on the 7th february today.

 

This is the gist of the reply I got today;

We are sorry to hear about your issues with accessing our website.
If you haven't already, then please update your link to our website by deleting our old url and add the following link to your bookmarks browser:
https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/sign-in
Once you are presented with the field asking for your email address, then please enter the registered email address you used from our old website.
If you use a different email address then we won't be able to transfer your old orders across the system.
Please note, as you won't be able to use your old password from the previous website, please click on the "Forgot Password" link and follow the instructions on the email you will be sent. If you don't receive it then please also check your spam & junk folders for the email.

We are currently sorting out some of the issues which are currently stopping the system running efficiently as it should be. And we are in the process of working through these at the moment.
We understand how frustrating this is, and we will keep the disruption down to a minimum.
If you have any outstanding orders then please get back to us, with as much information as you can, so we can investigate these for you.


Neither of the emails I used while trying to get on the site are being recognised so I am just going to stick to the new account I set up to be able to use the site.

 

I haven't logged in here for a little while and have just found this thread, which I admit not to having read very carefully (because it's nearly my bedtime). So, my apologies in advance for any duplication of what others may have said, However, I have been having all of these problems too and they have been discussed on other forums with people generally reporting the same issues. I had several false starts before I could log in to the site, with two or three attempts at recording a new password. Then I fell foul of the search problems, with results presented in odd sequences. Ordering was then difficult and one specific issue was having to put spaces in when there was no folio number, as no content at all wasn't accepted. Then I couldn't make a payment successfully until I had logged out and in again. I then couldn't find any record of my order, until I logged out and back in yet again. I had no mail confirmation of my order - on 9th February - until today. Now the site lists several of my past orders as being current, but has no mention of my new order.

Frustrating as this all is, I think it's much more worrying that people are also reporting problems and delays in getting probate currently. Dealing with someone's estate is never easy in any case, so any glitches in the process will only make things worse for all concerned. My wish for copies of historical probate documents to help my research is obviously much less important. I don't know if the system for ordering copies of probate documents is entirely separate from their other systems, but this makes it even more a pity that they've changed a system that appeared to be working well before, because now they've got a lot of irate historians complaining to them, on top of whatever other issues they have?

 

That's true, but as there are problems with both current probate processes and the system for ordering copies of previous probate documents, I wonder if they've had a more wide-ranging IT 'upgrade'? My main point though is that HMCTS seem to be under pressure anyway and complaints about the probate search system will only be adding to that.

 

I checked my will today that had only had two copies of the grant page, and lo and behold the will was now there, so I am at last Happy !!!!!. Interestingly there is now a message saying they are working on the sign in page but I was able to sign in with out trouble.

 

Having sent several emails asking about my missing wills/grants from the order placed in mid-January, I have to date received a couple of replies. One told me that the order was now complete (it isn't) and the other told me that problems with logons on the site had now been fixed (a question I hadn't asked). I then replied asking them to answwer the question I had actually asked (and gave them all the details) and have had no response at all. I think I have run out of options unless anyone has any bright ideas?

 

I have just discovered that a Will I thought I ordered on 10th January on new web site is not shown on list of outstanding orders. Of course I have no proof as they no longer send an acknowledgement email which is poor practice. I have no transaction on my credit card so obviously transaction did not complete even though web site said it did at the time. Has anybody come across any reason for changing a perfectly functioning web site? I do wonder if the original web site was hacked or server failed and had no backup!! And all they had was the database and so they have quickly built the current front end to access the database!

 

The Gov uk /ironmountain site is driving me up the wall, I have been corresponding with them for quite a while as I cannot login and now I am just going around in circles. I have contacted them through the feedback link and they have answered by saying everything should be ok now. I tried to send a reply and now this is bouncing back. All of the problems described above I have experienced but the problems are just multiplying. I do not want to lose my history from the old site but I am at the point of scrubbing everything and starting afresh. Here are some of the error messages I am getting......

There is a problem
The email address (my email address) has an outstanding password reset request

Here is the answer I received when I told them there was a problem........
Search probate records or find a will
Check your email
Enter your password
We have sent an email to (my email address) with a link to reset your password.
After you have reset your password, come back here and continue.
If you do not get an email, check your spam or try again.

I did not receive an email to my inbox, spam or anywhere else.
.................................................................................................................................................................

Here is another answer I received from them........................

Dear Customer,
We apologise for the problems you have been encountering with our website.
However, we have fixed most of the issues and you should be able to place orders as normal.
If you have placed orders with us before from our old website then please re-register by using your previous email address which you registered with us before.
This way, all you previous orders will be preserved and we will be able to supply you with the orders which you ordered via the old website.
If you have an old link to our website then please delete this and update with the following new url:
https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/sign-in
Once you are presented with the field asking for your email address, then please enter the registered email address you used from our old website.
If you use a different email address then we won't be able to transfer your old orders across the system.
Please note, as you won't be able to use your old password from the previous website, please click on the "Forgot Password" link and follow the instructions on the email you will be sent. If you don't receive it then please also check your spam & junk folders for the email.
If you have any outstanding or missing recent orders then please get back to us, along with as much information as you can, so we can investigate these for you.
Kind Regards,
HMCTS Wills Helpdesk

If only it was that easy.................
...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
When I send a reply to ironmountain I get.....
Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups:

Wills, HMCTS Wills (hmctswills@ironmountain.co.uk)Your message wasn't delivered because the recipient's email provider rejected it.

I really do not know what to do next, I am not very good with technical things and this is driving me to despair, help please

 

You are certainly using the correct email address, Heather. I'm just writing to be sympathetic because I don't know what to suggest at all - perhaps someone else does!
In my case, I have had a couple of those standard (meaningless) replies but no reply whatsoever to the last few emails I have sent, so I have lost the orders I made before the mess-up. Like you, I am considering writing off the money and starting again....

 

I agree, Peter, but what else do we do?

 

Time has resolved most of the problems I had at the changeover and orders placed since are running smoothly, allowing for order confirmations being a bit hit and miss. Still not had access though to a will ordered just before shutdown and as that has passed the 6 week mark have sent a chaser. It's in My Orders but as Documents pending

 

That's my problem too, Kevin. I've sent a number of chasers now and I finally got a response today saying that my order was now ready to collect. There were two outstanding items on it and one was indeed ready, so I grabbed it, but the other is still pending. Funnily enough, it's the one where I received an email during the period they were off-line saying it was available, but it isn't and never has been, for me at least!

 

I've had a similar experience to others with the Probate Search site, but with some differences.

I had ten wills on my wanted list, and was quick to order them on 9th March. I'd read Peter's warning that a password reset might be needed, so I got in quite easily, found no sign of my previous orders, did this new one, and had no confirmation of the order or payment. The confirmation e-mail didn't come until 15th, and it does not list the items ordered as it used to, though I could see them in my account all marked as pending.

When the first items got "download" live links (16th), I could only get the grant - no wills, and these four were all probates. I'd seen the post on here about clicking twice to get two files, but that did not work for me. So I put in a query (more of a complaint) about that.

Then on Friday (18th) I want back and tried again, and did get the two files. From my records, I've only once had a separate "_W" file before; all the other wills (over 70) followed the grant in the "_G" file. But maybe that's because of the dates: all the latest batch are in the range 1951-1977.

There were two new things I'd not seen before. One was how I got those two files (_G and _W) - it only needed one click on the "download" link. My Windows system is set up to always ask me whether to open or save PDFs, and there were two of these dialogue boxes for one click. I've never seen that before, so it was rather confusing.

The second thing may be a bit more serious. My ten items have been given only seven of these "probate numbers" between them. I'm not convinced that is a probate number, but it is the file name without the final G or W. And there are three pairs that have the same number for both! By then one of these had become available too, and when I clicked that I got the files for the other item with the same probate number! So that was another query to Iron Mountain.

By 21st one more file had become available: one of another pair. This time it led to the two files I expected. Then a long wait, until on 3th March I got an email with nine pairs of _G and _W files attached. This explained that they had been looking for my documents manually, and had found all except one of the ten. But the newly found files did not get "download" links in my "active orders" then, and only one has since, and I'm still missing that last grant/will.

Sorry that's a bit long, but I think it shows two things: there is someone up there in Birmingham trying to sort this mess out; quite possibly a whole headless-chicken coop of them - and it really is huge mess!