Original will missing at Harlow Probate Office

Mauritius90

Can you believe it I got a call yesterday from the probate office saying they had found my father's Will and Grant of Probate will now be issued, I should receive this within 10days! The relief is immense! I do wonder whether the find was influenced by my stating I had written to my MP, Moneybox Radio 4 and commenced this forum!

badger09

Mauritius90 said:

Can you believe it I got a call yesterday from the probate office saying they had found my father's Will and Grant of Probate will now be issued, I should receive this within 10days! The relief is immense! I do wonder whether the find was influenced by my stating I had written to my MP, Moneybox Radio 4 and commenced this forum!

No doubt it was your reference to MSE that swung it!

Glad you've got it sorted 

Mutton_Geoff

I am having a very poor experience with the probate office in Harlow. Not only are they failing to work to their own deadlines, three months ago they sent me a letter enclosing someone else (unknown to me) original death certificate. I called them and they were apologetic and said this had never happened before. I sent it back. A month later, the same again. Exactly the same certificate sent back to me.

I wrote a letter of complaint and asked them to escalate this poor service and breach of data protection. No reply received until today when ... I received a standard covering letter, and the same death certificate back once again.

I called and waited on hold for 30 mins until I spoke to some person who might as well been an automaton reading standard scripts back to me. When I pressed to speak to a manager, they hung up on me.

Next stop my MP.

p00hsticks

Mutton_Geoff said:

I wrote a letter of complaint and asked them to escalate this poor service and breach of data protection.

I agree that it's appalling service, but if all that you are receiving is an unrelated death certificate, I don't believe it's necessarily a data  protection breach, as death certificates are in the public domain - anyone can buy one.

Mutton_Geoff

p00hsticks said:

Mutton_Geoff said:

I wrote a letter of complaint and asked them to escalate this poor service and breach of data protection.

I agree that it's appalling service, but if all that you are receiving is an unrelated death certificate, I don't believe it's necessarily a data  protection breach, as death certificates are in the public domain - anyone can buy one.

Don't you have to have "good reason" if it's less than 100 years old?

TonyMMM

Mutton_Geoff said:

Don't you have to have "good reason" if it's less than 100 years old?

No - they are available to anyone on payment of the statutory fee (currently £11 for a paper certificate) 

carefullycautious

I would take the death certificate to the local birth marriage and death registrar office and let them deal with it. I have always found them (in my area) very professional with any problem I have had.

NeilRed

Two witness questionnaires sent to Harlow separately arrived in the same recorded delivery 14 Jan. One was uploaded same day, the other is missing.  Attempts to locate/complain etc are like dealing with a black hole. The phone reps don’t know anything and won’t give me contact with anyone that does. An “investigation” seems to be sending an email to Harlow office. Very frustrated