Hi Gavin Putting the silly political comment to one side as its not the forum for it My grouse is not that they charge, I know that any service needs to be paid for and am prepared to pay where needed if and when I have the funds to do so Its the dumbing down of the search engine on scotlandspeople that really aggravates me, they restrict the fields to search on so you are forced to pay out for meaningless unconnected hits, the fields of data are there to be searched on in the database and if allowed you could get to the target person without having to buy several pages of unconnected hits They would not lose out by making the search more usable as people would use it the same amount but be more satisfied and I suspect spend more in fact, I know I would if I knew I would be more likely to get the result I was looking for English certs are seven pounds each and I have never ordered one that was not mine, I have lost count of how many wrong pages I have downloaded from scotlandspeople, they may be cheaper but I have wasted far more money there than any other site With a subscription to Ancestry you can search anything within their databases with no further expense, I have downloaded literally hundreds of pages of the census, its a pity that scotlandspeople don't have a similar method of use or allow Ancestry to have access to the images Best wishes Nivard Ovington, in Cornwall (UK) > I don't think GROS decided all of their own volition to charge for > access - they were obliged, like many other public bodies, such as the > Ordnance Survey, to cover their costs from revenue (I seem to recall

2009/4/6 Nivard Ovington <ovington1@sky.com>: <snipped> > you are forced to pay out for meaningless unconnected hits, the fields of data are there to be searched on in the database and if allowed you could get to the target person without having to buy several pages of unconnected hits looking for > ... ... ... > English certs are seven pounds each and I have never ordered one that was not mine, I have lost count of how many wrong pages I have downloaded from scotlandspeople, they may be cheaper but I have wasted far more money there than any other site Nivard, We are probably average users of the Scotland's People [ScP] service and it's always seemed to be very good value for money. All Sheena's family were Scottish so we have been very focussed on ScP. Since 2002 I have downloaded 370+ images of which about 200+ were relevant. I have had nearly 700 pages of search hits. Total cost £510. This works out at about £2.50 per image - considerably cheaper than English ones. Added to which by widening the search criteria to ensure that my hit-pages are nearly full, I am able to look for siblings and descendants on the same page. I don't expect to know enough about someone to be able to precisely hit them so the slightly approximate ScP search suits fine. > With a subscription to Ancestry you can search anything within their databases with no further expense, I have downloaded literally hundreds of pages of the census, its a pity that scotlandspeople don't have a similar method of use or allow Ancestry to have access to the images What would my six years have cost on Ancestry? From the website it looks like either £900 paying monthly or £650 by paying annually. This in addition to the £1400 for the images. So: Ancestry £2050-2300 ScP £510 = No contest. And how often are the listings Ancestry provide subject to typos and indexing errors. I've had three errors on ScP two of which they corrected immediately [I didn't notify the other as it turned out to be irrelevant]. I think ScP provide a really cost-effective solution to making all their records available as on-line images not transcriptions. A major benefit! -- Best wishes Ray ********************************************************** >From Ray Hennessy Forenames website: www.whatsinaname.net Preferred Email address: ray@whatsinaname.net **********************************************************