Credit Card
Cart payments are processed by www.paypal.com or Google Checkout and your bank statement will show "UKfamilyrecords".

Cheque
You can also pay by cheque in pounds (GBP) sterling by making it payable to LONDON AND ESSEX GENEALOGY. Send to: London and Essex Genealogy, 9 Bretons Cottages, Rainham Road, Rainham, Essex, RM13 7 LL, United Kingdom.
Research will not begin until all payments have cleared into our account (5 Business days).

Bank transfer
We bank with Lloyds TSB, if you can arrange a transfer between your bank and ours then we will be happy for you to use this service - just contact us for details.

These payments may be subject to a service charge.

Payments made by credit card and bank transfer will be subject to payment processors service fees. Individual services such as certificates will include service fees in the amount total; payments for large projects will have service fees deducted from total amount e.g. you make a payment of £100 via the shopping cart which is then processed by PayPal, they take a percentage fee of £3.60. We deduct £3.60 from your credit and the actual amount of payment research credit you have will be £96.40.

Other Fees

i. E-mail Updates

If you regularly enquire about your research several times a month, we will charge £2.50 for each response we make. Unfortunately we have been forced into this position by over eager family historians! It is not a cynical money making exercise, but rather a means to serve the best interest of all customers.
Unlike many of our fellow researchers we have always tried to update customers during the course of long running projects, our colleagues often make customers wait until the end of research before they send out information and documents which given the researchers circumstances, is entirely reasonable. For more information about the work of Researchers and Genealogists see the FAQ, Hiring a Researcher.

We want to promote a balanced equal service for all customers.

ii. Sending out documents to customers early
There is an Admin fee of £15.00 for sending out documents to customers before all research has been completed.

iii. Admin Fee for correcting reports if the error belongs to the customer
If you send us information about your current family to be included in a report and it proves to be incorrect, you are responsible for covering all costs involved in making the correction. This is particularly relevant to those buying Complete Family Trees, who need to complete Application Forms about their parents and their grandparents origins, much of which we do not check. If we did spend time confirming this information then not much money would be spent building a customer's family tree, in fact we would end up telling them what they already know.
In some circumstances we will check the information, but we are aware that our clients may be confused as to what we do and do not  check so we will be addressing this issue shortly.

The new fee for correcting errors made by the customer is £45.00. All costs will be covered by us if the error is ours.

If you are in another country and wish to make a payment we prefer you to use www.paypal.com or direct bank transfer, however if you do not like to use the Internet for payments or you cannot get a bank transfer then we will accept an International Money Order or a cheque in your own currency.

If you send a cheque in your own currency then this is subject to a £25.00 admin fee to cover the extra paperwork and red tape involved in cashing foreign cheques instigated by the British Government since 9/11.

As professional researchers we still need to make a living, we have invested our time in your research, paid out travel fees and possibly document expenses on your behalf and would therefore be out of pocket if we weren't paid.
Many genealogists have to supplement their income too because most wages are under £10,000 a year, it will never be a job that makes anyone rich!

There also seems to be a commonly held view that genealogy and archive research are not proper jobs, so why pay someone for it? But it is actually a skilled job, requiring some degree of learning, professionalism and training and should in fact be counted as a professional position.

So to use an analogy to answer the question, if we went to our dentist for a check-up and he did not find anything wrong we would still pay him for looking wouldn't we?

i. Complete Trees

We will supply complete refunds if a tree is deemed by us untraceable minus the amount spent on research thus far, this is your Guarantee. We do not supply refunds if the tree is:
1. Taking a long time, but is researchable as deemed by us in our professional opinion.
2. You require us to terminate research quickly because it is needed for a specific date. Research will continue until all funds have been used, but reports can be sent out early if an advance agreement is made at the beginning of the Application process between us and the customer and a £70 admin fee has been paid. Any research that continues after that date will be sent as an addendum to the report already dispatched.

ii. Refunds for other services

Certificates : £4.00 refund if no certificate is produced.

All other research is subject to the minimum fee rule.

We operate a Priority Response System.

All queries regarding orders where funds have cleared into our account are high priority, we aim to respond to them within two business days. If we are unable to answer your query immediately we will inform you that we have received your query/enquiry and that we are attempting to gather information to answer it.

All other queries, general research enquiries or questions about orders where funds have not cleared into our account are low priority and may take up to 21 business days to be answered.

If you have made an error with your order then remember it is your responsibility and not ours. Any errors we find that you have made with your research application or payment are treated as low priority (up to 21 business day response).

If you are enquirying about an order, then you should supply the order number you received upon confirmation of your order. 

For general research - your initial enquiry should be to ask us whether we have a research slot available for you and if not when one will be available, you should also inform us what type of research you want, i.e. beginners family tree, continuation of research etc. You will also need to tell us the era in which you are researching, so that we can anticipate how many resources are needed for the job.

If we have a research slot available we will then ask for further information. If you have already begun your research and wish for us to continue, you will need to supply the following:
A GEDCOM file with all your research to date
Copies or transcripts of relevant documents

If you are buying a complete tree from us you will need to fill in an application form.

The assessment. Based on the information you have supplied to us we will decide if research is possible; if it becomes apparent that no assessment can be made we will suggest a Research Test. For a small fee we will research the background of your subject to see if further research is possible; after the Test has been completed we will then provide you with the results of the assessment.

Should we decide that research is possible, we will provide a brief outline of our research plan; full research methods are not disclosed as they belong to and are copyrighted to Ukfamilyrecords.com and its partners.