If, in the immediate future, you have need to purchase an official birth certificate – not the much cheaper photocopy of an entry in the civil registration register known as a 'research copy' – you need to be aware that the HSE-managed certificates.ie is currently working on a 100-day despatch cycle.
Yep, 100 days.
This has increased since Monday (29 November), when, as you'll see from the tweet, right, I was told delays were running at 'an average of up to 8 weeks', ie 56 days. I received the tweet after I queried the non-arrival of a birth certificate I'd ordered on 7 October. The order auto-acknowledgement had said the cert would be issued within 30 days, so when I hit 53 days with no advice about additional delays, I felt entitled to an explanation.
Four days later, the service delay has moved on by another 40! See the image below, which is not a grab the Home Page of the certificates.ie site. No, that still says the HSE aims to complete orders within 10-30 days. It's only when you go to place an order that you discover it could be 100 days. Nearly a quarter of a year.
I have sympathy for the chaos caused by the cyber attack. But there's no excuse for not keeping your customers informed. I mean, come on. How long does it take to update one line of a website? Or an auto-response email? Or the answering message of the customer service contact telephone.
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| The turnaround time has gone from 10, to 30, to 60, to (this week) 100 days. |