If, once you have paid our invoice, we determine that our copies of the records (if any) are not faithful reproductions of the original, then we will certainly make it right (e.g., by correcting the file or by revisiting NARA). That is very rarely necessary, however.
It is your responsibility to ascertain that you are requesting the correct records. We will NOT provide a refund on the grounds that the records that you requested turned out to be for someone other than your ancestor.
Also, remember that you are paying for our service in retrieving and duplicating the record(s) – not for the record(s) themselves. The National Archives limits the number of records that can be pulled by a single researcher on a single day. So if we pull a file at your request, then that limits the number of records that we can pull for other clients. That’s true regardless of the volume, condition, or nature of the documents that happen to be in the record.
By offering low flat rates, we assume the risk that the record that you request may contain several hundred pages, requiring us to exert much more time and effort on duplication than we would for an average file. At the same time, you assume the risk that the file may contain very few pages or that some or all of the originals may be incomplete or illegible. We won’t know what we will find until we find them – and by then we have exerted the effort on your behalf.
We therefore will not offer a refund on the grounds that you are disappointed with the contents or number of pages in your record.
Thank you for understanding.
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