AncestryReviews 635

I have been an Ancestry customer for more than 20 years. Ancestry has a long history of making unannounced drastic changes to its programs without any prior consultation or consideration of the needs of its subscribers. The worst surprise of the last 20 years was the new right window popups in hints. They must think their subscribers just love nothing better than right window popups. What's worse, every change Ancestry makes is to dumb it down. It's not genealogy for dummies anymore. It is for idiots only. They destroyed collaboration by hiding comments where no one knows where they are. Genealogy without collaboration is a junkyard. They bought Rootsweb and destroyed it. They need to do more than just sell DNA kits and that was a passing fad. For me, that was a one and done. And I recommend anybody else for DNA testing. They cannot tell the difference between Scots and Irish.

I attempted to cancel my renewal two days prior to the renewal actually being done. This I attempted to do through there website - do NOT ever do this as it will not cancel your membership. I went to the website thinking that they would be an honest and upstanding website and found out differently. Went through their you are not a bot verification, chose the reason why I was cancelling my membership, provided them with a lengthy explanation on why, received the statement "we are sorry to see you go" and clicked submit thinking that was the end of it. I have a transcript of the whole conversation with the chat people on the charge. They stated that since I did not receive a confirmation email from the cancellation they are justified in making the charge, I advised them that I would be putting this review anywhere that I could so that they could not keep fraudulently charging people after they thought it was cancelled.

I stay with Ancestry only because of its massive data base of documents. As for its site, I have found and heard from others, that since the take over by Blackstone it has become more glitchy with regular IT issues. As for the Help Line, they might help with very basic issues but be prepared to spend a half hour or more with the associate. I would give them a 10/10 for their document library, 6/10 for their site reliability and 5/10 for the Help line.

It has been 2 years since this started. They keep asking for another sample saying the sample is no good but can't tell me why. We are on sample #4 now! My subscription that came with purchase is long expired so even if I get a test results I cannot connect my tree to others without paying heavily

Ancestry is mostly a good site. It is fairly user-friendly and can be very helpful if you are a discerning researcher, but overall it is way overpriced and plays dirty by charging cancellation fees, auto-renewing subscriptions, and forcing you to cancel free trials multiple days in advance of it ending so as not to incur fees. I forgot to cancel my free trial and ended up paying $50 ($25 for the subscription, $25 for "cancellation fee") despite not using my account at all during the time I was charged for. I would recommend only using this site if you're planning on blowing money.

Ancestry.com offers you a 14-day trial hook, but doesn't allow you to cancel before the trial-They state you will be automatically charged at the end of 14 days, but list the trial as a "registered" guest-After 24 hours of signing up, I called to cancel the 14 day trial and couldn't. I asked to delete all my information and they told me that could only be done in writing submitted to "upper" management- The hook is that you will be automatically charged at the end of 14 days, no option to leave before then and then try/hassle to get your money back for a subscription charge.

Verbatim on their site: Your Order Summary
14-Day Free Trial
U.S. Discovery Membership
$0.00
14 days free, then $16.50/month for 6 months. Renews automatically until you cancel.

And then their customer support is like reading from a handbook-They're like robots and either they themselves don't realize they are screwing people and/or they are part of the entire scam and condone it.

I have found many like myself that are filing a formal complaint to consumer affairs for investigation.

I started my account in 2011, I cancelled in 1/13/12 and restarted on 12/6/16 and cancelled my account on 4/19/17. Then they say I started up again in 2018, but I haven't been working the account and didn't know that my account has been set back up. Wow, one way to make money!

They are robbers there was no email saying that the trial was going to end. Nothing to say would you like to continue your subscription instead they charge you and keep your money. Customer service doesnt help either even when you tell them you cant afford it. They say oh well. I accessed the site one day the day I opened the trial. But got hit with a whopping $50! For something they should have given notice about.

I do like Ancestry. Yet it has its problems. I can only look at the information I have downloaded to my own tree if I have a subscription. Yes I could download everything and reupload but that would be time consuming and why should I. The DNA is severely lacking in tools. Large database but very poor ways of checking how you match. So 5 stars for the records. Minus one star for the subscription only tree info and minus one star for the DNA lack of tools. Really it's only saving grace are the great records and amount of other people's trees. Please sort yourselves out Ancestry or I will be an ex subscriber.

I recently tried to conduct some personal research of archived death notices and obituaries. A few of them hitting brick walls of dead or unresponsive links. The Customer Support links also open to bad server or unresponsive pages that are limited to family or DNA search. No actual contact support.

I would have given it a half star if I could of. I just spent AN HOUR AND A HALF on the phone with ANCESTRY.COM because they canceled my account and deleted my trees. I called to reactivated and restart the 6mn period today since I lost 2 months of work. Then the agent and a supervisor both told me I didn't have an account under my email address (even though I was looking right at it) and that I was using an account that was over a year old even though I didn't know the user name and password. How do you sign into an account you don't know the username and password and don't have the email or phone number linked to it to get the username and password? I DO NOT RECOMMEND ANCESTRY.COM. RUN, RUN AWAY FROM THEM!

Beware! Ancestry.com can get your information thru email addresses and then they can charge your card associated with that email. I never sign-up for Ancestry.com subscription, I just saw I have a charge of $24.99 on my card from ancestry.com I call them and told that I never sign-up to them. So they cancel my subscription (which i never did) but they can't refund the $24.99 coz they say it's not on their policy to refund. So if you're not aware of the charges on your card this kind of company can easily steal your money. They can do this to anyone, so be careful on sharing your information online.

Overpriced and if you want to continue to access you have to keep paying. It's a scam. But, hey! If you're Mormon, you can get access for free! Talk about religious discrimination.

Overprice and useless. The membership automatically gets renewed each month. You pay to do your own work. Be aware and save yourself tome/money.

So my sample got lost in the mail, there is an issue at the local usps, and now theyre making me wait until the very last minute of the 20 day return shipping time frame to send a replacement even though tracking was never scanned but the sample was received.so now it might be several months before i get any results from them. Thats why im going elsewhere next week to do the paternal one from amazon that takes two days.

I recently took out a 6 month membership with Ancestry for $100. It was a very disappointing experience. I was hoping to find lots of relatives that I did not know, I found nothing,. Lots of date and spelling errors in their records. Unless you have lots of information you will get nowhere. I kept getting hints I would click on them and add to my tree later to find out by some members it was incorrect. These people did not belong on my tree. I have a few people in my family that were in the military but could find nothing. The only things I could find out were old addresses of relatives. Some areas you go into require more money to be spent. 100$ for this information was just a waste of money.

They have quite a scam going on here. I signed up for the free trial period and cancelled before it ended. Ancestry continued to charge my credit card. When I called for a refund they claimed that since it was a recurring charge they could not refund my money which is bullsh*t.

If you want to use this service check with your local library. They most likely allow you to access it for free. You've already paid for it with your taxes, don't give these rip-off artist any more money.

I entered my credit card info to order a kit before I realized I could order with free shipping on Amazon. Without me giving permission, they kept my credit card info. You cannot delete it. So, I did online chat. They said I can't delete it to protect my account (?) so I have to call. I called and they said they can't do it, I have to email. I emailed, they replied from another address saying "let us know if you still need assistance" when I replied, they told me I have to email the original address I had just emailed.

The customer service rep told me even if you delete your account entirely, they don't remove your info.

There seems to be nothing I can do except get a new credit card.