AncestryReviews 635

ancestry.com uses dark patterns to trick you into thinking you've cancelled your subscription so they can charge you. After it appears as though you've cancelled your subscription, you end up on a landing page with a lot of information no one cares about. Hidden away in the corner is a link that says "Cancel Membership" and if you don't see it and click it, your account hasn't been cancelled and you will be charged. In my case it lead me to being charged for my free trial period even though I only used the site for one day and attempted to cancel it on the 11th day. They don't offer any sort of refund for this, which is further evidence that they are deliberately predatory.

Aside from their behavior as a company, I didn't find the site particularly useful. I found a few interesting old documents there, but for the most part every bit of useful information came out of publicly available obituaries or newspapers.com. Most documents I looked up on ancestry.com just redirected me to newspapers.com anyway and I had to make an account there.

Users can make family trees, which can be interesting, but they can also be very inaccurate, as all of the ones featuring my family were.

On the whole I wouldn't recommend the site very highly without their scammy behavior. They don't notify you when they charge you either, so if you don't see it in your bank records, you won't even notice that they charge you each month for a free trial that they engineered to make you think you cancelled. I even initially failed to successfully cancel it while chatting with support about cancelling it.

Nowhere on the site or the kit could I find that it did not do MT DNA testing. Which is the maternal side. Therefore my results are only half complete. False advertisement, long wait and not to mention the very vague and confusing results given.

I cancelled my monthly NON-SUBSCRIPTION in February 2021 only to discover they were still taking it out in April 2021. The website and customer service have been painstakingly researched and refined to NEVER allow a customer out of the payments. I re-cancelled (which is like a maze of pages on purpose to foul you up-are you sure you want to cancel? Are you positive? Really... click, click, click) anyway on 4/29 and logged back in only to find it still set to monthly "pay as you go". I called the customer service and was told "Ohhhhhhh we can't cancel unless your husband calls too." Then I said I wanted my credit card info removed and was told "No ma'am we need your husband to call also". I had to call my bank and cancel my card and do a charge back for unauthorized charges. If it is worth all that headache to you good luck and God Bless.

I started my family ancestry tree just a couple months ago so I'm still a beginner but everything you learn is so incredibly interesting! Ancestry.com is SO helpful with little leaves that pop up for you to review and ultimately decide if it pertains to your family or not.
Unfortunately, they are rather pricey which can be a little difficult especially with the economy what it is right now.
They also have a DNA kit you can purchase and do yourself at home and then send in, your results help with figuring out who your family is. It's definitely something I'm going to try in the future!
If you have any interest about your family history this is the place to go!

I signed up for the trial and cancelled prior to the required date, but was charged anyway. Since I had used a debit card I rarely use, the charges were not caught right away. Once I called them, they stated they would issue a partial refund. That was a couple months ago, 6-7 phone calls, a bogus statement that the refund was issued on 3/12. You can't talk with anyone of authority, you can't get answers. In fact one of their representatives stated I should dispute the refund with my bank. Of course, my bank doesn't dispute credits owed, or charges older than 2 months. I'm pretty sure she knew this. I will NEVER recommend Ancestry.com. Their business practices are terrible.

I know my family history and can yet my DNA results could be for someone else it is so different. First agent said that I must be adopted! I believe the DNA results are simply a compilation of other family members that have Ancestry accounts and requested DNA. No other logical reason since I was not adopted

Ancestry wants subscribers to be forced to continue their subscriptions by deleting records the customer previously entered by their own original resources or have paid for by years of subscriptions. Or they deny access to records previously downloaded to their tree that the customer has previously paid for. They also will not allow me to delete my credit card, which is my, not their property. I pay the bill, Ancestry does not pay my credit card bill. I recently read my credit card will not be deleted even if I delete my Ancestry account. Ancestry was breached by the dark web because of their lack of security. Wow! What a hacker can do with all the DNA, birth dates, social security numbers, addresses, lineage. An identity could be so easily stolen. I don't know any other company that steals purchases from the consumer and does not allow them to delete their credit card at any time. There needs to legislation for genealogy companies. Una

I and 2 cousins did research in 1700 to 1900s old, handwritten Norwegian parish books, as well as Norwegian country records from various counties and towns. I have spent decades on my family tree and researched within handwritten Norwegian records dating back to 1700s. I have spent $1000s on 4 DNA tests and 12 years of Ancestry subscriptions. Now they have deleted messages with other Ancestry members, with no notice. Unless I pay for the International Subscription, I cannot access data I download from the original sources. They do not keep the links from the original sources and turn them into HTML Ancestry files and not original jpgs. So you save the link to Ancestry, not the original document you researched. Remember you are paying them high subscription prices to do data base entry for their company. They don't pay you, you pay them to enter your family's information which was hacked in 2017. They only care for profit, not you as a customer. Go to another site where the information is not charged extra. Don't build your tree on Ancestry, you have no control over it. Download the data and make a tree offline. And don't use Family Tree Builder. It is no longer supported.

My sample was received on January 19th and I still haven't received my results. I've been waiting for almost 10 weeks now. My portal stopped showing an estimated date 7 days ago. I've contacted 3 support people — Ian, Mary, and Reigna — and none of them could tell me an estimated date of when my results will be ready. They said my results were already extracted and analyzed, but couldn't give me an estimated time. I asked them to reach out to someone who could and they said they can't do that. Very un-impressed. I've complained to my co-workers and they all said that 23 and me got back to them during the pandemic within 5 weeks. I'm wouldn't recommend this product to anyone. I'm so frustrated that no one can help me.

This 'renown' [infamous in reality] company has plenty of tricks, real bad service and faulty product [see other reviews]. They've kept my money and have botched two dna test results I've sent to them. They've sent plenty of emails with lies and excuses and they've wiped out some of my account info on the purchases. I trusted this big company and feel like a fool; it's been several months now. The pandemic is a poor excuse to try and justify their crooked practice and seem able to get away with keeping $108.95 of my money. I don't need to use more derogatory language to explain my anger at being fleeced twice bc a point anyone can relate to is they never sent the results or refund. No product no refund. I need the help of any view who understands these shady practices by 'big companies.' The hell with politics it's just too much when a company this big pulls these cheap deals during a pandemic. Help me in calling out this type of practice we consumers have to stick together.

Stay away from ancestry.com They started charging my credit card $10.88 2 years ago and I called them very couple of months and each time they said i need to log into my account to cancel. Please note I had no account and they refused to stop charges and refuted my bank after the bank sent a plea to stop. I recently contacted utah bbb & utah & nys (my state) attorney general. Ultimate scammers

This company has horrible/non existent customer service. We went to purchase the DNA genealogy kit yesterday. My wife selected apple pay as the option, as it was listed on their website as the most trusted and secure payment method. Immediately upon pressing it, without having any order confirmation to review and approve the payment was processed. This was surprising, but then we realized we meant to use a different DNA service. They were closed to cancel on Thanksgiving, which is reasonable. However, today we called to cancel, they stated they were unable to cancel the order because it was through apple pay. Elevated to supervisor, after several explanations that they are the company supplying the product, they need to be able to stop orders, same story. They can't cancel because it is through apple pay despite the payment being directly linked to my debit card, and my bank debiting ancestry directly. They can't do anything manually, they won't call anyone to cancel, they have no manual options to email anyone to cancel. Its not on their electronic system so they can't help us. They say call apple pay to cancel payment which they can't do, and banks don't cancel debit payments because they are automatic. A company that is unable to process cancelations of their own product is ludicrous! They also say there's a 15 dollar return fee for returned items. We can't even head this off now like we are trying to! They have no other emails or phone numbers to use. Only people that can't help. Thanks a lot "chris" and "joe" and ancestry.com for atrocious scam policies. Order #*******

I am already a high value subscriber to Ancestry and I thought I would give my husband a DNA kit for his birthday in October 2019. I duly bought the kit for $129, he utillised and sent it back.

However Ancestry would not return the results to our joint email address, they would not send them to him and nothing that was suggested seemed possible. My husband is 79 and I am 77 - there are no secrets and he is happy for the information to come to our joint email address - however "not an option" according to Ancestry.

Ancestry also messed up my existing subscriber page on Ancestry. They have put my husband's name - Edward Mortimer - instead of my name Helen Clarke - but all the information is m ine. Very confusing when making contact with another subscriber.

Ancestry will you please try to sort this out before my husband dies!

Cannot order another kit, I have been emailing them for days, they keep offering the boilerplate auto responses, no help at all with a technical issue which is at their end. They are also very expensive and offer no future rebates for previous customers. Additionally, once you get the kit analysed you have to pay a fortune to actually access any records and the expenses are ongoing forever, they offer almost nothing for free even when you have fully paid for two kits to be analyzed.