AncestryReviews 635

Ancestry charged my credit card 158.54 in Aug 2020, all of my info was erased, when I called customer service spoke with a lady Purette., who was clueless, after being on the phone 1 hour, she could still not restore my service. Finally offered full refund, stating "I'm gonna make your day and give you a full refund" even though I had no access to my info for 4 months, still waiting to see if that appears. Thanks for the favor Ancestry...

I called with what should be a simple fix, and what they told me I have to do to fix it is UNBELIEVABLE! I wanted to edit my username. Simple. I saw how to do it, I did it, it doesn't work! I called the support people, they told me how to do it, I told them it doesn't work! I'm quite sure I was not talking to anyone in this country, but they kept putting me on hold, it took a lot of my time, and their answer was unbelievable. They were going to write a feed back report! If anyone was going to address it and fix it, it will be done automatically! By the way, no one was going to give ME the FEEDBACK. And they won't even give you a higher level to speak with! I WANT MY MONEY BACK! I REALLY WANT TO GIVE THEM ZERO STARS

There is a cancellation link in your account, but it has not worked for me in the last 3 years. It goes into a continual online thinking process.
When you subscribe, there is no choice but to take a subscription that auto renews.
I like to take a 6-month subscription during the winter months when I am most likely to research. I carefully calendar my subscription expiry date to alert 72 hours before the expiry date (based on my own and other peoples previous experience).
My current World Heritage subscription has just expired and despite me attempting to cancel online numerous times, and despite my contacting them via an online email link, they still took my money. I have since received the following (partial email) response:
"Thank you for contacting Ancestry in regard to trying to cancel your subscription.
We are sorry to hear you no longer wish to continue with your membership and we hope you have enjoyed your time with us. Your subscription has been cancelled immediately and you will have no further billing from Ancestry. Since you contacted us before it renewed, I was also able to give you a full refund. We have issued a refund of $249.99 AUD to the account that was billed originally. It can take up to 10 business days for your financial institution to post this amount to your account".
I will now need to wait up to 10 days to see whether I will receive a refund.
The refund is not why I am writing this review. This has happened to me before and to several family members and acquaintances. I have helped several people to contact Ancestry Support for their refunds. The customer support process is difficult to negotiate and, in my opinion, deliberately designed as a deterrent to cancelling.
I think that most ancestry users are likely to be 60+ years of age.
Before you purchase, I would like you to think how many people out there that have auto renewing subscriptions and lack the knowledge or will to do so.
Ancestry has poor reviews compared to other ancestry sites. Reading through other people's reviews, I concluded that most positive reviews are from newer users who are enamoured with discovering their heritage and new family members. When you read the negative reviews, you will discover users who struggle for ancestry support, subscription issue etc.
If you read Trustpilot reviews, you will see that in most cases a carefully conscripted response that points the blame back at you. Will I get one?
Next winter I will purchase a MyHeritage subscription.
A message for Ancestry:
Your response to reviews tells me you are not listening to your customer base.
Overhaul your online customer support process and make it user friendly. In my case, I just wanted the online cancellation link to work as it should and confirmation that process worked.

I was just on the phone a total of 3 hours, disconnected twice. Asked for a supervisor twice to no avail. I want to remove all my personal information from their website. One Cust. Service person emailed me instructions how to do so which were incorrect. Not one person offered to do it for me. I asked one Rep. To walk me thru the instructions while I was on their website. Even the Rep. Couldn't navigate the website or also gave me wrong instructions. Terrible website. I would like to see this company shut down.

I just got off the phone after receiving the most vague test results from this scam website.

$68 to tell me I am middle eastern. Ok, tell me, where exactly in the middle east? We don't know, because we do not have enough data and research done in regions outside of Europe. If you are white, they might tell you oh, you're 20% Irish and 40% German, but if you are a person of color, they have not done enough research to give you an accurate break down of the percentages. Which is fine if they at least were honest about it before you buy the test, but the fact that I contacted customer service and they were like, yeah sorry we are bad at this is upsetting. Do not recommend at all.

I have been a member of Ancestry for 1 year. I will update it from time to time. I payed by pay pal and decided this month to pay by my secondary payment feature which is my credit card. Two days later I got an email that said my payment info needed updated. I called Ancestry, got my credit card put in as desinated payment. The person now tells me that my payment is now 24 plus tax instead of 19 plus tax. I said no way! Then they say they will let it stay at 19 but next month it will go up to 24 plus tax making it around 26.00. If I would have not changed my payment plan, it would have stayed at 19, I just know it would have, and told them so. This is not right, and I will discontinue using Ancestry after this month.

Buyers be aware! Ancestry notes that they take their customer service and any complaints seriously. Then if they take complaints seriously then why is their response to everything the same "Canned" response over and over of call customer service and speak with them?

On June 30th, I called to inquire about my question. After a 45 minutes conversation with an associate and going back and forth, I asked to speak with their manager, I was told that Ancestry "does not have managers." The associate then hung up on me.

After being hung up on, I called back waiting 30 minutes in que to speak with someone then asked to speak with a manager. The associate argued with me and told me that she was in charge of ancestry and "how she is dying to make my dreams come true". I got so frustrated that I ended up hanging up.

On other occasions on June 30th, July 1st and July 10th, when I asked to speak with a manager, I was put on hold for 2-hours waiting to speak with a manager only to be told, "they could not be bothered with customer's petty issues".

Ancestry needs to get their act together, they need to stop responding with "Canned" responses and they need to take time to actually resolve the issue. The time they spend with the "canned" response could actually be used to help solve customer issues. Buyers be aware of their treatment.

I signed up for a free trial, and decided I did not want the service, called in and tried to cancel. Apparently the cancellation did not get acknowledged. 5 days later I was charged for the month. I called in and they said (as per the 30 day policy) and they agreed and stated the charge would be returned in 9 days. One month later the charge has not been returned.
I wrote again, and they said in their return email "REFUNDS ARE NOT ABLE TO BE PROCESSED ON THIS PLATFORM OR BY EMAIL" Come on, I have called twice and written 3 times... Horrendous Company

The big issue I have is the fact Ancestry doesn't allow the user to delete their credit card information. This is contrary to asking someone to steal my information without me giving you permission to do so. So you loose a star for not allowing a user to remove their information from your system. Also There wasn't much this platform could offer me at this point, because I was looking for family members on my father's side and did not get any responses. So I felt like I wasted money for something I thought would provide some real answers. But what I do know that what listed on my profile might not be my real father although he is on my birth certificate. However, non of the surnames matches our names. So it is very likely that my real father's bloodline is not aggressive enough to contact me, or they just are not on your platform. I have the same results from 23andMe. So I will not be renewing my membership in the future as well. But I did like Ancestry setup much better. I did find a lot more about the mother side of the family I already know. So that was good. I did get my mother's picture and my aunt's school picture. This was good. But that's not why I purchase the plan. And it did not appear that the sale's rep didn't really care although she did her job professionally and she honored my request. I just wish Ancestry (and 23andME) did more to help their members. But I guess this was a learning lesson. You give but you don't get and that makes me very disappointed with this process.

I canceled my subscription but they charged me anyway. I thought I had canceled it two days before expiration, but I was billed anyway. It is very difficult to cancel and you will have no luck if you dispute it once you are charged.
There are 5 steps to cancel.
1. Click here. If prompted, sign in to your account.
2. In the Subscriptions section, click Cancel subscription.If there's no Cancel subscription link on your My Account Options page, the account you're signed into does not have a membership. If you're being charged for a membership, you probably have another Ancestry account. Sign out of the account you're in and sign back in using a different email address. If that doesn't work, contact us to find the account you're being billed on.

3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and select a cancellation reason, then click Continue.
4. At the bottom of the next page, click Continue to cancel.
5. At the bottom of the next page, click Cancel my membership. Unless you're within the refund window, your subscription will end automatically at the end of its current term. You can find the Ends On date on Your Account page.
6.! Check the email address associated with your Ancestry account. If you see a cancellation confirmation, your membership has been canceled! If you don't see an email, start over at step 1 and make sure you complete all five steps above.

I have researched my family history over the last 30 years so I know what it is like to actually do the legwork and locate birth, marriage and death records by looking them up on microfilm at the county court houses and libraries. If you want to truly research your family tree and create solid documentation with sourcing along the way, then Ancestry is what you want.

A note about DNA testing which I have also done on Ancestry. The DNA testing is really to be used as a supplemental type of data to help you work through roadblocks or find cousins and others that may be sources. Yes they have some nice charts and maps that show you geographically where you family came from and their migration path, but do not expect DNA to be the end all for genealogy research. I also am disheartened by people who rate Ancestry poorly because their DNA test came back to reveal that their parents lied to them. Come on people - you choose to take the test, the results and how you handle it is on you!

Ancestry shows you actual documents about your family so you can determine who is who for yourself. As far as the Ancestry trees created by others... they are only as good as the person who put them together. I do not view ancestry tree results for my research unless I have hit a stone cold brick wall and even then, I only use what I can prove with historical documentation.

The other thing that I think is so valuable about how Ancestry works is that every time you save information from a document to your tree, they are tracking the source information in the background and it is always there if you need to prove you are related to someone specific.

They have also done a really nice job helping us to merge new data with old information, make updates or edits. You get to see the old and the new and choose which facts or data you will use.

I have more than 7000 folks in my family tree and through ancestry I can prove that I am a daughter of the american revolution multiple times over, that I am also a 4th generation American, my ancestors fought in the Napoleonic wars, were shirttail relatives of the royal Stuart's of Scotland and were pioneer farmers in Iowa. I know the part my family played in history and I continue to learn more as Ancestry is digitizing and adding data from across the world as fast as they can get it done. Thank you Ancestry! -Rachel

I have been using Ancestry for a few months now, so I have some experience with all of its features.
On the positive side, Ancestry.com provides nice family tree navigation tools and access to many historic public records - which definitely give it value.
My big complaint with Ancestry.com is it's just a huge waste of time! Ancestry.com is designed to be subscription-based puzzle game for building family trees - not a family tree tool. There's no technical reason why each subscriber must waste dozens (for some people hundreds) of hours rebuilding family trees, which were already built by dozens of people before them. I personally don't have the time, nor interest, in spending hundreds of hours recreating the wheel. There is only one family tree, which we all belong, there is absolutely no reason there are thousands of trees scattered across Ancestry.com. It's simply a revenue model they feel locks people into long-term subscriptions - which may be fine for people interested in researching and puzzle solving - but Ancestry should offer pricing which allows individuals to simply leverage work done by others. I have canceled my subscription, perhaps if new management wakes up in the future I will return to enjoy a view my family tree option - instead of playing your silly puzzle game.