AncestryReviews 635

Three days ago I shut my computer down for the night and the next morning when I started family tree maker it would not sync with my online tree. Finally 3 days later i got it straightened out but losing some of the links to 50 records (I do not know which ones.)
I have been using FTM and the online tree for months with no syncing problems. I do not believe it was my mac that caused the problem but some hick up in ancestry's database - has it become to large and cumbersome to be useful and looking at reviews and FAQ's I am not the only one with this issue!

Every person on every family tree has had his information altered! From his or her portrait, which was cut from a rectangle into a circle; the place of birth and how birth and death dates were written; records have been distorted; the owner's text has been overwritten by software full of errors; pages can not be printed; corrections disappear; millions of mistakes in all have been foisted on paying subscribers' private work without their permission: without warning. The New site's mechanics are so full of problems that a person can try for hours and get nowhere. The worst indignity of all is that mgmt of Ancestry.com ignores all protests, pleas, and petitions. It glibly states that the New Ancestry is retelling everyones' LifeStory in a fuller, richer way. Perhaps so we can feel like we're on TV? Thousands of hours of work for thousands of people will soon go down the drain due to a few money-hungry, ignorant executives.

I agree with other reviewer that the site is expensive and you need to read the fine print about what you're signing up for, but where else can you get access to so many records all in one place? That being said the information Ancestry has access to including easy to review census information, passport applications, and ship manifests to find immigration records has made learning information about our family easy. I love getting a new "leaf" on a family member's name with new hints as more records are transcribed and made available. I agree that there is a lot of duplicate information and sometimes junk in other people's family trees, but I just use those trees as a jumping off point and look for the original records and source data. I've spent many rewarding hours tracing our trees backwards and it is a great resource.

I am very unhappy with the look of ancestry.com's new site…it is cluttered and very time consuming to wade through and makes it a chore rather than a pleasure to participate. The baby boomer generation of which I am a member has a lot of discretionary income and I think you are making a very big mistake to make such massive changes to appeal to a younger generation when the baby boomers are going to be the ones who have the time and inclination to use your service for the foreseeable future. I would hope if you must push the new look for ancestry.com that you would at least offer long time members the option of being able to use the old ancestry site. If not, give me the best way to reclaim my family tree and prevent ancestry from ruining more than a decade of research.

I detest the new format on Ancestry. It is not user friendly. The programmers who dreamed this up are idiots. Oh to go back to what we had before. There is no longer any joy for me to research on ancestry. Must look for an alternative. Obviously the programmers do not do research. There are not enough words to describe how unhappy I am. Bring back the old format I have been using for years. I am just sorry I couldn't rate it as 0.

Can we go back to the previous Ancestry, please. There are a number of errors on this new appearance - my predecessors were living in Aberdare, not Aberdeenshire, for...'s sake - and there are other errors that I have discovered - I can't go back and check every entry. The contemporary events photo inserts are really irritating - most are totally irrelevant. If I want photos, i'll put them in myself. Get rid of them. And it's complicated now to see the media that I have attached to incidents. Also I object to being told that my wife 'passed away' - she was killed in a car crash. Altogether very disappointing.

Used to be a great site! Genealogy was a hobby I loved and worked on for hours on end almost every day! They decided to revamp the whole site and all the changes are HORRIBLE! Customers are beside themselves with frustration and anger at having their complaints ignored! There are all kinds of glitches causing incorrect data to be displayed in peoples trees. Lots of people, including myself, have made their trees private for this reason. They have made once simple features complicated and every task requires tons more clicks and scrolling than before! If you want to know more, go to the Ancestry home page, scroll to the bottom and click on the Ancestry Blog, then go to any of the "New Ancestry Update" posts and read all the comments by ancestry users who can barely contain their rage and are practically frothing at the mouth! This is about much more than people resisting change as some claim. It's about destroying the accuracy of years of work on one's family history, it's about taking away important features and tools & making once easy tasks more difficult. And worst of all, the Life Story feature is just Ancestry trying to write YOUR family story FOR YOU! And with all kinds of mistakes! This feature CAN'T be completely turned off! You can turn it off so you don't have to see it but everyone visiting your tree still can! The whole thing is a giant outrageous MESS!

You do not have time to read my reviews of your NEW enhanced version. I have just looked at half a dozen sites and not one of them has favorable comments that are not overshadowed by an enormous negative reflection.
I do not like any feature of the new ancestry program. The time line is cluttered by every family members info. The Life Stories are a joke filled with the wrong information on the ancestors I viewed. Oh yes I can edit it but I spent my time documenting it and getting it right to have to endure someone else's mistakes in my view.
I added a will yesterday that attached a wrong death date and when I added it to all the children it gave all of them the same death date. Every time I add a record I do not want to wait for the timeline to highlight before I move on. My time is valuable and this version is a Power point presentation, not user friendly it is time consuming and not logical.
40 yrs I have been researching and I have had FTM since version 1 15 yrs with Ancestry and this is not worth the effort for me to have to click click click and then redo the errors that come with the program.
This was more than an enhancement to the program it is a major overhaul and like when Henry Ford introduced the Edsel a lot of hype and a big Flop!

I started with Family Treemaker and provided hours and hours of research which cost plenty to accumulate; all provided at no cost to them and Genealogy.com and Ancestry.com. All this FREE to them going back to the early 1700's, and complete! Now, some years later, maybe 10 max., I cannot even access my own information! Yes, I'm pissed; I provided complete info. And can't even access it. What a RIPOFF, what a SCAM to gain YOUR information! Hell, I can't even forward it to my son without him buying membership... PISSED!

Site is too complicated. I was on an extended vacation when I received an email notification of the 6 month renewal, and when I went to cancel, they kept my money and are making me continue my subscription for another six months - EVEN THOUGH I HAVE NOT USED THEIR SERVICE FOR MONTHS BECAUSE IT IS DIFFICULT TO NAVIGATE, AND THE INFORMATION IS OFTEN USELESS!

There isn't a box for no stars!
I only dare venture onto that new ancestry site for five minutes at the most, I feel my blood pressure rising every time I take a peek to see if they have listened to us and improved it, but no they have not listened one bit, not yet anyway! What a complete joke it is. They are making their long term customers look like idiots with all the mistakes they are making with OUR HISTORY. I just looked at two people tonight, that was enough to make me reach for a glass of sherry, or two! So they think my gt gt grandmother lived in Wellington New Zealand, do they (Wrong again, it's Wellington Shropshire England) She never left England! And according to ancestry my gt gt grandfather was born in Dawley Middlesex. Well, what do you know, they got it wrong again, he was born in Dawley Shropshire England. And my 4th gt grandfather did not fight the battle of\Waterloo in 1815 in Ontario. ONTARIO! For goodness sake, don't they know any history themselves. The battle of Waterloo took place in Belgium for your information ancestry! I find it quite insulting that ancestry put that in, as my 4th gt grandfather was very badly wounded at Waterloo, indeed he was very lucky to survive the battle, and he was only 20.

As I write this, I am still able to access the "Classic" format. I venture over to the new format a couple of times a week. They are slowly adding features that I use... BUT. There is more "clicking and scrolling" with your mouse. Not a big deal unless you have arthritis in your hands. The background colors are extremely difficult if you have vision problems. Also if you want to print something out, if the page has any color in the back ground you use a lot of ink. The "Classic" format was black print on white background.

Then, the one change that has many disgusted with Ancestry: Putting square or rectangle photos in a round circle. It looks horrible! Sure, they shrink down the photo to fit into the circle but then you have grey background surrounding that photo. It's ugly!

Funny, tho. I saw one of their new advertisements today. Those pictures on the tv screen are rectangle. They should show them shrunk down and fitted inside the grey circle.

My tree will be going private and my information will not be available to the public. That means that the subscribers will not be able to see what information I find and record on my ancestry tree.

Also, once the Classic view is no longer an option, I will be canceling my subscription.

This change is not an improvement. There are no functions that cannot be performed on the old site. It takes more time to perform the same functions, search is slower. They have meddled in peoples family histories and chosen to rewrite them. They have also manipulated personal photos in an effort to make them fit their new designer photo portraits. Square photos have been made smaller in a feeble attempt to make them fit a round space. Background colors make family charts almost illegible. Upper management has not addressed a single issue, leaving it to customer service reps to handle. This has been a totally unprofessional and amateur transition. The should be embarrassed.

Ancestry used to be a upstanding company Recently they have completely changed the entire format of the family research experience and even the way our personal family trees appear. Firstly I am and have been paying a yearly subscription rate to have complete access to all the records etc this program allowed me to place ancestors pictures where I want them. It was possible to add my photos and other media and attach them to certain census dates. With the new format all that is not possible. My family stories are my family stories. Ancestry has taken it upon themselves to insert certain stories and or media that pertains to a certain era in which my personal ancestor was living. I didn't give them permission to make these stupid changes and if I choose to research what was occurring in the world when a specific ancestor was living I w I'll do the research and add it! They need to stop messing with people's family trees. They have also. Hanged the color to a horrid grY that after about ten minutes of reading my eyes are so weary. This color is bad and can't be good for the eyes. This new site is cumbersome and difficult to navigate and not user friendly again I didn't pay for this. I paid for the old classic ancestry. All the joy has been taken from family research. I am ready to quit. When I personally have let ancestry know about things that I didn't like... I was told all I do is whine and don't explain what I didn't like. I have numerous times and I was told if I don't like it I can leave! Well that is not good business! Who tells customers to go away? There are many people that are working for and spokespersons for ancestry who are haughty and hateful, self righteous non helpful people! They certainly have no work ethics. In fact my opinion is ancestry has lost all good ethics and are only interested in becoming a bigger money grubbing corporation! I used to tell anyone I talked to how wonderful this company was no more though. I would NOT recommend ancestry to anyone -- they don't care about furthering family research they have another agenda. They are not listening to their customers who are serious researchers. We want the classic. It works! They should at least give those people who want classic the choice instead of forcing the new on us!

Ancestry.com recently changed the format of the individual profile on family trees. This change does not seem to be well conceived nor well implemented. Most particularly, the changes made have destroyed five years of my work in building a family tree.

The quality of service provided by Ancestry.com as sadly declined over the five years I have been a member. While once I once thought this site provided the best means of researching family history and building a family tree, but no longer. I cannot recommend Ancestry.com, and in fact would discourage anyone from subscribing to the site.

Ancestry.com is a company that cares nothing about its paying subscribers, or even if their website is functioning. I have been a member since 1999 and it has gone from a functioning, useful site, to one that is down in part or completely daily, signs you up and takes your money and you don't have the use of what you are paying for. Now they have decided that everyone must use a site that is geared for inexperienced researchers and cell phone users. The platform is difficult to read, and people with a vision issue, cannot use it. They should be fined for bait and switch, and discrimination towards visually challenged people. They refuse to refund my subscription fee, even though I cannot use their program.