Ancestry

I called customer service today to find out why I was being charged $99 every six months (presumably because I failed to see some tiny print on a back page somewhere that made this unconscionable "renewal" occur-- that in itself a scam), and I was on hold 50 minutes. Finally, I reached a customer service representative. But when I told her that I needed to inquire about an unauthorized subscription charge, without comment, she transferred me to a number that caused a loud screech to come out of my phone. Then after 30 seconds, my call was intentionally dropped. WHAT A SCAM! Seriously!

It gets worse. At a minimum, I knew I needed to cancel my so-called subscription online immediately. THERE WAS NO WAY TO DO SO. I clicked on How to Cancel My Subscription. I followed the instructions exactly, going to My Accounts page that said Cancel My Subscription. But guess what? The link to Cancel My Subscription does not exist! I even had my twenty-year-old come over to the computer to double-check the process. She said "Wow, what a scam. The link's not there."

At this point, I've contacted American Express to dispute the latest charge. I will NEVER, EVER, EVER use Ancestry again. I am appalled at this entire
Scam by what I thought was a reputable company. WHAT A WAY TO MAKE MONEY! You've breached the public trust with your consumers, Ancestry, and I couldn't be more disappointed.

I got no where with my trial, canceled my account and they still charged me. They refused to give a refund, complete scam, do not use.

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.

They charged my credit card after I had cancelled. When I called to dispute the charge they made it very difficult to eventually approve a refund.

A total waste of money. Relatively quick processing but I didn't get my haplogroupes... Guessing nationality is useless - I already know it...

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

Beware of Acestry.com - they are only interested in you parting with your cash - Try to unsubscribe - it's a journey to hell!

This troubles me. I have been a steady member of Ancestry since 2009. I have since quit my full year subscription because of misleading advertisements. They treat you like a horse where they dangle the carrot just out of reach so that you can buy another product from them. Case in point is after you join you will get an email saying there are clues or "hints". When you clik their hints link it brings you to their join ancestry page and the link stops there. This happens every time.
I have over combined 3000 people in 5 different trees there. I am presently downloading them in a GEDCOM form to up load to another program.
SO... I get a "special " price on Ancestry "All Access" which includes Newspapers.com and Fold3. I didnt find out until after I ordered the 6mos subscription that it was only a "basic" membership to these and that you had to ad another 30.00 to access that. I had Newspapers.com years ago and let me assure you... they are useless too. Fast forward from ancestryto present day and I get a notice that there is a DNA match... How can there be a match when I never submitted a DNA sample?
BUYER BEWARE! They are all full of hidden charges you dont get to see until you join just once. Their customer service SUCKS! Should be able to clear things up with a simple email but they want you to hang on hold for 2 hrs hoping you will forget what you called for

The cost is outrageous! Good heavens! With the $300 they ask for every 6 months for full access a whopping $600 a YEAR, I can save that money and fly to England AND GET THE RECORDS MYSELF!

There are a lot of problems with ancestry.com. 1.) you are paying for information that is free elsewhere, birth certificates, marriage certificates, death certificates, & census information. A few sites have allowed ancestry.com free access to their information, but do not allow them to charge the public for the information, find-a-grave is one such sight. 2.) it is not uncommon to come across many family trees that contain conflicting information, such as death dates, or birth dates, some trees won't have dates at all, other use terms like about, or after in front of dates. You just cannot be sure the information is accurate, so you have to weed through the garbage much like a detective to determine what is correct and what is not. 3.) the search functions stink, they pull up to many results that just do not match the search, and no matter how you try to limit or add information to a search the results are much the same. Because of this there is way to much information to review and 99% of it is useless, and a waste of time, when you are looking at thousands of results you like me will just give up after about 5 or 6 pages of results. 4.) what really gets me mad about ancestry.com is that once you decide your tree is complete, or you no longer want to use the site... you cancel the "membership". But be fore warned. All those birth certificates, death certificates, census reports etc, that you searched for are no longer available to you. That's correct you paid for the information, but cancel the membership and you can't review it again. So if your smart you will print out copies of all the official documents that you found to verify information In your tree. Keep it in a separate file, because you will want to review the information again, without having to pay for it again. 4) finally, make sure your tree is set to private, this way no one can steal your pictures, or stories, I made the mistake of not setting the tree to private and many of my pictures are now on other trees. When I asked them to delete my pictures they tell me screw off, they paid for them...

The information they supply is very generic, any of their "extra services "are tricks to scam more money and very difficult to cancel