AncestryReviews 635

Each time I call to get questions about the kit the customer service agents were pleasant. After my results came and I called to ask why the results so vague, the agent was rude and ask if I want to speak with another agent. I went on the facebook page to complain and was bombarded with people attacking me and Ancestry.com removing my post. It may be good for whites but I am not sure how much it can benefit blacks especially if you are not from the South. I wasted my money as it claim my ancestry is from about 10 different countries and family matches are all distant cousins 7 times removed

I would have given this site a five star rating IF it delivered as promised when you sign up. Don't get me wrong... I use ancestry.com a lot, found a sibling and many cousins through Ancestry.com. That said, the site has software glitches that it cannot repair.

Since September 2013 Ancestry.com has failed to deliver invitations to join my family tree (I sent them to family members) and failed to deliver email notifications of data updates to those who are already members. I have called, written and even posted on their Facebook page to no avail. They know of the problem BUT cannot tell me when the problems will be fixed.

ANcestry.com charges a lot of money for full access to their site and data. I do think this is the most comprehensive genealogy site available but not the best, by any means. Plus... the DNA test is a rip-off. All you get back are "possible" matches of third, fourth, fifth, etc. etc. Cousins. None of them have been real for me.

So, if you choose to go with Ancestry.com I recommend you sign up for the least expensive option. Or, try another site until they can get their glitches repaired and working again.

Interesting site but run run by thriving Mormons. I signed up for the two week trial then sent an email to cancellation email to them. They continued to bill me and when I contacted AMEX re the 1+ years of charges ancestry.com says because I contacted AMEX and not them they were not going to reimburse me for more than the Jan and Feb charge. Check out their frequently asked questions on their site. They make it difficult for people to cancel. They even told me I hadn't signed in even once after the 2 week trial.

Site does what is designed to do, which is search for names in records, the one main problem with names is how they were written and how one person deciphers their name, maybe they have language barrier or a writing style that is unreadable and it is up to volunteers of these data base to decipher what was written. So it is up to the user to be creative ( guess) how the name is spelt, back in the day all records are hand written, this is what I have found ex. When searching my grandfather; the person writing the document crossed the "d" making it appear it was a "t", writing blurred letters from one to the next ex. "e" to "n" or "i". The people deciphering the text are doing this with good heart but major errors can take a easy search to a hours of sifting through documents = time is money
Your subscription has an expiry date.
Word to the wise. When you quit this daunting task and cancel, you will lose access to all the work you have done. Even the stuff you have added your self, picture, other vital document relevant to your Tree so on that note PRINT everything your find, save the images to your computer as a back up make a lovely paper trail, store in a filing cabinet or binder unless you want to pay Ancestrydotcom for the rest of your life just so you can read it at a later date.
Side note; it can take a long time to research your family specially if your ancestors came from another country, while some searches are easy many are not so YOU must think first how common your ancestors are or how obscure.

While on one level there is a lot of information on the site, there are webpage problems. One such problem I encountered is when I want to view original records and images. All I got is a broken web page, black in color with some format issues and about five spinning wheels. After following their suggested "fix"... clearing the cache, deleting cookies, rebooting the browser... and even trying alternative browser's like Firefox or Chrome... I could never get those pages to open correctly. After checking the blog page, apparently this is not an isolated problem. The support staff always keeps pointing to my computer/software as the problem.

The Web site is OK as you're using it. Subscription prices are in my opinion way to high for the relatively few data sources, but that's not the site's main problem. The troubles start when you decide that you don't want the service anymore.

WARNING: Deleting your account and data is impossible.

Even deleting all personal data from your account is impossible, because it doesn't let you delete the family tree that you've built. You can go in and delete each and every ancestor from your family tree manually, but it's tedious and it still leaves the name of the family tree.

It doesn't let you delete the credit card information either, leaving your account susceptible to hackers. You could fill out a fake credit card number, but considering how easy it is to make mistakes, I would stay away from this site and look for other genealogy products.

I started searching my family history 35 years ago in 1978. I have researched the Orlando Library (which has a remarkable family history center), the Miami Library, most importantly the DAR Library. Two family history libraries, one here in Winter Park, Florida and one in Washington DC. I stopped in Jacksonville to visit there library when I came out my passenger side window was smashed and $250 was stolen from my purse. So, you can see I was very serious about my mission.

I aplaud Ancestry.com. If you have any common sense and have a knowledge of American History, seek confirmation through the Internet or your family stories that have been passed down, they will provide you the information. It is up to you to verify information through many sources. I have been a member for many years, and they have provided links and historical information in one place that would have taken me years to uncover, most likely never. Yes, there is much miss-information, people eager to add names. But if you approach this will intelligence and and do some research, you will gather a family tree that is most likely accurate.

This site has been up and down more times than a yo-yo at a tournament these past couple of months - ever since the roll-out of FTM2014. Several weeks ago, my tree was mangled during an FTM2012 sync. I just got it fixed. Two days ago my tree got mangled AGAIN during a sync operation. I'm wasting my subscription time repairing a mangled tree over and over again instead of getting research done. A complete waste of money and time.

Ancestry.com used to be wonderful but the pages are now so cluttered and unchangable, I am ready to cancel. With advanced technology, a user should be able to turn on functions that the user wants and turn off everything else. For example, I don't don't use Connections and have to keep deleting them. I don't use Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and have to use external software to block. Now they have added Story View. If they add anything else to the screens, I would be able to see my ancestor any more! Get a software package and use other online sources. Thenmaybe you can read your own reseach results.

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...

Signed up for the 14 trial May 17 2012, decided to try it a month and used PayPal to pay for the service. After finding what I could about my family which really was no all that much I decided the service is very limited. My wife who really wanted to investigate her family found very little, so much she was really disgusted with the site. We decided to cancel the service online. Like many people out there, when you cancel something on their website you think it's all over, but nooooooooooo! Ancestry kept submitting bills to PayPal and PayPal kept paying for one year. I found out because I had to visit PayPal concerning an amount I paid for a book this year only to find Ancestry has been receiving $34.95 a month for 11 months. I called to cancel and found they do not reimburse monthly payments, only annual payments. So the lesson learned here is visit your PayPal account monthly to check what is being paid out. It shows up in your bank statements as "PayPal" with no separate statement. I personally wish karma on the business managers who decide not to pay back customers who honestly find the mistake. They are no different than thieves with business suits. Ancestry should think that bad publicity is worse than reimbursing a honest customer.

I initially thought this would be a very good site to begin investigating my family tree when I used the free access, but decided I wouldn't really pay to join until I retired and could spend more time. It still may be very good. I have second thoughts, though, after reading in a review for Archives.com that Ancestry.com is related to it. Archives.com sent me a message that I was subscribed to it and that $39.95 would be automatically be deducted from my credit card account unless I cancelled. I have never used Archives.com, which has a bad ethical and service reputation. I suspect Ancestry.com may have enabled Archives.com to go on a phishing expedition to me. I'll be checking my account.