Elisha F.

I signed up for a free 7 day trial with archive.com. I wasn't all that impressed with the results, but decided to give it a try a bit longer figuring it might be useful the further I got into my family history. About six months later I realized I had forgot to cancel and they were still billing me every month. Completely my fault and so I took care of it. I thought anyway. Got a confirmation email after I canceled and figured everything was fine.

I am the only one with access to my debit card and I admit I don't check the statements frequently. So today when I got online to take a look I realized they had been billing me this entire time. I called the number and was on hold for over 10 minutes. When I finally got someone, she acted like I was a complete idiot. She was rude and pretty much immediately went on the defense saying that it was my fault for not checking my bank statements regularly! (I got the feeling that this isn't the first time they have had this complaint, as she got defensive before she even took a look at my account.)

I gave her my email so she could check the account and she found where the account had been canceled. Yet instead of apologizing and agreeing to refund the money, she told me that the most she could do was refund the past three months, as it was against company policy to do more than that.

I asked her how she can justify that when it was obvious that the account had been canceled and they were basically stealing money from me.

Her reply "There is no way for us to know that you are still being billed as we don't have access to your bank statements. Had you checked your statements and brought it to our attention this all could have been avoided."

I did agree to the refund for three months, but I do not intend to let this go. This website is nothing but a scam and they should be shut down! There is no telling how many other people they have done this too. For me I'm currently out around $80 for an account that I never got one single record from and that I made sure to cancel.

Also want to point out that removing your debit/credit card information from your archives account does nothing! They have that information and will continue billing you even with the information removed.