Ancestry

This charged showed up on my credit card account 3 years ago, despite me NEVER signed up for this. Despite blocking them from my credit card and filing fraud charges every year, it keeps showing up. The customer service at Ancestry might be at the top of the worst list that I've ever experienced. Because of this poor service and the fact that despite 3 years of reporting this transaction that was NEVER authorized, I would NEVER recommend this company to anyone, ever.

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!

I think yall are the worst DNA site. I was supposed to receive my DNA results on December 31, now it's saying I will get my results on January 11th now it's pushing it even further! The service sucks I would never recommend this to anyone! Nor will I waste money on this horrible site again!

It really is a shame that corporations can "use" customers by taking their money but not care about their customers views of the product. No notification that Ancestry was going to change the format or program, just "dictated" that it would be permanent on 12/15/15.
No customer appreciation? I HATE THIS FORMAT AND NOW HATE ANCESTRY. I WILL NOT RE-SUBSCRIBE. And yes, you have to pay to get all the information you researched and stored.

I have Natuve American ancestry from several sources on both sides of my family. The strongest is from my father's mother's father, who was 100% Native American. Yet my results came back as showing 0% Native American. This is not possible. I sent an email asking what happened, and three weeks later I still find no reply. So today I called and asked for a refund, and was told I cannot have a refund since I received the results. THIS IS RATHER DISCUSTING!

I signed up for a membership on Ancestry on March 1,2022. On March 6,2022 I converted my membership to the world explorer membership for 6 months. On March 7 I was billed $229 for an automatic renewal. I called to cancel, but I was told once I was billed I couldn't cancel the membership. The problem is, I was automatically renewed for one year. I don't understand how that can be legal. If I had automatic renewal, wouldn't it be for the 6 months I signed up for the first time. This site is ripping people off. I filed a BBB complaint.

What moron thought this new format was a good idea and what lame brain approved it. Get ready Ancestry you are about to lose a ton of business and I will be one of them.

UPDATE-- I just found out from Ancestry that they are soon going to force this new format on everyone. After ten years I will not be renewing my membership. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ---- THIS NEW FORMAT IS A JOKE.

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!

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!

Tired of "hints" for an ancestor who lived in the 1500's having CIVIL WAR hints. 200 YEARS AFTER MY ANCESTOR DIED. Ancestor born, lived, died in Virginia - get baptism hint from ENGLAND.

Now suddenly trying to add ancestor mu tree is in SPANISH. THAT'S RIGHT, SPANISH. PHONE SETTINGS SHOW ENGLISH, CHANGED LANGUAGE ON ANCESTRY TO ENGLISH MULTIPLE TIMES - STILL SPANISH. ONLY SITE IN SPANISH. BOT IS USELESS. CAN'T GET PERSON UNLESS YOU GO THROUGH MULTIPLE USELESS QUESTIONS.

I AM ON MY BREAK AT WORK. DO NOT HAVE AN HOUR JUST TO TALK TO SOMEBODY.

USED to enjoy this site, but there are too many sites out there than I can post my tree to. And THEIR hints are RELIABLE! Ancestry has become too unreliable! Tired of deleting JUNK that gets added to my tree!

5/31
Decided to cancel subscription. Now they are going to delete all of my foriegn hints, even though I have been paying for them for the past TWO YEARS.

How's THAT for a scam?

Welcome to ancestry.com!

Ancestry.com reply to all negative reviews with generic replies which rarely address the specific concerns raised by their (many) disgruntled customers. They cannot however dispute the following facts:-
FACT: 22% of UK customers, 1765 people rate Ancestry.com as bad on Trustpilot.
FACT: 16% of UK customers, 756 people rate Ancestry.co.uk as bad Trustpilot.
That is a hell of a lot of unhappy customers - I am an Ancestry.com customer who is joining that growing cohort. There are millions of Irish Diaspora in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and many other countries. From my use of the Ancestry.com site, I have not been able to locate a single document via their website, they should re-name their site 'no Image available' as that is the message that you will see on every search. So, if you are trying to trace your Irish roots, based on my research stay well clear of Ancestry.com. I was able to obtain all of the documents which were 'unavailable' on Ancestry, via free civil records on sites such nationalarchives.ie, irishgenealogy.ie and others – save your hard earned money.
Also be wary of their 14 day trials as if not cancelled on time commit you to 6 or 12 month contracts to this almost useless service unless you specifically de-select. BEWARE – you've been warned.

My wife and I both ordered tests at the same time. We received the kit within a few days. Took the test and sent it back the next day. Looks like mine got lost in the mail, after 9 days and still no word I called them, they offered to send me another one but ask if I could wait another day, I agreed (DO NOT DO THIS ASK FOR IT) I should have ask for the replacement right away, After a few days I called back, now they tell me I have to wait 20 days. I check their return policy I can only get half of my money back after the ten days, none after 30 days so this is beginning to look like a scam to me, wish I had gone to another company

I received $169 subscription for Christmas. Not only did I get an email before Christmas ruining the surprise, I tried to cancel it WITHOUT accessing my account, I called their toll-free to cancel. The barely English-speaking customer rep couldn't find my account because he could not understand English, then three times he insisted the account was accessed and used for research! It never was! After arguing with him for 20 minutes, he finally agreed to refund the $169. In case any of you didn't know this, their site provides information if you are requesting U.S. heritage. DO NOT SUBSCRIBE IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR EUROPEAN HERITAGE. Being first generation European, they cannot provide reliable, or even basic, family information. Very disappointed with ancestry.com

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.

Can't find family on Dads side including Dad. Wrong birthdates and death dates for family I know. No help at all. Been trying to delete but haven't been successful.

Ordered the AncestryDNA kit and got fascinating insights into my heritage. Simple saliva test, but the results took a bit longer than expected. Overall, a wonderful eye-opening experience!

THE BEST PLACE TO PRESERVE YOUR PRECIOUS PHOTOGRAPHS AND STORIES FROM FIRE FLOOD AND THE ROUND FILE. Ancestry.com IS the BEST GENEALOGY search engine out there. And always will be. I wasted time and money on all sorts of things. Time is the most importntant. Especially at my age. It is worth every penny. I have a dozen trees for my mom/dad, even spun grandparents family to their own tree. /husbands. I am thrilled that they are getting Quaker records to search... It is just a FANTASTIC site..

The best way to describe this company is to say they are thieves.

My wife bought a DNA sample test kit from these guys back in July 2018. The goods came to NZ, I sent the test away and it took some time to return with the results.

To cut to the point. Exactly $797.34 has been stolen from our account by this company over an 11 month period. The bank details made to purchase the initial DNA test was used to deduct further transactions. To make matters worse there was no paper trail whatsoever. Nothing telling us this money had been coming out. Moreover in our account the transactions appeared as a eftpos transaction and didn't list their company name.

This came as a shock to us as we were on holiday when we noticed a lump sum come out. We emailed back and forth. They completely dodged all the questions and responsibility. The first email even said "I'm sorry these transactions were not from us, perhaps it was a third party"

We managed to get back 1 payment they stole, however there is still over 500 dollars outstanding that they say we will not be refunded.

I would not recommend this company to anyone. The sheer dishonest practice is disgusting. I wish that we had never supported this outfit.
There are many other companies to chose from and these guys will not be your only option.

This brings me to the conclusion,
If you are signing up to this ancestry test outfit, you may be buying this as a gift for your friend or family. Be wary, they are not a trustworthy company.

Ancestry is great for taking your money but giving you poor customer service. They have no cyber-bullying policy and refuse to do anything about it. They refuse to accept any responsibility and are more protective of the bully than the victim. In this instance, the victim did all that Ancestry asked them to do but the bully did not. Yet the bully still has control of the family message board and strictly controls who can see what. The bully has gone so far as to claim that a state issued birth certificate is not sufficient evidence to acknowledge a person. You can talk to people at corporate but they choose to protect the bully. I guess its going to have to get to a level where people are hurt before Ancestry steps up and realizes that their policies are not even worth the paper its printed on, if printed, or the zeros and ones on your computer screen. They only care about getting their money each month from you. Their customer service reps can't even follow a supposide standardized company policy. Often times the CSR's take it upon themselves to try to resolve an issue that is all ready at the corporate level. I do not recommend Ancestry.com anymore.

FTM and Ancestry are a racket. I paid for information but if I don't get to it soon enough it is erased.
I canceled my subscription, I got charge for the new subscription, I called to get the charge removed, I get a new charge for the subscription I don't want. Avoid this Morman company like it was the plague.

This company is concerned with profit over customer satisfaction. I have been paying a yearly subscription for my husband to have an account for over 10 years. Last January I apparently started an account for myself.( I was waiting for the DNA test kit to be sent to me and then had to go into the hospital for neck surgery. This put me stationery and not able to use my computer at all for months. All this while they have been charging me 24.99 every month( for 10 months!) I contacted them today ( which is not easy) to let them know they have been charging me for services I have never used. I've never even opened the account. They say it doesn't matter, there is no refund for monthly accounts.
We are seniors on a restricted budget. I can't possibly afford to have 2 accounts. Especially when they are not being used. When I called, it was clear that they did not care at all about this customer and don't even care if I discontinue my husbands account.
How does a company exist without customer satisfaction? I am so disappointed. This should have been a total refund since they have not given me any information all this time! Steer clear of this company -unless you have unlimited resources.

We were so excited to get our family DNA results. Then they came: Western Europe. My family originated in Western Europe, really? Really? Western Europe? Not France, or Austria, or a region of (I repeat) WESTERN EUROPE? No! Western. Europe. Like we could not and have not narrowed it down ourselves, but NO! WESTERN EUROPE.

That's what you get for your money at ole Ancestry.com, a pronouncement that your white, western european family originated from somewhere in WESTERN EUROPE: Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK, Ireland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Vatican City, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and Austria, and others!

I will admit I probably didn't read all the fine print. Be aware that if you cancel a subscription they charge you a cancellation fee. I have never heard of this before with a service like this.