Ancestry

My maiden name is McCawley. According to Ancestry I don't have a single drop of Scottish or Irish blood. That sure gives me a lot to thing about. So you're saying my Dad really isn't my Dad?

I had a lot of information saved to my tree and it all disappeared! I'm extremely disappointed in this site and I would highly recommend using a different site!

I signed up for a free trial, and decided I did not want the service, called in and tried to cancel. Apparently the cancellation did not get acknowledged. 5 days later I was charged for the month. I called in and they said (as per the 30 day policy) and they agreed and stated the charge would be returned in 9 days. One month later the charge has not been returned.
I wrote again, and they said in their return email "REFUNDS ARE NOT ABLE TO BE PROCESSED ON THIS PLATFORM OR BY EMAIL" Come on, I have called twice and written 3 times... Horrendous Company

I saw this review and checked out the site. Now I'm trying to see if I'm related to anyone famous from way back when... sort of cool to see if perhaps you are related to some big names.

I started a free trial and found it EXTREMELY difficult to find any of my ancestors (even the ones that I new of!) After that, I wasn't able to find anyone that I may not know because the site expected me to know the names of my ancestors.

The most frustrating part of my experience was when I tried to cancel. I wen to the cancellation page on the website and chose to cancel my membership and the page WOULD NOT LOAD. I tried to find support to send an email or chat, because making phone calls is more difficult, but the only way to get a hold of anyone is through calling a phone number. When I called the phone number, they had extremely high wait times and I was unable to speak with anyone on the phone.

Not only is the site bad, but the customer service is even worse. STAY AWAY.

Canceled back in July and still get charged. Contacted customer support and get a run around. Keep offering services. I wanted to cancel and wanted my money back. Guess what? No refund..

I got the free one month subscription, used it once, didn't work, forgot about it until a month later when it charged me 34.99 for a membership I will never use again

The site is awful. They offer you a 14 day free trial and then make it next to impossible to cancel. They hide how you can delete yourself from site. It's a total scam site.

The big issue I have is the fact Ancestry doesn't allow the user to delete their credit card information. This is contrary to asking someone to steal my information without me giving you permission to do so. So you loose a star for not allowing a user to remove their information from your system. Also There wasn't much this platform could offer me at this point, because I was looking for family members on my father's side and did not get any responses. So I felt like I wasted money for something I thought would provide some real answers. But what I do know that what listed on my profile might not be my real father although he is on my birth certificate. However, non of the surnames matches our names. So it is very likely that my real father's bloodline is not aggressive enough to contact me, or they just are not on your platform. I have the same results from 23andMe. So I will not be renewing my membership in the future as well. But I did like Ancestry setup much better. I did find a lot more about the mother side of the family I already know. So that was good. I did get my mother's picture and my aunt's school picture. This was good. But that's not why I purchase the plan. And it did not appear that the sale's rep didn't really care although she did her job professionally and she honored my request. I just wish Ancestry (and 23andME) did more to help their members. But I guess this was a learning lesson. You give but you don't get and that makes me very disappointed with this process.

This company has horrible/non existent customer service. We went to purchase the DNA genealogy kit yesterday. My wife selected apple pay as the option, as it was listed on their website as the most trusted and secure payment method. Immediately upon pressing it, without having any order confirmation to review and approve the payment was processed. This was surprising, but then we realized we meant to use a different DNA service. They were closed to cancel on Thanksgiving, which is reasonable. However, today we called to cancel, they stated they were unable to cancel the order because it was through apple pay. Elevated to supervisor, after several explanations that they are the company supplying the product, they need to be able to stop orders, same story. They can't cancel because it is through apple pay despite the payment being directly linked to my debit card, and my bank debiting ancestry directly. They can't do anything manually, they won't call anyone to cancel, they have no manual options to email anyone to cancel. Its not on their electronic system so they can't help us. They say call apple pay to cancel payment which they can't do, and banks don't cancel debit payments because they are automatic. A company that is unable to process cancelations of their own product is ludicrous! They also say there's a 15 dollar return fee for returned items. We can't even head this off now like we are trying to! They have no other emails or phone numbers to use. Only people that can't help. Thanks a lot "chris" and "joe" and ancestry.com for atrocious scam policies. Order #*******

Classic "free trail" scam. They bait you with a "free trial"- you sign up for it, even put on your calendar to cancel if you don't need it anymore but oh wait- when you try to cancel Nobody answers you back. You get a ticket with a number, and they conveniently forget to contact you back until after you're charged.
But if you're smart like me- you call, they put you on hold for over 30 minutes. I don't know about you guys, but I have a job that I can't just sit on hold. So I called twice, filled out the contact form email like 4x,(to have it in writing with a date), no response.
When they charged my account, I called them on it! Now they're STILL digging into - not knowing my email address or any of my information. I find it HILARIOUS that they charge me for $10 for literally nothing, no services offered-, but they "can't find" my email address or the billing address or the the last 4 digits of my credit card. How do even charge somebody with no billing address? Liars! Don't do it! It's not worth it! I hope someone shuts them DOWN!

I found a reoccurring charge from Ancestry.com on my account in March of 2022. In contacting Ancestry.com, I was informed that I signed up for a "free membership" in October 2021 that I did not cancel. Even if I had signed up for a free membership (and forgot to cancel), I would have immediately cancelled if I had been informed or the automatic monthly charges on my credit card. I received zero communication from Ancestry.com that wasn't an advertisement. I do not have a confirmation that I signed up for any membership nor that money was being deducted each month - not even any emails asking me how I am enjoying my membership (the one I didn't know I had). I do not know if this was fraud or just a bad business practice on the company's part; however, Ancestry would not refund me the $125 (5 months of charges). The only thing they would do is to provide me with 5 months for free so I could at least try to use the membership I already paid for. It is better than nothing - however, I am still out $125.
I am writing this review to warn anyone thinking about signing up for Ancestry - check your credit card statements.

ancestry.com uses dark patterns to trick you into thinking you've cancelled your subscription so they can charge you. After it appears as though you've cancelled your subscription, you end up on a landing page with a lot of information no one cares about. Hidden away in the corner is a link that says "Cancel Membership" and if you don't see it and click it, your account hasn't been cancelled and you will be charged. In my case it lead me to being charged for my free trial period even though I only used the site for one day and attempted to cancel it on the 11th day. They don't offer any sort of refund for this, which is further evidence that they are deliberately predatory.

Aside from their behavior as a company, I didn't find the site particularly useful. I found a few interesting old documents there, but for the most part every bit of useful information came out of publicly available obituaries or newspapers.com. Most documents I looked up on ancestry.com just redirected me to newspapers.com anyway and I had to make an account there.

Users can make family trees, which can be interesting, but they can also be very inaccurate, as all of the ones featuring my family were.

On the whole I wouldn't recommend the site very highly without their scammy behavior. They don't notify you when they charge you either, so if you don't see it in your bank records, you won't even notice that they charge you each month for a free trial that they engineered to make you think you cancelled. I even initially failed to successfully cancel it while chatting with support about cancelling it.

Watch your credit card if you do business with this site. I have a cancellation notice and they claim I restarted the account the day after I canceled it. Won't refund it or prove it.
BOO!

I just subscribed to ancestry.com a couple of months ago, and at the same time bought the FTM software. I enjoyed building my family tree. But then ancestry announced they were discontinuing the FTM software, which means everyone is being pushed into an exclusive online subscription. I am not interested in that. I want all of my information on my own computer, under my own control. My intent was to do research for a couple of months, then discontinue my monthly subscription, and just renew it occasionally when I wanted to do more research. Since their announcement, I have changed my mind. I cancelled my subscription and am in the processing of transferring my data over to another software program. I am disgusted that ancestry has decided to "dumb down" their website, like so many other companies have decided to do (paypal being another perfect example), and make it what they think is visually appealing, but very far from being functional. I am a noob to genealogy, but some folks have been doing this for years, and now, from what I understand, data is being rearranged and lost because of ancestry's changes. I am so disgusted at how everything today comes down to investors making money at the expense of the people who put them in their lofty positions to begin with. I will have as little to do with ancestry.com as I possibly can.

Had a family member pass and when I tried to find family from a current list of names and addresses the program was unable to find anyone. Did better searching google. Waste of money and time

Overpriced and if you want to continue to access you have to keep paying. It's a scam. But, hey! If you're Mormon, you can get access for free! Talk about religious discrimination.

I called with what should be a simple fix, and what they told me I have to do to fix it is UNBELIEVABLE! I wanted to edit my username. Simple. I saw how to do it, I did it, it doesn't work! I called the support people, they told me how to do it, I told them it doesn't work! I'm quite sure I was not talking to anyone in this country, but they kept putting me on hold, it took a lot of my time, and their answer was unbelievable. They were going to write a feed back report! If anyone was going to address it and fix it, it will be done automatically! By the way, no one was going to give ME the FEEDBACK. And they won't even give you a higher level to speak with! I WANT MY MONEY BACK! I REALLY WANT TO GIVE THEM ZERO STARS

Very bad service. I had a difficult time cancelling my subscription. I was promised reimbursement that never was fulfilled. Very disappointed in their customer service.

This site is Bogus. IT says free trial, then they ask you for a credit card number. TOTAL SCAM. It never lets you even look at your parents history. WTF? Stay away from this site, it is garbage.

I would like to say doing the free try out was fine which I only tried it out a few times like let's see 3 times. Really was useless for me. However few weeks later my wallet was stolen and I replaced my debit card with a new card. Long story short 2 new bank cards later I long forgotten I sign up for them. I never caught on they were taken money out my account (stupid) me until my son school wanted a print out of payments then I notice ancestry was STILL taken money out my account.
I was in complete shock for I never notice since they were taken it out around rent time. The guy basically told me but saying clear not them of course many people bank off those who do online banking and that VISA itself was the one updated my cards with out informing me. They ONLY refound me this months charge! Are you fkn for real right now. I'm contacting a lawyer over this issue for many reason like let's see the main one I never gave any one my permission to update my new credit CARDS yes more then ONE card number in the first place. Please be careful giving your card number to them in the first place for they have access through visa itself to update your credit card any time you change them or when they expired and I feel that's complete BS. Thanks for making me feel real comfortable banking with a bank in the first place. Online bankers beware they are some sneaky $#*! people

Ancestry search for marriage records is rubbish. Total waste of money. Can't find my aunt's marriage. Can't even find my own marriage which I know exists.

We ordered our kits and they says they would be here in 7-10 business days. The shipping said the same things everyday it would be here at 7pm. We never received the kits. We called several times saying if we didn't receive it that day they would send new ones. We didn't receive any kits so called one last time, they told us they never received the funds and was unable to process the order. The money came out of our account. We had nothing but issues with this place, if we talked to them several times prior and didn't tell us the first few times the order wasnt processed due to the funds which again isn't true because the money was out of our possession why is it now been over 3 weeks and you are barley saying this. Talked to a supervisor and said they didn't receive the money after that I was livid so I had it out with them. I wanted the money back because it came out of my account. They then try offering me new kits and membership again I just wanted my money back they processed my refund and said it would take 5-10 business days. I pray I get those funds back because if I have to call back it will not be a very pleasing phone call.