Ancestry

I had been a member for over 20 years and had to cancel my subscription because my husband and I are now on a fixed income (only SS checks). I assumed all my information would still be accessible if I had entered it. But I discovered that now Ancestry wants to make money off of me anyway by taking those ancestors away and making me subscribe if I want to see the information! Such a greedy ripoff they are. I gave one star but would rather give them -1 star.

I had Ancestry for a while and thought the results were fun and the site was decent. However I got a got bored of it and cancelled my membership to be the free basic package. Ancestry decided to charge me £49.99 every Quarter anyway, for at least a year. My membership still showed as being the basic package but I got charged regardless. Finally got through to Customer Service who told me there were 2 accounts attributed to my email address. How did that happen? No answer?

"Don't worry though we are refunding you £49.99. Aye no bother, ripped me for £200 but you've given me £50 back. The Customer Service were really rude, I asked for a complaints department email/number to be told there wasn't one.

My recommendation is, do not use! They will do what they can to take your money despite there being no Service given.

This is the third kit I've had to buy this year as all tests come back with no results!
30 Days after sending my latest kit back they still don't know where it is and have not tested it even though I paid for priority testing.
Then they tell you to wait for 40 days. The staff often hang up on you!
Absolutely useless ancestry. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY THEY ARE NOTHING MORE THAN A FRAUD

Ancestry provides organized public information on family histories, a decent service that will go on to bleed you monthly as numerous offers on DNA, family, International family ties, origins are made. After years of membership should you chose to cancel - have greater patience as canceling membership is a herculean effort. The number of wrong, false misleading leads to family history is a frustrating warm up party to canceling your membership! I cannot recommend this service

Shame on you Ancestry.com for shady business practices! I had a 14 day free trial and cancelled it online the day before it ended but this did not go through. When I got charged for the 1st month I went in and cancelled again and found there are 3-4 pages of upselling and clicking cancel before they knock off trying to hang onto me. 2 days later I got charged an early termination fee of $25. I've searched Ancestry.com and cannot find a reference to this anywhere! Called Support and then was told of this term. Fee until I firmly said "bull$#*!'. I said I would file a complaint with my credit card and then she gave in and said fee would be refunded. I still have a paid month so will try to use it.

Free trial is impossible to end without calling customer service. Highly deceptive offers claim you can cancel online. You cannot. Then customer service tries to upsell you on keeping your subscription despite being firm about cancelling. This is unethical, illegal and breach of trust. I would never use this service again and recommend nobody ever gives them credit card info.

Be careful on Ancestry, you may put hours into building you tree only to have the app crash and lose whole lines of data and connections. I have also gone to the trouble of adding photos etc, only to have it disappear. It's too expensive to have this keep happening. I'm going to cut my loses now.

First of all you are making it impossible for me to work on their tree with all your daily scheduled maintenances you are basically not letting use what I am paying for and its quite a bit. I feel like I am wasting my time and money now. Second my DNA says I get my Scottish from both Parents. My Dads DNA says he has no Scottish. Seems like you are guessing. I have been using Ancestry for 25 years and WAS pretty happy, now I am very upset. It is very stressful to use you site. I hope you fix your issues soon.

PLEASE BE CAUTIOUS: I purchased a gift for my friend, and Ancestry gave me a $1 subscription, stating it's a part of their AMAZING deal. They put you on a subscription automatically without letting you know and you have to go on their website to cancel. As a result,I was charged $99 for a KIT my friend didn't even activate, and they would not give any refunds. This is beyond insane, especially given the support tech just ended our chat randomly. DO NOT RECOMMEND purchasing anything from this company because they will send you all these wonderful promotions so it seems you pay less when they actually charge you twice as much for a mystery subscription you signed up for without knowing. That's insane.

My wife has been using ancestry.com for almost two years now. Recently a lot of the data she has entered just starts disappearing. She has reached out to their support and has gotten no help whatsoever. They don't reply to her emails, her phone calls, nada. I want to personally thank ancestry.com for being on the receiving end of this madness. I guess they won't mind losing that membership money. My advice is to stay away from them.

I was going to try a membership and had all set up but cancelled the same day due to them not resolving an issue of someone posting my mothers incorrect obituary that the funeral home corrected and they threw me to four different people and resolved nothing so I cancelled and have contacted a lawyer! Don't waste your money or time they are lawless and have horrible, incompetent, arrogant, and dumb workers!

Ancestry was until a year or so ago, simple to use, uncluttered and just about 100%, now I wouldn't rate it 20%. Full of useless links that are difficult if not impossible to over-ride, where is the old start page? Stories everywhere of no interest or relevance to my family research. Looking for alternatives!

I was an Ancestry member for well over a decade. Paid annual memberships and had great customer service experiences, until now. They tell you that annual memberships save you money but that leads you into getting bigger packages and then automatically renewing your subscription and you cannot get a refund as it is written into their policy to deny refunds. Canceling now and never returning to Ancestry!

Ancestry rates keep going up and up. They nearly doubled my costs and started charing semi annually to mask the scam. I pay for Newspapers.com plug in which has not worked for over a year. They refuse to address it. Now they have the nerve to make software fixes and want to charge me another $9.99 per month to use them.

So their overpriced non-functioning software doesn't work and now they want me to pay more to fix it. What a crock! SCAM SCAM SCAM

I paid more money to subscribe to Ancestry as opposed to other genealogical research sites, as their claim and other online reviews stated they have the greatest depth of information. I soon found out they have a lot of information, but the data may not be true. When you accept their hints, even though the sight lists if you are researching the same person, it often creates a duplicate. This causes chaos in your tree. I have tried to reach their support on multiple occasions, and they have no answers and will not escalate. Don't bother with this site, just do your own internet research.

I have been a member since 2020 and was happy enough with the site, however realised today that I have been overcharged for the last 6 months and when I queried it I was advised "no refund policy"! But it's an error! I've been charged to use the US site ( which means converted to Aussie dollars I'm paying almost double!) And when I threatened to cancel my subscription after 3 years they were more than happy to cancel and get rid of me! Terrible consumer service and a refund policy that serves only their company bottom line.

It has been 2 years since this started. They keep asking for another sample saying the sample is no good but can't tell me why. We are on sample #4 now! My subscription that came with purchase is long expired so even if I get a test results I cannot connect my tree to others without paying heavily

I cancelled my membership at Ancestry.com / Ancestry.org in early July of this year (2023) by calling the support line. Today I was reviewing my bank account activity and noticed that I was still being charged every month since July. I realized it was my fault that I did not make sure it was canceled, so I canceled it online. Ancestry charged me $25 fee for cancellation and still charged me the monthly membership fee as well. When I called to find out why, they basically said that they do not have any records of me calling in July snd that they will not refund my charges for this month either. My advice to anyone using this service is to be careful of being charged after cancellation.

Horrible site. I had all my photos set to private as well as my trees and someone was able to use them. What really has me upset they used my info to create a tree that has my deceased father and sister as another women's husband and child. Horrifying! Stay away or use code names for everyone in your tree. I have requested the removal of at least the pictures of my family members from that users tree (several times) and it's fallen on deaf ears.

Ancestry does what you'd expect. It finds the location(s) in the world that your previous generations come from and lived. My siblings match me so it is accurate. It only goes back 3-4 generations or so but it is supposed to get better as more people search.
Records were poor 100+ years ago so it's difficult to be specific.

Bad service been trying to get a refund for the shipping and ancestry didn't do anything saying wait til tomorrow …. And what if it comes your not gonna refund me when I could have just did the regular shipping

I've been with Ancestry since 2005 and have endured the constant raise in their fees. I have never had them just charge me - because I turned off the automatic charge. They have to contact me. So no issue there.

My main issue is people who copy other trees as if it is the gospel truth without sources. Inexperienced or just plain stupid? Also users who put these dumb photos of flags, and other things to identify their ancestors. It's garbage that gets sent to everyone who have the same common ancestors.

Also seems everyone is Native American. They attach Dawes or Baker files to an ancestor who died 130 years ago and that's their proof. It isn't. It's sloppy genealogical research.

I've decided that after years, it's time for me to call it quits once my membership expires. I'm in the process of saving everything because Ancestry does seem to think they own our ancestors! So no where to transfer unless you use their program that has yet another fee. I am tired of been nickel and dined to death.

Other than that, it used to enjoyable and a wonderful hobby until the grownups left and now a bunch of losers (ancestry employees as well as stupid users) have ruined it.

Joined in 04 at 99$ per year. They then sneakily doubled the amount a year later without notification. Then, they kept "upgrading and improving" until navigation became extremely difficult. They used to hide their phone number until they got rid of e-mail and live chat. They censor your comments to other users and if you complain they delete your comments and your ability to comment. The records are good, but not this company. Census records are public domain and I can't believe that they charge for access. They charge big bucks for internet convenience. My advice? Find a pen pal in your research area who will help you for FREE without these pieces of crud making book off of your hobby. Or, make the trip to the library.