ArchivesReviews 158

I signed up for a free 7 day trial. Site offered nothing for my search - absolutely nothing. So I cancelled my membership the day before it expired. All seemed well. Then I reviewed my credit card billing and I noticed I had been charged for two months. I wrote to their customer service, stated I had cancelled on time and wanted a refund of my two months. A reply from Angela in customer service says they will happily cancel my membership but not give me a refund for my two months as per their membership agreement. Of course, if I had an e-mail showing the cancellation things would be different she said. Seems to be a scam to me. Do not use this site.

Found a lot more information on Ancestry.com. Archives leads you to believe you can look at documents right away--not! You have to order them from $30.00 and up! Some of the records I can goto the local library and print them for 5¢ off the microfishe machine. Granted, not all of the records are there, but there's enough there to make me happy. Plus, Archives does not have a whole lot on overseas searches.

I cancelled my "free" trial, I will see if any charges show up on my credit card, especially now after seeing all the complaints about them charging you.

This site is the worst. I was trying to remove my information from them like how spokeo and intelius have all your information under pipl dot com. All other websites remove your information without a problem, but archives dot com will not. I hate to get religious, but they are MORMON OWNED and affiliated with ancestors.com which is the same. I don't know how the BBB works, but they need to be reported. They refuse to take down my web information.

I decided after a couple of months that I no longer wanted them to bill through PayPal directly and removed PayPal as my billing option. I wanted to make the decision month to month whether to renew based on value. I assumed they would bill me. Instead, they continued to bill through PayPal - indicating that if I wanted to change billing, I had to cancel the contract. Repeated emails with customer "service" resulted in continued frustration. I ultimately cancelled the subscription - don't join in the first place!

I signed up for the 7-day free trial. When I clicked on the county and state record it stated in a bold font that $0.00 would be charged. After I submitted it, it changed to $49.90 would be charged. There was no phone # listed on the site. Through 'Contact Us' I immediately sent a request to cancel the order and cancel the free trial. A few days later the charge showed up on my credit card. I got their phone # from my credit card, but they refuse to remove the charge. I am going to pursue getting the charge removed but don't have a lot of hope based on other people's experience with this company.

Scott P. I cannot believe that every single person on this review page has something negative to say about archives.com. The only conclusion I can come up with is that the millions who have actually HAD a great experience with the site is just simply not saying so. This is now the second year I will be using the resource, and I just love what I've accomplished. I use it often and have been doing extensive research into 16 different lineages. I have been able to (with much patience) trace most of my ancestors back for 300 or more years. I'm sorry to hear how some have lost out. I love using this site. The only thing I have to complain about is that they do not have extensive background in continental Europe. Otherwise, I've really enjoyed the results.

I have been doing Genealogy for nearly 30 yrs. When I went to Archives.com they stated that I was a member, yet I could not sign-in. I even went as far as to give a credit card, and would have actually paid for info, but the site continued to refuse to give me access. I wrote to "*******@archives.com" and received NO RESPONSE. I wrote again, and again. FRUADULANT comes to mind. I would not give this site any stars. I will contact my credit card service to refuse payment if they have the nerve to try to take any $. I deal with many genealogy services and this one brings the words SHAMEFUL FRUDULANT SCAM to mind!

Here is the "latest" scam from AncestryDotcom.

I enrolled in Ancestry and dutifully gave them a CC#. I cancelled within 5 days and got the confirmation of the cancellation and the $39.95 never appeared on my CC bill.

However, they gave my CC # to a "marketing partner" called One Great Family (OGF) who immediately charged my account for $59.88. I called OGF who immediately cancelled my membership but couldn't refund my money. Instead I was referred back to Ancestry.

At this point, I could see what was going to happen, so I called Visa and filed a dispute on the charge. They blocked the charge until they could investigate,

Then came the "finishing touch". Someone, probably Ancestry, sold my CC# and the buyer started using it. Thankfully Visa sensed fraud and called me. I told them that I had not made the charges and Visa shut down the account and will be reversing all the charges.

For the record, I'm filing a complaint with the Feds and with my State Attorney General.

This fraud has to stop.

If I could, I would give Ancestry and One Great Family MINUS 5 stars.

Horrible and unprofessional! I have just gotten off the phone with manager Melissa, who did nothing to help me get my money back (I was charged 2010, 2011 and 2012). They refunded the money from this year, as it was placed yesterday, but as of previous year she suggested I should take care of my finances and that they don't do it for clients! Now the aspect that angered me and that I see described in previous comments: to sound professional they claim they always send emails prior to placing charges on a card. GUESS WHAT? NEVER got any... When I asked Melissa about it, she claimed (!) they were courtesy emails and they didn't have to take responsibility for them getting lost! After I said it was odd I never got them, three years in a row, and how I suspect they were never supposed to be delivered, so that I wouldn't really know about the charge, she claimed I should be responsible for my account regardless if I get an email or not. Well, nice customer service, Archive.com - let's just admit, you DO count on people not noticing your charges and the courtesy emails you should send that you so proudly emphasize NEVER make it to clients inbox. They don't go to their junk folder as you strongly suggest, you just NEVER SEND THEM (they will say just about anything to make you look like a fool who doesn't have control over their life and will blame their shortcomings on you or your email account pushing their emails to its junk folder). Ironically, just when I was ready to hang up on Melissa, I got an automatic email from Archives about the phone call I placed AND I GOT THIS ONE! So, the marketing emails MAKE IT to my inbox, but the ones about CHARGES DON'T? Right, I get it. Keep counting on people not noticing the charges and then bombard them with your ready to use phrases that are formed specifically to corner the client, make them look stupid and get off the phone, so you can keep their money. Lesson learned - NEVER provide your credit card for a FREE trial. ARCHIVES.COM is a SCAM.

I, too, regret that I did not read reviews for this bogus "company" prior to signing up for the 7 day free trial. I talked to two people (their customer service offices are in Omaha) who seemed to be reading off a script broken record style. One supposedly was a "supervisor"... in reality probably was the desk buddy of the previous person I spoke to. I asked for the address to send my request for a refund of this worthless service and for a contact person to whom I could send to their attention and he would not give a supervisor or head of customer service name. When I asked for the address of the corporate headquarters, he said he wouldn't give that out because customer service is in Omaha. Really? So what if all us unhappy customers wrote to the corporate headquarters and flooded their office with the stories of their atrocious and borderline scam service? I plan on sending letters there AND to "customer service" whose address is PO Box *******, Omaha, NE *******, at least that's the address according to the faux customer supervisor I just got off the phone with. I wonder if these people are aware that they have a non-credible rating as compared to a reputable company such as ancestry.com? I could only hope that as is stated on this site, that the owner of archives.com does see these reviews. Oh, wait, that would mean that the higher ups actually care about their reputation out there... somehow I don't think they care the least... only about the money their are raking in at the expense of the unknowing public.