AncestryReviews 637

As I look on Ancestry at the "hints" for my relatives what I find are the photos I've uploaded and the extensive genealogy research I've done for 20 years (from books and digging through courthouse records and microfiche - not the internet) and uploaded to Ancestry. I am lucky if I find one new thing a year. It upsets me that Ancestry charges a huge monthly fee and makes money on my research! And I don't get anything out of it. I'm to the point that I am going to delete all my research from Ancestry and upload it to Familysearch.org.

Don't believe the TV commercials. Ancestry is a good source and you can find info. But the changes they have made in the past years have not been helpful. You get a lot of hints but it is its the same info over and over. They do not pay any attention to what the people who have been members for years and years. Myself since 2001 want and have asked for.

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.

The information they supply is very generic, any of their "extra services "are tricks to scam more money and very difficult to cancel

I originally order a DNA test from them, but called them back because I thought I ordered the wrong test, the told me to order another test. When I found out the original test was correct after I activated the other test, the told me I couldn't get a refund, even though I called the next day after activating and talking to a supervisor.

I've attempted to cancel for 5 months to no avail. No refund either. I'm over the stealing. I haven't logging in in months.

As appealing at it is to research your family history, Ancestry.com is a waste of money. All of their "helpful" records and hints are just noise. They inundate you with records, but don't provide any real guidance on how to sort through everything. If you don't already know your family history, trying to figure it out through their site is next to impossible. Also, despite having met the requirements of my initial contract (6 months), they still charged me a penalty for cancelling my membership. Don't get caught up in this scheme and save your money!

You can easily do much of the research yourself and save yourself money. The quality of the site is subpar and the customer service is laughable. Sorry that I spent the time. The company is a sordid pile of rubbish and is hardly worth your while. Be forewarned that the company will charge your credit card yearly (even if you've canceled the account) without warning! Even if you've deleted your account and information, they will cunningly try to charge you a yearly fee and then feign lack of communication to sort everything out. Keep an eye on any current credit cards previously used for this site over the years. Very low. Very inept.The only service that seems to work with any consistency is the company charging your deleted account fee after fee.

Nothing but excellent service. Got pretty much my whole family's dna test through ancestry and connected it together on my family tree. They have the most samples in their data base so amazing if you wanna connect and get the most accurate results on your dna.

NO customer service. Have been trying to reach someone for a week.
THERE is ZERO customer service. Just cancelled

Do not sign up with ancestry until they treat you like a human and not a bank account. They do not practice legitimate customer service. With most companies they'll reverse a fee if you haven't used a service, not this one. You'll get someone on the line who does not care about you, or care about reversing extra charges. Yes extra charges. Bad company.

After my mother received hers, I signed up with Ancestry.com about nine years ago to find out about my DNA results. Hers showed that she was 63% of UNKNOWN parts of Asia, 25% European. Smaller percentages showed North American and African. When I received my DNA test results, it showed that I was 53% African, 23% European, Russian/ Jewish, and Native American. I logged in to Ancestry.com today and discovered that I am now 78% African, 20% European, and the rest is BS! I HAVE NO JEWISH BLOOD, AND I AM NO LONGER POLYNESIAN! Ancestry.com SENDS EMAILS TO TELL YOU THEY HAVE MADE UPDATES TO YOUR DNA. WHAT THEY ARE DOING IS FABRICATING A LIE! MY MOTHER DID NOT KNOW SHE WAS ASIAN, BUT THEN A RUSSIAN JEW MIGHT HAVE BEEN THE MISSING LINK TO HER UNKNOWN REGIONS. SHE KNEW SHE WAS IRISH!

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE A WHITE PARENT, A BLACK PARENT, AND 9 YEARS LATER, RESULTS DETECT BOTH PARENTS ARE PRACTICALLY BLACK? THEREFORE I AM NOW 78% BLACK? MY MOTHER'S IRISH AND RUSSIAN JEWISH LINAGE DOESN'T EXIST?! PLEASE DO NOT SEND YOUR DNA TO THIS COMPANY! THEY WILL CHANGE YOUR RESULTS WHENEVER THEY WANT!

I purchased for $194 a gift membership for my wife that is all access for a year including access to Fold3 and Newspapers.com. I was led to believe that this was, in fact, all access. It is not all access and the only information available to her is information that she provided or already had in her tree when she previously had a subscription. She hit a paywall when trying to access anything new and when the gift was purchased they said nothing about certain content being excluded from the ALL ACCESS. Because it is a gift membership, that was activated, they are refusing to refund even a portion of the money. I told them that as she will not be using it at all the account was useless since it was not as was represented. Since she HAD logged in three times for a total of 45 minutes (where everything new she wanted to see needed an additional subscription) I would accept them lowering the gift to a single month. Abysmal customer service.

Unbelievably bad service. I paid for three of the top DNA tests (which included medical information), for myself and my two adult children. The kits came, we filled out all the info., did the swabs, sent them in, then heard NOTHING. Called months later and got the run-around about they were backed up, etc. Then two of the kits came back with info. With the ancestry info., but not the medical. The third kit was never processed, apparently "lost." They sent a new one and my daughter redid it. Seven months later we have NO RESULTS. Just spent an hour and a half (not exaggerating) on the phone trying to prove I should get a refund. Absolutely mind-boggling how incompetent the refund process which involved multiple emails with broken links, ugh. Enough... let's just say this: the process was very upsetting and I am positive it was intentionally so. Most folks would not have been as persistent as I was and they bank on that. Friggin' ripoff.

They said I canceled too early, wtw, took money from my account and they refuse to put it back, not good. They that hard up for subscriptions they put stipulations amongst all those small words and they think it's ok, well its not. So i wouldn't advise any one to try the free trials, that's where they start billing. I am not writing anything false, i had it happen to me, and i was not HAPPY!

Sent in adopted husbands DNA & found mothers side & possibly fathers. Contacted Ancestry to confirm if a DNA match could possibly be a half sibling. Sent text & they replied at 1AM with 4 texts while I was trying to sleep. I called & was told that information was not precious. I asked where she was & she said in Columbia. I said no wonder we can't understand each other as her reply didn't make sense to me.

I bought the kit and sent it in and results came back completely different than what I had always been told. So after thinking about it I finally realized that I had sent in my results using my stepdad‘s last name which I have used since I was little. The results came back as a result of that last name which matched their results. Had I used my biological last name the results would've been totally different so therefore they don't go by DNA they do a name trace.