AncestryReviews 637

I got charged twice this month for the so-called "free trial", the fee is 145.10$, put it twice and you get 290.20$. In my bank account, I had 4.49$ and it says -285.71$! The day after, I called ancestry.ca to get my full refund from this FRAUDULENT free trial add, the lady told me it will take 3 days for me to get my refund and cancel my free trial subscription, she gave me a cancellation confirm number in my email. I am still waiting for my refund. I am extremely angry and shocked! > :(

I want to take my whole tree someplace else. It all gets messed up and so called "experts" don't help you. Their answers are things I have already tried and don't work. Sometimes the whole tree disappears. It's confusing and awful to work with. Changing a relationship involves selling your right arm. So fed up. I am quitting it in about 3 weeks when my subscription runs out. I will find some other software that is more pleasing to work with.

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!

They keep charging my credit card. I call the automated line to cancel and they claim they don't have a my credit card on file. I have disputed the charges 3 times with my credit card company. IMPOSSIBLE to get a hold of a live person -- most of the time the phone number goes to a fast busy. Now on their site is says

"The Ancestry support line is currently experiencing intermittent service interruptions. We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause and appreciate your patience as we work to resolve the problem as quickly as possible." Sent 2 live chats no response.

Ancestry.com DNA results didn't match results two other companies, who did DNA test very well. Ancestry.com DNA result is very General and shows very high Eastern European ethnicity WITHOUT ANY breakdown, and shows map with a few dozens of countries without any specific percentage for each of them, including many Western European and Asian countries on the same map, It's pathetic! I contacted three times this company asking to correct or re-take the test, or issue refund, but they NEVER responded.

Absolutely awful.
Signed up for the two week free trial and expected to be charged £19.99 a month after that. So to my horror £99.99 was pending from PayPal account I phoned PayPal to cancel the transaction and they also suggested I also phone Ancestry to get confirm the refund. So I call the helpline to be on hold for over 45 minute. I do understand that volumes of calls can be high and that the lady on the phone was very helpful and did confirm the refund and apologised for their fault. The problem I do have is that a few days later I received a message from my phone provider. There is additional charges of £96.59 for calling ancestry. At NO POINT of me being on hold did any of the recorded messages state anything about being charged per minute for the phone call. I would like to think ancestry would do something to rectify this issue as if it wasn't for their mistake in the first place I would not of had to call them.

I was given an Ancestry DNA kit as a Christmas gift in December of 2018. As instructed in the directions, I registered the kit on an account I opened and mailed the kit in the first week in January 2019.

I never heard back about the progress or receipt by Ancestry so I call them on 2/6/19. I spoke to a customer service rep named Matt. After a half hour of fumbling and lack of knowledge, Matt finally located the kit number I provided. He told me that Ancestry personnel had entered my email address incorrectly on his end. He said it was an error on their part and could not be corrected because of the way their program was designed. So he said he would mail me a new kit. We doubled checked the shipping information to
Make sure they had the correct name and address.

On 2/11/19, not having received the kit, I called again and spoke to Brenda. She told me it would take 7 to 10 days to receive it. I gave her the original kit number and asked her to check the date Matt mailed it out. As before, after about 30 minutes of being put on hold and fumbling back and forth, she told me she couldn't find any record of it being sent. Once again I gave her all the shipping information and she said she would send out a replacement kit that same day.

On 2/25/19, guess what. Still no kit received. I called again and spoke to Crystal. Another 30 minutes or so, after explaining everything again, Crystal told me they had no record of a kit being sent to me. I asked to speak to a supervisor. Crystal balked, but put me on hold until one was available. Another 15 minutes went by and Crystal was back telling me the
Supervisor was still busy, but she would send another kit out. We carefully went over the shipping details. She said it would be shipping that day and after waiting another 5 to 10 minutes she provided me a confirmation number.

Today is 3/11/19. Yup you are correct, still no kit. I called again today hoping I would be able to talk to a supervisor. The recording said there would be at least a 30 minute wait to speak to a customer rep. I had other things to do.

By the way, I gave all this information to Ancestry in an email survey. Gave them 1 star saying I would never recommend them to a friend. The automated survey responded to the 1 star and asked why. I explained it and have never heard back from them. Same zero response from an email I sent through their website to customer service.

The service is good, but the cancellation process is complex. It doesn't work with Google chrome. I had to get out an old Windows computer and use Internet Explorer to cancel. The telephone cancellation process doesn't work if you use Paypal. And the wait time for a customer service rep is very long.

And you have to navigate about 5 pages to even get to thre right cancellation option, and the pages obfuscate the options necessary to actually cancel.

I signed up for a 7-day free trial, was on it for approximately 2 hours and canceled the trial. Got charged $30 three times in a row even tho I canceled with a confirmation number. I contacted my bank and they credited my account because I had called more than once, complaining about this. They got me an 800 customer service number and went around with a bunch of people but finally spoke to a manager. He canceled it again but refused to refund my money. Well, to hell with you Ancestry, I got my money back, thank you Chase.

I have found the Ancestry DNA to be helpful in identifying cousins. Most of the time people will either not respond or respond that we are not related even though we are highly likely a match. I have met 3 close relatives; one I correspond with, one that is of another race that says we are not related and one that pretended to be intetested. Bottom line is if DNA matches you, you are related. I find most matches want to see the ancestor chart and not interested in the genealogy. You can always tell those by them having not signed in in over a year. Then there are those that hide their tree. If you want to meet cousins you need to be able to match people. It is frustrating but I love genealogy research. Kudos to Ancestry.com, but there is nothing like visiting cemeteries, libraries, and clerk-of-court offices!

My whole family has done the Ancestry DNA test, with stunningly accurate results. The key to using this test, and being satisfied, is understanding the basics of DNA and genetics. I see all these negative reviews, and they can all be broken down into 3 categories. 1)" I don't like what it showed me." This can be avoided by entering into the test knowing that you have history that you don't know of, and may not like. You might discover that someone had a baby with the (eh-hem) milk man. Or that your family origins are not quite as pure as you would like them to be. 2)" This test sucks because I couldn't spit" It's a spit test, if you can't spit, don't order this test. 3) " My test failed" Well yes, your test failed because you either didnt provide enough sample or you allowed other people to handle your sample and smear their DNA on your sample. Follow the instructions and your test won't fail.
All in all, this is a good test, and a good company. Like any other test, it does require that you follow the instructions, and you have to be prepared to see things you may not like or things that surprise you. So, if you are determined to believe that you are a " full blooded Italian" you may wanna skip this one.