Ancestry
Reviews and Complaints

Been a member 10 years for lack of an alternative, and for the last few years at highest level. But they have

1) Never fixed relationship calculation errors that I have alerted them to multiple times. Are not fixing foundational issues chasing bells & whistles.

2) Their servers seem to crash regularly, making parts of tips or trees unavailable. I suspect they have oversold relative to capacity.

3) Charge your payment method without authorization. Make it difficult to avoid auto renewal by not taking checks or prepaid cards. And say they remove payment method but do not if making a one time authorization. I have had this happen several times, & I gather I am not alone.

4) They don't moderate trolls, so one basically has to shut off contact internally from everyone. To avoid those outraged by trees that contradict their info. Or those having done little or no work on their own tree who believe they are entitled to full access of your years of research. PS. This after I stated clearly in my profile that I am happy to answer specific questions but don't share my tree.

5) Early adopter on DNA test, but underwhelmed re level of detail. Feels like it doesn't go very far back either.

6) Long waits for customer service which ineffectual & no real follow-up .

I set up a trial account to like around and look at some old family records. Cancelled, or so I though, immediately, only to find a month later I had a 45 dollar charge on my card for the service... that I had cancelled. I later went back and cancelled, this time for good, and discovered along the way that they possessed no refund policy and that their cancellation process is intentionally misleading.

Ancestry.com goes to great lengths advertising their abilities to find out what your roots are, in particular the latest tv commercials where an individual starts by say "all my life I thought I was — , but when I took the ancestry dna test I found out I am italian serbian this and this there are at least 4 of these kinds of commercials on tv which deceive the public by actually lying as the test results are not that specific so ancestry.com is actually making false and deceptive claims and lying to consumers
After waiting 2 months and paying over $100 I finally got notice via email my dna test results were ready I raced home from work to find nothing but an evasive test result with a pie showing I am 81% western european which encompasses belgium france germany switerland lichtenstein on and on and a small percentage of this and that the test results are so wide spread
I am so irritated that I fell for this lark this is nothing but a money making scheme
I want a refund as this company ancestry.com is deceptive in making false claims

Patricia berrisch
[protected]@gmail.com
[protected]

As a family project, my children and I purchased DNA test kits from Ancestry.com. I am fortunate enough to know my genealogy and detailed records recording where my family is from; however, I went along with the testing so we could create a family tree and research possible relatives using the company's app. When the test results were returned, it showed my children were all related, but I was not. Having carried them all during pregnancy and birthing all three, I am confident we are related. We all had a good laugh at my results and knew they were clearly wrong. I contacted Ancestry.com to tell them about the error, but instead of offering to do a new test, the representative on the phone argued with me and told me the results were correct and the lab never makes an error. When I asked how it was possible for my children not to be related, she indicated we were not doing something correctly in the system. The customer service is terrible and It seems like this whole thing is a scam; simply a way to rip people off. There are no checks on accuracy within the lab, so I am not sure any of the results are trustworthy.

Hello I have found it extremely difficult to cancel my subscription with you. I am unemployed and although I used your service to find out a few details I have not used your site or service e for over 6 weeks and was under the impression that i was not going to be charged.
please credit my account t to the sum of 28.71 as I have not asked for further subscription and have tried to cancel but find your site very user unfriendly. I am unhappy with this service as Igot nowhete beyond what I already knew. .Ps i cannot afford to be in the red as I get further charges.
thank you.

Suzie Lindesay

I cancelled, out at least believed I had cancelled my subscription at least 3 months ago. Found out today that I have been getting charged $19.99 every single month. And of course since I didn't write down a cancellation number or keep an email, I'm now out at least $60. When I called in and waited for around a half hour to talk to someone. I'm told that they will cancel my subscription, but can't refund me my money. I told the customer service guy that he could even look up the last time I logged in and that's the date that I thought I had cancelled my subscription. But he wouldn't even do that! This is complete and total crap. How is it OK to basically steal money from people? And not even want to try to make it right with the people your company stole the money from? As soon as I submit this, I shall be filling a complaint with the BBB also. Hopefully other people read this and do not get scammed the same as I did!

Signed up for a free 2-week trial membership, which I cancelled one week into the trial. The woman I spoke to on phone last week told me it was already cancelled. She confirmed it was, and assured me nothing further was needed. This morning I discovered Ancestry charged my account for a month service w/taxes anyway. I called to complain. The man cancelled my subscription again, and told me if I wanted to complain I would need to write to Orem, Utah. He couldn't take it over the phone.

I also didn't care for the service - it was difficult to use, and after one week of inputting my family tree, it became wiped out through nothing I did. It also didn't link my ancestral lines like some other genealogy sites do.

My card was charged $9.99 without my knowledge, called company @ [protected] to ask question why was my card charged it was stated I don't have a file with them so I have the fellow why was my card charged if there's no file on the question was asked and info was provided that's when I was told to contact [protected]@ancestry.com

August 31, 2016
Card Charged without permission
Request a Refund

There ought to be a law
Well here is my story.
I became interested in my family tree about 15 years ago so I started with Family tree Maker but that program was limited so I moved to Ancestry.com. I hired the genealogy staff to trace my surname back as far as possible. I was quoted a fee of $3000.00 for 25 hours of work. Three months later the research was wrapped up. I received a binder which was sparsely filled but I do have a small family so I moved on.
During the research a separate tree was created (ProGen Tree) this tree contained the result of the research for my surname, documentation and the individual family members.
This information was informative and resolved some mysteries of my surname. I now wanted to copy this information along with the documents to my tree. I was given a four step process which did not work. I wrote to the account manager and got this response “Hi, I am not sure why the locations would not match. I wish I could help. That is very strange. Please call our Tech Support Line at [protected] & they will be able to assist you. “Called tech support three times they were unable to copy the documents to my tree. Contacted the account manager again he sent the same procedure, contacted Tech Support again they think my status as a guest on the ProGen Tree is the problem. So I contacted the account manager to have my status changed so I can copy. The account manager responded “. I'm sorry, but it is ProGen's policy not to make anyone an editor of a ProGen tree as it could compromise the integrity of the data if someone uploaded faulty information. You will have to transfer it all individually to your own tree. My sincere apologies, but that is the company policy we all have to follow.”
The result of my experience with Ancestry.com was negative, unacceptable and unprofessional.

I have paid over $3000 for nothing. Every time I tried to access the ancestry website it told me I had to pay, I already had an account that I have been paying monthly for $19.99. Apparently, Ancestry entered in the wrong user ID for me which caused me not to have access to the website. I have not been able to access the website since I joined. This was their fault not mine but I am being punished for their negligence. I have tried to cancel and contact them for months. When I finally got ahold of someone they said they were sorry but there was nothing they could do to give me any of my money back but they could cancel my account. I have lost thousands of dollars and they are sorry, what a scam. They should lose their license to operate when they fraudulently take money out of your account and you get no service. They don't even care that this happened.

I have some information about my family and wanted to complete my family tree. So I joined this website looking up for more information. I decided to use their professional genealogy services and paid over $3000! I sent them my family tree that had been handwritten by my grandfather, my parents and me. I was told it might take a while but they would try to find my ancestors. Well, recently I received a message that my tree was complete. I was so excited! But then I received my booklet and realized there was no new information. There was absolutely no additional information! I contacted ancestry.com ad was told they need to verify some information. I gave them everything I had, so what do they need to verify? I paid $3000 and got absolutely nothing!

They forcefully rolled out their new site today. Don't get me wrong, I love change - really I do. These changes, however, were not for the better - not even close. What were they thinking? What a disaster. It's UGLY, jumbled with useless crap I don't need to see constantly. It's MUCH harder to navigate, sources are placed in a way that it is difficult to copy/share, it's almost impossible to add a new person without jumping through hoops. I used to be able to edit a person with one click, now it takes 4-5 depending on what page I'm on. That is not a time saver. And I see that the same old garbage "hints" are still around. Like the one showing that my grandmother who was born in 1912 miraculously had 4 children born in [protected] or the hint that shows my Uncle Ray (who is still alive and I just spoke with) and his wife (who died in 2013) as having died on the same day in 1963 (on the day their only son was born). Instead of completely revamping the look of the site, ancestry.com needs to focus on the information they are providing. If they want to be the best, they need to offer the best. And that ain't happening. They've made it quite clear they DO NOT CARE about their customers. While they do excel at, and continue to be, the greediest of all genealogy sites by buying up companies and databases, they don't have all of them yet. You can sign up for *several* other services for the same price of an Ancestry account. Don't waste your money on Ancestry.

I recently used the website www.AncestrybyDNA.com and was disappointed that I wasted money. I paid and hoped to get real report about my ancestors. But the website provided some general details and it wasn’t what I really needed. I asked to return $120, which I have paid for the report, but the company hasn’t even reacted to my email. Don’t waste money for some general details, which you can find in the Internet.

Purchased 9/23/2015. Paid in full with credit card, via Amazon.com. Cannot file complaint with either company, due to computer hacker. Ancestry will not release the results or send email notification of findings. Require hard copy of the results, or full refund, including shipping cost. Packing slip not provided by either merchant.

I signed up for what I thought was a 14-day free trial on Ancestry.com. The company then deducted several hundred dollars on my credit card account, and claimed I signed up for a full annual account. There is no way I did this since I only intended to use the website for a couple days before a family reunion (during the 14 day trial). I feel as though they are committing blatant theft of unsuspecting customers! When I called to say I never signed up for this annual membership, they insisted this is what I selected (which I never would have done--if I'd been forced to choose, I would have chosen the least expensive option). I believe their website is fraudulent and auto-populates an annual membership without making it clear to people who think they are innocently signing up for a free 14-day trial. Customer service was TERRIBLE and the SUPERVISOR was surprisingly rude. Wouldn't even offer a partial refund. I'm completely disturbed by this company's business practices and customer service. Shame on them.

This company is a total rip off. I took out what I thought to be a one month subscription in March 2015. It has came to light that they have continued to take money from my credit card every month for the past five months. I had been unaware of this and was shocked to see they had been doing this I rang the company and demanded my money back as they could check out that I had not used their service any time since the March. They have ref}used to refund me except for the last payment that came out as {a good will gesture}! I think that the advertising is totally misleading and I made the stupid mistake of not reading the terms and conditions. They are clearly hoping there are more fools like me who subscribe not realising the consequences.

Hi everyone. I have been writing a family history of our family, going back to England in the 1700s, but got stuck at that point.I purchsed the then latest version of Family Tree Maker, (At the time FTM 2012 Deluxe). The program recommended the use of Ancestry.com for research, so I joined up and paid a subscription. I suspect one of these companies owns the other.
I have foundAncestry.com useless for my purposes so far. They are very efficient at billing, (The money goes out on the day but no receipt is issued), but when I log in to search for information and look like getting somewhere, I run up against roadblocks. I get told I need to upgrade my membership, or I need to go to Ancestry.com.au or uk or somewhere else. When I go to these recommended sites, I am asked to upgrade membership status or rejoin that particular branch. When I click on a link, it takes me to some archive that requires extra payment. So far, i have not been able to download any useful information. Does anyone else have these problems? Can you recommend a genuine better research group that is user friendly and will really give me access to the information i need to finish my book in the few years left where I still possess all of my marbles? This outfit wth their offers of free trial membership and redirections to other payable sites within their organisation are rapidly driving me nuts!
HELP PLEASE!

I have had a membership for a long time and have used it regularly for my work. I used to be able to email customer support if I had any problems and they would get back to me in a day or two with the answer. I need a copy of my monthly invoice so that I can turn it in to the company I work for as an expense. Customer Support had to email instructions on how to do that because unlike most sites, they don't email you a receipt. It was a little complicated but I got used to doing it every month. Recently they have made changes to their site trying to push more sales of software. In doing so, they removed the email contact for customer support and they removed the ability to print your purchase history (monthly invoice). I called the number for customer support since that is all they offer now, and they were no help. They just told me I was right, that feature was removed. They said they couldn't email me a receipt, I was just SOL. This was actually on my 2nd call to CS because the first rep hung up on me. Very bad customer service! These people on the phone don't know what they are doing, and do not know how to properly handle complaints they are about to get flooded with because Ancestry removed several important features to try to push more sales. I think they are going to find a lot of customers like me cancelling their membership because of this. Also after reading several other customer complaints, I fear they will try to keep billing my company credit card. It has to be illegal to refuse to offer a receipt for services charged.

Found they have been charging my credit card for a year after cancellation. My fault as the card that was used originally is one that I don't use regularly. When I caught their error I of course called them but was on hold, like other complainants for an hour. Got a snippy representative asking for my cancellation reference number. When I said I didn't have it in front of me, she told me she couldn't help me, other than cancel now. When I said of course cancel AGAIN she asked if I wanted my reference number? This site is a scam! Don't use it. I will go through my credit card company. They aren't getting my hard earned money!

Over two years ago, I used ancestry.com to put together a family tree for my mother's side. I used the free trial, then paid for an additional month. I then cancelled, and never saw another charge. Out of the blue today, I had a $106 charge in my account! I called the company, and sat on hold for 30 minutes with no answer. I gave it a while and tried again, another 30 minutes later, and still NO answer! I will try once more, and then I will make a formal dispute with my bank.

How unfortunate.