MyHeritage
Reviews and Complaints

Date of incident: 14 Dec. 2022

Time of Incident: 13.42

After my purchase of a DNA kit, I got a call from a MyHeritage representative to promote an upgrade to my existing subscription.

He explained to me how "important" it is to add names and surnames to my family tree so that their algorithm can match them with their millions of records.

My question was "How can you match the record without the DNA information of my family tree information?".

I asked him to defend the below statement:

'This way of building the family tree and matching it with millions of records only and only based on names and surnames can create more confusion than clarity and provide us with very biased information.'

He could not say much.

I proceeded to ask him if the kits we are buying can provide us with scientific information about family relations eg. between the child and parent, but he got angry and did not even professionally explain the process and closed the conversation in progress by saying "If you do not want the upgrade then have a nice day", hanging up, although I was in the middle of talking.

Those people have access to our vital information with no solid ethical accountability to human beings.

I have a huge complaint to MyHeritage: Firstly, be accountable with information such as the DNA of humanity, and cater to the real needs of people not having your mind on generating money while you are involved with extremely vital cases of humanity! Be extremely responsible about who has access to that kind of information!

And secondly, when your product or service is being questioned with reasonable objections, you should be able to explain clearly and admit any weaknesses in the system your product is depending on.

the amount below was taken from our bank account automatic renewal not authorised i have email them many times since last week and received no reply

Paid with

DEBIT_CARD

You'll see "PAYPAL *MYHERITAGE 700-" on your card statement.

£207.38

E-money conversion rate

£207.38 GBP = $240.00 USD

1 GBP = 1.1573 USD

Manage MyHeritage Ltd payments

Transaction ID

8KF52176XE630805T

Seller information

MyHeritage Ltd

+972 [protected] x20

[protected]@myheritage.com

Invoice ID

M5PR662D75ZTM232

Purchase details

700-61A379D9BC30E6BA45F51D4CB8CC8657-3

$240.00 USD

Total$240.00 USD

Print details

When I responded to another MyHeritageDNA member IN ITALIAN, the

My Heritage programs translated my message into ENGLISH! Why? Why can't I communicate in Italian (and other non-English) languages? I turned off Grammarly and the program still translated my Italian message into English. I do not know if the other person speaks English so he might not answer. And I speak Italian so this is frustrating!

Please explain how I can work around this automatic translation "glitch".

Jim Caradonio

Before I purchased the kit, I contacted sales and spoke to Jose. I wanted to know if they had successfully shipped to Argentina and would I be charged in Argentine pesos or USD. I was told no problem shipping to Argentina, and yes I would be charged in pesos.

My Argentina credit card was charged in USD which activated a 30% surcharge. I would have gladly used my US credit card, had I known I was actually going to be charged in USD and not pesos as promised.

I purchase my kit on August 4, 2022. It was shipped but did not take the 12 days promised. It stayed stuck in Argentine customs according to the tracking. I tried contacting support to find out the disposition. I contacted them August 14,15, 17. When I spoke with Juan on August 19, I was told to contact DHL and see why. I informed Juan that the shipper must contact DHL, they will not speak to me. He could offer no solution other than to wait 44 days. I then tried contacting them on Aug 23. A support person Maria, sent me an email. On Sept 23 she reiterated everything she already told me including that I should contact DHL. Once again I had to explain why I could not do this. Finally, on September 25, 2022 she informed me that my kit had been lost (!) and they were sending a new one.

It's now November 25, 2022, 2 months since the new kit was sent, and I have still not received it. I contacted Maria once again on November 14, 2022 to let her know that the kit shows it is still in customs since October 11. (This is exactly what happened with the first kit) Her response once again was to tell me to contact DHL personally, and that sometimes there is a need for some additional documentes that they would be happy to send me. I sent Maria the cut and pastes from the DHL website where it explicitly states that the shipper must contact DHL and that if more documents are needed DHL will make contact. This also has not happened.

On November 15, Maria then wrote me that she was going to pass my issue on to their DNA team and they would contact me right away. I am still waiting. It's been 10 days.

During this time on September 3, 2022 I was charged for an annual subscription that I did not want or order.

This is crazy that close to 4 months I have not received a kit and that I was charged for something I did not order. Had I known that this was going to happen I would have never ordered from My Heritage. What a disappointment.

I was not made aware of a pending charge on my account on 11/18/2022. $340.20 was charge to my credit card through PayPal. I tried calling customer service and couldn’t get through because I didn’t I know my account number. I had cancelled the account and could not retrieve the account number as they asked to proceed with the call. They gave me know way to be able to speak to a customer service representative. I have sent emails to [protected]@myheritage.com and have not received a reply yet. This is not good business practice.

Unauthorized charge to my credit card appeared on my bill. Card ending 3278. Charge of $138.00 CDN on Oct. 14th was authorized for purchase of product. Charge of $217.28 which appeared subsequently was not authorized for any product. No product ordered and no product received. I attempted to contact My Heritage by telephone through the contact numbers on their website with no success. The answering machine said the number was changed with no forwarding number provided.

Last year I must have signed up for a free trial. I honestly do not even remember. I missed the first $150 charge during a time of family crisis. This year they automatically renewed me for $350. I'm sorry but that's egregious, manipulative, and greedy. I imagine a lot folks using this service are much older, forgetful, and not as tech savvy. It's pretty rotten to think how often they probably automatically renew double or triple the original amount of the subscription on folks who don't even remember that they have this service. Shameful.

At 2 am this morning on my phone it said I had a transaction that was declined for 139 dollars for a bls my heritage ltd business, I didn't make that transaction, it shows on my cash card and it shows for me to add the cash so they can receive it, I didn't make any transaction or try to reach out to any one from that business or whatever they are, i'm glad I didn't have the money on my card or they would have taken my money and I hope this doesn't happen again

On Oct 31, I received an e-mail from MyHeritage stating they had charged my credit card $315 for an annual subscription. I had no advance notice of the upcoming charge and do not want the subscription. I immediately called their support number and was given case #[protected]. The call center was unable to resolve the issue and could not transfer me directly to billing. Nothing happened for several days. I called, again and again, no resolution. Shortly after my second call, I received a standardized email from "Aner" which said they tried to contact me but couldn't reach me by phone. I responded to the email asking Aner to either give me a direct line for me to call back or respond to my issue via e-mail. Again, no response for a few days. Today, I received the identical standard e-mail again from "Aner" without any response to my earlier e-mail. Their website promises a money-back satisfaction guarantee. I would like a full refund of the $315 charge.

Brian Snow

brian @snows.me

MyHeritage Acct# [protected]

On 1st November a charge of £114 taken out for a subscription I don’t want. I got no emails in the lead up to the end of this trial period so I could cancel it and as soon as they'd taken the money out I called and emailed to cancel and apply for a refund but neither request has been acknowledged.

Their policy states that they guarantee a full refund by contacting Customer Support within 30 days of the purchase date. I’ve followed the instruction and contacted them the same day I was charged on the 1st of November followed by a phone call on 4th November to which I was told someone would call me back, but I haven't received any response to either. It seems that this whole process is designed to scam people and discourage them from seeking a refund.

3. Refund Policy

MyHeritage values the satisfaction of its customers and offers a thirty (30) day money back guarantee. If you are not satisfied with your purchased plan you may request a full refund by contacting Customer Support within thirty (30) days of the initial purchase date of the subscription.

The money back guarantee applies to MyHeritage subscriptions (Premium, PremiumPlus, Data or Complete), and not to shipped products such as MyHeritage DNA kits and family tree posters.

All refunds will be reimbursed to the original credit card with which the purchase was made. Please allow a reasonable time for the refund to be charged to your account.

I accessed my bank account online on 20 October 2022 and realised $546 was pending to be extracted from my bank account. I contacted My Heritage by phone (they did not call me back) and then I emailed and asked for my subscription to be cancelled effective immediately and asked for a refund of the money removed from my bank account.

The first email from My Heritage cancelled my subscription from 2023 and I asked for it to be cancelled effective immediately i.e. now in 2022. They actually did that for me and said no further action was required by me, except there was no mention of $546 being returned to my account.

My query was then escalated to the Specialized Billing team and I have received one email saying they have tried to contact me and were unable to. I asked what number they tried to contact and provided my cell phone number. There has been no further contact by that person or anyone else from My Heritage.

My Heritage are relying on a subscription structured arrangement that I paid for last year ago and by ticking their 'own box' they count down one year until your account can be accessed again. What is actually wrong here is there is no reminder of the upcoming renewal and they proudly cite a 30 day cancellation policy as they value their customers. If that were the case, I wouldn't be submitting this message.

I am a Genealogist who takes on cases from time to time and I have no active cases at the moment. My Heritage has not taken into account a person's change of circumstance and are playing a carefully well thought out 'gotcha game'. The renewal amount taken from me is at the full fare rate and not even a special rate was applied.

I suppose the rationale is that My Heritage collects many subs where people let it go after a year has gone by and the money is simply taken out. The 30 day cancellation time limit would then benefit My Heritage in reverse as it would be too late to cancel after this amount of time has lapsed. Then there are others caught in the net who request their money back like me within the time limit and are receiving a stonewalled customer service.

Seems there are a series of steps you must take where it is hoped that you will give up at any stage along the way.

The bottom line is that I am not longer doing genealogy at the moment. I have cancelled my membership effective immediately and I want my $546 money back as there is no service that is currently being sought by me and if My Heritage do value their customers as they say, then my money should be fully refunded.

My situation is simple. No renewal and no payment to be made as there is no service being provided.

Dear Sirs,

I ordered a DNA testing kit for my wife as a surprise for her birthday on the 23rd November and paid for it using my credit card . I had to register it in her name. as there was no other option on the website, and was surprised when your company immediately contacted her to advise her the account had been set up. Since then she has received emails on an almost daily basis, further reducing the surprise. More importantly, I ordered the kit so my wife could take advantage of the 1 months free trial, after she had registered the kit and received the test results. However that is not the case, the free months trial has started, before she has even received the kit, some 7 days after I ordered it, and before she has done the test, sent it back to you and got the results. This is unacceptable, your advertising implies the free months trial does not start until you have registered the kit, not when you place the initial order. I spoke to a young lady on the direct line but she was either unable to unwilling to help, continually repeating the same script. ' she can either proceed or refund' there was no other option as they could not delay the free trial. I explained that as your company has obviously comprehensive technology so linking the start date to either when the kit is registered or when my wife accesses her account for the results should be easy, it does not just have to be at the time of ordering. Can you please delay the start date of the one months free trial as, currently, that will be exhausted before my wife has received the results, let alone her birthday.

Thank you John O'Neill

my email address - jejoneill.[protected]@btinternet.com

Hello

I would like to cancel the invoice issued on 09.10.2022, because I do not agree with the extension of the subscription after the expiration of the trial period. I sent e-mail ([protected]@meheritage.com) for cancellation and on 09.10.2022 after seeing the account debited :(

Please refund for the amount of 105.91 eur debited from my personal card. I mention that, I was not previously informed for debiting the amount of 105.91 Eur from the card and I did not accept the payment. I requested on the site the cancellation of the subscription already 09.10.2022.

I signed up for the 14 day free trial. After a couple days I cancelled the free trial as I was no longer interested in this service. I followed the steps and triple checked that it had been cancelled. On October 3rd at 10:08pm AEST I received an email from MyHeritage stating that I had been charged AUD$185.90 from my account which was not authorised and is completely incorrect considering I cancelled the free trail. I have contacted customer support and I was given the ticket number #[protected]. However, I have not been contacted regarding this major problem. As soon as I received the email stating that I had been charged for something that I did not want, I requested a refund at 11:12pm AEST on October 3rd. This is not acceptable and I must have this issue resolved immediately please. It seems this is a reoccurring issue with customers. Perhaps it is a problem that should be corrected so it stop reoccurring.

I signed up for an online, free 14-day trial to do ancestry research for my family tree. The agent from my heritage called me to ask me to sign up for the premium service, after a discussion about it being a pay-in-full service I advised them it was too expensive and I wouldn't be continuing. The agent told me that I needed to go online and cancel my subscription. I went online and selected cancel, and I believe that was the end of the 14-day trial.

What is not explained to you is that you signed up once for a 14-day trial, however, the one sign-up comes in two parts. It doesn't give you this information, and my cancellation was for one part of the subscription, not both parts, but nowhere on their site does it tell you this, unless you then go back into your online account. #

I received an email on the same day as they took the £79.00 for the data information I was still signed up for, this email was not sent to remind me that my 14 days were coming to an end etc, it was to thank me for taking out a yearly subscription.

I signed up for one 14-day trial, but I cancelled the 14-day trial, I do not want access to this database, there is no point to the database without the other subscription. I was not aware I had to cancel both parts, I did not know the subscription was in two parts, because I signed up for one 14-day trial.

I have emailed several different email addresses asking for a refund, informing them I did not sign up for this service, I have telephoned and gotten cut off many times without an answer, I have used their chatbot several times and raised ticket numbers, but nobody from My heritage contacts me back.

the fact that they hide the one 14 day trial in two sectors, means you have to cancel twice (two different options) otherwise they take your money and your bank cant do anything to help because you haven't cancelled in full, but how do you cancel in full if this is hidden information. I believed I had cancelled my subscription because I only signed up once ... my heritage are scamming people because the one subscription is then split into two parts and hidden from you

On September 21, 2022 I received noticed that my premium subscription had been renewed until September 21 2023 and my credit card was being charged 244 dollars including taxes. I had not received previous notice for this charge. I then called customer services for My Heritage, they initially told me that they could not return the money since it had already been charged, even though it was only one day since the charge was made. They offered a partial refund of 60 dollars, I refused. I then explained I wanted to unsubscribe to all accounts. He then said an answer will be coming via email. Today I received an email saying my subscription has been renewed until Sept 21 2023 but will not be automatically renewed. I have spent three hours interacting with agents who were hard to understand because of heavily accented English. They were also aggressive in their sales tactics. I am living on a fixed income and cannot afford this expenditure.

MyHeritage has fraudulently charged my mastercard $400 without authorisation. Without me engaging with them at all. Ive found that about a month ago without me noticing they have also impersonated me by fraudulently using my email to sign me up for a subscription under the name Morpheo which is obviously not my name.

This is not a case of failing to cancel or anything like that. They have just blatantly stolen money by illegally using information with zero authorisation.

Steven Smith

Oakleigh East

VIC, Australia

I just happened to look at my Pay Pal account and to my horror $315 was taken from my account by My Heritage. My first reaction was who the heck is My Heritage and why did they take money from my account? There were no emails from them in my inbox. There were several from them in Spam once I typed the name in the search bar. Why would a reputable company that I subscribe to have their correspondence sent to me via email and wind up in my Spam?! I immediately tried to contact them. I left a voice message and sent 2 emails. No response. No surprise there. I then contacted Pay Pal and they informed me that it was an automatic renewal. I never subscribed to them in the first place. I did some research and seen the other scam notices about this company. The owner is a billionaire in Israel. Now I see how he got his money, apparently from fraudulent means. SCAM SCAM SCAM! Beware of these scam artists.

On 31st August 2022 I received an email advice and invoice from My Heritage telling me my Complete Subscription had been extended for 1 year and they had billed me for NZ$547.

The documentation tald me the order had been placed on the same day.

I had no idea I had a Complete Subscription with My Heritage and certainly wasn't wanting to pay NZ$547 for the service.

I contacted them the same day by email requesting cancellation and reversal of the charge and received a Ticket Number Reference [protected] and phoned the call center who said they would escalate the issue for me.

Having not received a response I have emailed them again today 5th September 2022 and phoned the call center where being unable to connect with an operator I left a message.

I keep my family tree and related documentation in a programme called Legacy on my computer. I have moved to using free 'Library versions' of the different genealogical search engines at my local library and with membership of my local genealogical interest group have sufficient support for my activity.

Finally as a pensioner with a single source of income the fee of $547 is almost the equivalent of 2 weeks income a My Heritage Complete Plan is way beyond my means and would have not been subscribed to.

Hi

Unfortunately, on the 2.9.2022 you took 223 pound out of my bank account without my permission without consenting me without reminding or asking me if I wanted to renew my prescription with you. Also, my annual prescription does not run out till 16th September 2022

This is basically robbery i be contacting authorities like trading standards if this is not sorted A.S.A.P and be contacting other authorities this is blind day light robbery. When people in the U.K are struggling to pay heating bills and buy food i have two small children to feed and mortage to pay. I am so unhappy with your service which I thought was brilliant until this event i can no longer recommend your service to anyone. I wish for this to be sorted asap and the money return into my bank ASAP. Otherwise, I be taking this matter further. Also, your contact number for English services to file a complaint is invalid how convenient for you guys.

My contact details are as followed

Samantha Lydia Foster

9 Casey court

Ashington

Northumberland

England

Ne63 9nn

[protected]@hotmail.com

[protected]

My heritage account number [protected]