AncestryReviews 637

1. Nearly impossible to find what I want to do in its bizarre labyrinth of screens, buttons, and links.

2. Once I find what I want to do, it's slow, clunky, inconsistent, and the options it presents are often ambiguous and lead to results I did not expect,

3. Worst of all, by far: I spent many hours over the last week constructing a deep family tree. When I logged in yesterday, 90% OF THE TREE WAS GONE. I spent at least another half hour poking through options and then Googling for clues. No luck. Hours of my life, wasted due to their sheer incompetence.

4. I decided to look past that and start reconstructing the tree, but it did not work the same as before. Ancestors I added DID NOT SHOW UP IN THE TREE AFTER ADDING THEM.

Highly not recommended.

I signed up for Ancestry's free trial and thought I had canceled in time — but the cancellation process is very confusing. It requires going through multiple confirmation screens, and I must've missed one. As a result, I was charged for two months and even hit with an early termination fee, even though I never used the service after the trial. Customer service refunded the cancellation fee as a "one-time courtesy," but they would not refund the two months of charges. I explained that this was an honest mistake and that I had no intention of continuing the subscription. It didn't matter — they stuck to their non-refundable renewal policy. This feels more like a trap than a customer-focused policy. If you sign up, make absolutely sure your cancellation goes through completely. And don't expect flexibility even if you don't use the service.

The site is no good.
Do not waste your money.
I paid for the test kit and have waited over 6 weeks. I received an email telling me that my results were in and to click on the tab. I have done this and there is no results listed. There is no one to contact about this issue or any other issue that you may have. They only have an AI response. Very poor Service. This company should have a point of contact. Very disappointed with the lack of aftersales support.

Please do not purchase. They advertise false informations.
Fake cousins, DNA results that changes over months from telling you you are 87% French, 3 months later you're 42% French and 41% Spanish. Like what? They don't reply to emails, poor customer service and refuse to refund you anything or take responsibility. The company charges you 133£ for fake results. Do not waste your money.

This is the third kit I've had to buy this year as all tests come back with no results!
30 Days after sending my latest kit back they still don't know where it is and have not tested it even though I paid for priority testing.
Then they tell you to wait for 40 days. The staff often hang up on you!
Absolutely useless ancestry. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY THEY ARE NOTHING MORE THAN A FRAUD

I had been a member for over 20 years and had to cancel my subscription because my husband and I are now on a fixed income (only SS checks). I assumed all my information would still be accessible if I had entered it. But I discovered that now Ancestry wants to make money off of me anyway by taking those ancestors away and making me subscribe if I want to see the information! Such a greedy ripoff they are. I gave one star but would rather give them -1 star.

I cancelled membership 1 day prior to a repeated monthly charge due date but was charged 2 days later. Customer service states there is no record of my cancellation. They did cancel this renewal and promised to refund this charge. I will update this review accordingly but this should not have happened to begin with. I am skeptical of this companies business tactics.

I had Ancestry for a while and thought the results were fun and the site was decent. However I got a got bored of it and cancelled my membership to be the free basic package. Ancestry decided to charge me £49.99 every Quarter anyway, for at least a year. My membership still showed as being the basic package but I got charged regardless. Finally got through to Customer Service who told me there were 2 accounts attributed to my email address. How did that happen? No answer?

"Don't worry though we are refunding you £49.99. Aye no bother, ripped me for £200 but you've given me £50 back. The Customer Service were really rude, I asked for a complaints department email/number to be told there wasn't one.

My recommendation is, do not use! They will do what they can to take your money despite there being no Service given.

Ancestry provides organized public information on family histories, a decent service that will go on to bleed you monthly as numerous offers on DNA, family, International family ties, origins are made. After years of membership should you chose to cancel - have greater patience as canceling membership is a herculean effort. The number of wrong, false misleading leads to family history is a frustrating warm up party to canceling your membership! I cannot recommend this service

Shame on you Ancestry.com for shady business practices! I had a 14 day free trial and cancelled it online the day before it ended but this did not go through. When I got charged for the 1st month I went in and cancelled again and found there are 3-4 pages of upselling and clicking cancel before they knock off trying to hang onto me. 2 days later I got charged an early termination fee of $25. I've searched Ancestry.com and cannot find a reference to this anywhere! Called Support and then was told of this term. Fee until I firmly said "bull$#*!'. I said I would file a complaint with my credit card and then she gave in and said fee would be refunded. I still have a paid month so will try to use it.

Back in the days we didn't have such technologies, mark my words. Today we can explore the genealogy just using the mobile application which gives you insightful information about your origin.

I ain't believe it's 100% correct, nevertheless it's way cheaper than applying to special labs or companies which are specialized in gathering your DNA and running comprehensive tests. Moreover it's more time-consuming than just using mobile application.

So I pretty much favor them for this app.

Free trial is impossible to end without calling customer service. Highly deceptive offers claim you can cancel online. You cannot. Then customer service tries to upsell you on keeping your subscription despite being firm about cancelling. This is unethical, illegal and breach of trust. I would never use this service again and recommend nobody ever gives them credit card info.

Be careful on Ancestry, you may put hours into building you tree only to have the app crash and lose whole lines of data and connections. I have also gone to the trouble of adding photos etc, only to have it disappear. It's too expensive to have this keep happening. I'm going to cut my loses now.

PLEASE BE CAUTIOUS: I purchased a gift for my friend, and Ancestry gave me a $1 subscription, stating it's a part of their AMAZING deal. They put you on a subscription automatically without letting you know and you have to go on their website to cancel. As a result,I was charged $99 for a KIT my friend didn't even activate, and they would not give any refunds. This is beyond insane, especially given the support tech just ended our chat randomly. DO NOT RECOMMEND purchasing anything from this company because they will send you all these wonderful promotions so it seems you pay less when they actually charge you twice as much for a mystery subscription you signed up for without knowing. That's insane.

First of all you are making it impossible for me to work on their tree with all your daily scheduled maintenances you are basically not letting use what I am paying for and its quite a bit. I feel like I am wasting my time and money now. Second my DNA says I get my Scottish from both Parents. My Dads DNA says he has no Scottish. Seems like you are guessing. I have been using Ancestry for 25 years and WAS pretty happy, now I am very upset. It is very stressful to use you site. I hope you fix your issues soon.

My wife has been using ancestry.com for almost two years now. Recently a lot of the data she has entered just starts disappearing. She has reached out to their support and has gotten no help whatsoever. They don't reply to her emails, her phone calls, nada. I want to personally thank ancestry.com for being on the receiving end of this madness. I guess they won't mind losing that membership money. My advice is to stay away from them.

Ancestry was until a year or so ago, simple to use, uncluttered and just about 100%, now I wouldn't rate it 20%. Full of useless links that are difficult if not impossible to over-ride, where is the old start page? Stories everywhere of no interest or relevance to my family research. Looking for alternatives!

I have never had a paid subscription as the fees are way too much for ordinary people to afford. I also bought DNA kits for my husband, mother and one son who bought one for me. I was able to see the inheritance of MY DNA seeing what was inherited from each of my parents (only one living). Today I got into my account to see my deceased parents DNA that I inherited and it is now gone! It says you need to buy a subscription to see it! I and my son paid lots of money for all these DNA kits to be able to see DNA results! Yes I get to see my DNA origins but why was something I was getting for taking the DNA test taken away from me only to say I can no longer see it unless I pay more money?! I'm furious! What kind of scam are they running? I'm very angry and disgusted, like they don't already have people's family info cornered, they make you pay to see or know it, they must make hundreds of billions of dollars off of people! Ancestry you should be ASHAMED!

I was going to try a membership and had all set up but cancelled the same day due to them not resolving an issue of someone posting my mothers incorrect obituary that the funeral home corrected and they threw me to four different people and resolved nothing so I cancelled and have contacted a lawyer! Don't waste your money or time they are lawless and have horrible, incompetent, arrogant, and dumb workers!

Started out in December and received errors during the process, this will be the 3rd times I'm giving samples of my DNA. And still waiting.