www.ancestry.co.uk

Ancestry have stiched me up. They have auto-renewed membership and are refusing to refund even a day after payment taken. No cooling-off period. Customer Service could not care less. Very shabby during this cost of living crisis. This is hardly an essential spend.

Be very careful when using this service. The very moment you stop using it you must stop your auto renewal. They take the money from your account with no warning email. I know of no other service which does this. 

You can sign up for a free trial but your credit card will be charged as soon as they can get away with it. And forget getting a refund you will waste more time in an attempt and grt nowhere. In my case I tried to get the useless Royal Bank of Scotland to cancel an impending payment they said I had to wait till the sum was taken from my account before I could report it. having done this I was told to get the company Ancestry to refund the money and the Royal Bank of Scotland could not help ( this took 43 minutes on the phone)

Give Ancestry a miss

Cheers

They took £99 from my bank account for a membership that I did not want to renew, what I spotted the debit a week later I asked for a refund, No they said. So they tool my money without permission and won't give it back!!

The blurb says that Ancestry.co.uk gives access to all UK births, marriages and deaths records. This is simply not true. Scotland is part of the UK, but the site does not have full records from Scotland. All my family are from Scotland. I can only find a fraction of them on Ancestry, but when I use Scotlandspeople.gov.uk I can find most of them very easily.

I initially signed up to the free trial and was excited to find out about my ancestry. However, I soon realised it was no use to me because I'm a Romanian national (and only then did I discover this...) Then, I never received my 'free' trial payment back and my subscription was auto-renewed, which I then cancelled. I emailed and requested a refund, however they simply pointed me to their terms and conditions and told me I couldn't have one. As a student, I feel stolen from, to be honest. Their auto-renewal is very sneaky. I definitely WOULD NOT recommend to anyone.

I decided to cancel my £24.99p monthly subscription just after Xmas and done so on line. As soon as I pressed the cancel tab a message appeared telling me if I would reconsider cancelling they would offer me a free period until the end of May. I accepted the free offer but discovered a few days ago they had continued taking the monthly payment of £24.99p from my account. When I phoned asking for a refund they insisted they had no record of me cancelling and said they did not give refunds as I must have pressed the wrong button. I knew that was a barefaced lie because the offer of a free period is only generated if you press the cancellation tab. I am going to try and get in contact with some organisation that will investigate those people and close them down for good. I notice there are hundreds of complaints about them all over the internet. Something has to be done to put them out of business

Tried to purchase 6 month gift subscription online via my computer and when that didn't work I tried my iPhone. Finally I rang them directly and the person I was speaking to had me on the phone for 15 minutes doing something that in the end wasn't even what I asked for. I quickly realised she wasn't even aware of the gift product Ancestry was offering! I hung up and now I'm going to find another present to give. Ancestry has lost out and left a horrible taste in my mouth before I have even gotten to try the service or give it to someone else!

I have been a member of Ancestry UK for nearly ten years on and off.

Over the years I have become increasingly frustrated by the many thousands of transcription errors. These errors have led me down blind alleys many many times now. It took me several years to find one ancestor in the 1881 cen because the family name "Tite" had been transcribed as"Yates".

When you consider that from my own experience I have seen at least one error on nearly every page I've ever looked at. This includes 1841 to 1901 cen as well as parish record's,there must be thousands of very frustrated genealogists at this point.

As far as I can see,Ancestry is NOT providing the service that it says it does. Unfortunately this situation is only going to be resolved by a complete review of all documents(Millions). So I wouldn't hold your breath for that.

Re. Ancestry.co.uk Bought a Pay per view today in desperation trying to find a family member,..... (DON'T BUY ANYTHING FROM THIS SHODDY OUTFIT!... & DON'T BUY ANY OTHER SUBSCRIPTION WITH THIS UNPROFESSIONAL LOT, THESE PEOPLE ARE conning us, THEY TAKE YOUR MONEY AS QUICK AS YOU LIKE AND THEN WHEN THINGS GO WRONG THEY WASH THEIR HANDS OF YOU, I AM ABSOLUTELY FURIOUS, PLEASE READ ALL OF THIS, THEIR AFTER SALES SERVICE IS NONEXISTENT!.)..... the first viewing worked ok and merely confirmed what I had, the next one I clicked on, nothing happened so I thought, oh well, I'd try again and accept the single wasted credit. Nothing happened again.... so I wrote an email explaining what had happened or hadn't I should say, and got a reply within the hour saying in their opening line that they were sorry etc. and they would help me with this issue. I was relieved to read this. The very next line in that email said they were unable to reimburse a, (i.e. one) credit and advised that I clear my cookie cache implying that the fault was with me and not with their clearly useless programme. My email clearly stated that I had lost 2 credits and not ONE so they obviously don't read emails thoroughly before responding to any complainant, they clearly treat us with contempt because we complain at their inadequacies instead of addressing the issue . Tomorrow I am contacting Trading Standards and shall continue to pursue this until I am reimbursed, trust me, I'll spend as much time as it takes. MY ADVICE IS STICK TO A SITE CALLED, "thegenealogist.co.uk" it's an excellent site and they are really helpful. Also, to build a family tree use, "My Heritage", Their FAMILY TREE BOOK is brilliant where you can see everyone in the tree, I have over 3000 people in mine and the book has photo's as well as many different headings, dates, places, biographies etc. etc. mine has about 700 pages.....much better than any chart where you can only see 100 or less people. My friend transferred his tree via a gedcom file from Ancestry to My Heritage because of this and he's glad he did. The reason, incidentally, that I tried a pay per view is that I am stuck on a particular relative. I looked again after the two lost credits and Ancestry.Ripoff.uk didn't have what I wanted anyway. I shall be posting again after speaking with Trading Standards tomorrow. Please stay tuned!... I WILL be letting you know on this site what Trading Standards has to say.