Ancestory a scam?

[Brightlittlecanary]

Hi

does anyone have any insight into ancestory please? I am starting to think it’s a scam, I paid for urgent delivery which was two days, it took 11, when I asked for a refund in the shipping they ignored me, no response to date. I mailed my sample in nearly five weeks ago, with priority processing and it’s not even marked as received.

I am going to contact my credit card company as they don’t respond to emails, have just taken my money and done nothing except standard mail a sample bottle, which I’ve paid it seems a hundred pounds for.

the whole thing feels a massive waste of my time so I need to do a charge back, has anyone else found them to be just a scam organisation?

Scottish records are completely separate abd all in Scotland’s People.

There are fewer records for Scotland on ancestry than for England or wales. I don’t know why.

Ancestry has been amazing for me. I found my father and a whole load of half siblings. But agree, you have to be prepared for surprises…

Scotland's People / National Records of Scotland operate differently to the General Register Office. They do not make their indexes freely available to transcribe. They retain copyright over the 1911 and 1921 census so you can only search them on their site.

A wider issue though is that Ancestry (or other sites like findmypast, familysearch, myheritage) is not about living indiviudals. It is about tracing ancestors, hence the name. There are plenty of Scottish records on Ancestry from 100 years ago or earlier.

Ancestry does include birth (and marriage?) records for England until at least the 1990s, which is helpful. I've just checked by looking up a couple of children I know were born in England at that time, and their birth records are there on the indexes.

The general registry office has a website where you can search births and deaths from 1837 to 2024, free. The search function is more limited than Ancestry but you get more info (ie mother’s maiden name, even for the earlier records). It’s only for England and Wales, though.

The other thing to note is that sometimes records are mistranscribed even in modern records. So what looks like a missing record is just wrongly recorded in the index.

Indexes yes, also available on free BMD. You'd need to request the full record in hard copy though. My 2001 English marriage is on there as an index entry. As are the index listings for the births of 2 of my kids. But Scotland's People don't allow duplication of their indexes in the same way as the GRO.

true, but I guess I would have thought finding my immediate family as a starting point was part of it. I’m not really doing this just to find people from centuries ago, that’s part of it, but if they can’t find my immediate family and only one of my grandparents, then it becomes limited due to the knock on effect.

my husbands family though is much more on there, so it’s a little odd as not consistent,

It was the same for me and I didn’t order one just before Christmas which I expect is a very busy time.

I wouldn't expect relatively recent records to be on there, to be honest. Makes identity theft far too easy.

I think this is part of the problem with the way Ancestry and other sites market themselves. They paint their DNA tests as some quick fix way to build your entire family tree but it is not like that. All DNA tests can do is match you with people who share some of your DNA and if you have never build a tree or heard the word "centimorgan" you are going to struggle.

Privacy restrictions mean that there are far fewer records online living people. Genealogy sites like ancestry assume you know who your parents are, and their parents and once you get into grandparent level you might be able to start finding records. You will need to use GRO indexes or Scotland's People indexes to build a tree and start slotting in matches when the results come in.

Postal disruptions over Christmas are epic.
But that’s not an Ancestry issue.
Sadly I almost always pay for tracking my post.
It’s most likely sitting in customs.

Well they say results in about 4 weeks, which means in total it will have taken 11 weeks and I paid for priority, wonder how long it would have taken without it.

Ancestry.com is a separate, for-profit company founded by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS)

LDS otherwise known as Mormon church, they started into family history as part of their quest to convert people from history to their church. LDS is in some peoples eyes a CULT,is that different from a scam?

Do they care about their serve, im not sure they do as ive seen the work they have put online in the way of parish registers, its very badly done, in fact incredible badly done without any through for the people paying and searching and badly transcribed by people in countries who's first language isn't English and have no ideas about the culture - which makes it difficult to transcribe correctly.

I'm sceptical about allowing a large American religious company to have my DNA

It's owned by Blackstone

www.reuters.com/business/exclusive-blackstone-mulls-options-ancestrycom-including-possible-sale-or-ipo-2025-09-25/

Ancestry's transcription is done by OCR.

OCR might be used now, but it wasn't originally when they started transcriptions and the issue with this is

William base child of Ann Smith becomes William Base, instead of William Smith and that is what has happened repeatedly. Not understanding that base means illegitamate

Id certainly not want Blackstone having my dna on file, but hadn't kept up with the ownership.

Well item still not even processing yet.

i don’t really mind they are owned by a religious group, for me it’s about rhe business and the service provided, and im not feeling right now they are on the ball. They should be clear on timelines and respond to emails.

Have you had your results yet OP? I have quite a few matches coming through on Ancestry in the past week, but they all seem to be Americans. I think Nov/Dec kits from Europe must be at the back of the queue because of the shipping delay.

No sadly not, they are saying middle to end of February , they’ve extracted the dna but not analysed yet.

so it will have taken them 4 months and that’s with everything expedited.

That's absolutely crap OP. They must have a massive backlog, but you've paid extra and it's even more annoying for you.

They really should not be offering expedited service at peak times when they can't meet their commitment. Their online help service is AI and crap. I had an issue recently with a record "hint" they sent me and I emailed [email protected] for help, I would ask at least for them to refund the extra fees you paid for quick processing.

I have asked for refunds, sent multiple emails and they haven’t responded to any of them. To be fair I haven’t done the chat as work has been manic, but all emails have been completely ignored.

I dread to think how long it would have taken if it has been expedited. Otherwise I suspect they just didn’t bother expediting, like the postage. Just took the money.

overall I think it’s been really poor. You get caught in a loop and of course if you’re daft enough like me to pay for the subscription service at the same time, you don’t fully geg the benefit of that either, so waste even more money.

I did it on a whim last Nov, and kind of regret it now.