Anonymous

Ancestry.com ..did I get scammed?

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I purchased and got the results from the ancestry.com DNA testing. The results showed that I have cousins with the last name of Rivard.

My last name is Rivard. The problem is that I was ADOPTED and my birth name is Davidson not Rivard and if the DNA testing traces your DNA to your genetic relatives what is the possibility that I have a genetic link to an adopted name! I think I got scammed!!! :-(..

I have contacted them and was told someone would get back to me. I was Never contacted back from them!! I am so disappointed after paying $99 for this SCAM!!

Find a creditable DNA testing service... :-(

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Loss:
$99
Reason of review:
Bad quality

Preferred solution: Full refund

Anonymous

The blue stuff just never went down

OH yeah! On August 8 I requested my kit from AncestryDNA -- which I received much sooner than I thought I would.

I followed all the instructions correctly, but the *** blue solution did not go all the way down. About 1/4 of it still remained (it's still there). Spent another week trying to find a human and/or correct email address to tell them about it. Said I wanted a refund.

Well, they talked me into getting a replacement offer ("free") instead. In one of their emails they admitted that, yes, on very "rare" occasions the blue stuff doesn't go down. Rare? So why did I get another dud?

Three hours ago, I followed all the instructions once again with this second try. The blue *** didn't go down on this one either. WHY? I did speak to a gal on the phone a little while ago, who suggested maybe I could loosen the top just a bit to get some air in, and then tighten it again.

Which I did. No luck. She offered to send me a third kit (!) and suggested I get somebody to "help" me with the *** thing. Why "help"?

What's so hard about following the instructions to this piece of garbage? Well, anyway, after talking back 'n forth (and holding on while she checked with supervisors a few times) she said she'd send me a partial refund.

Whew! I'm just not meant to do it, I guess.

View full review
Loss:
$46
Reason of review:
Damaged or defective
1 comment
Guest

Please remove my complaint. I see it's not as awful as some of these others.

I had ordered a kit when it was on discount, just for the heck of it. Why only a small portion of the stuff went down, I'll never know. But again, please remove the complaint.

Others have been "burned" a lot more than I was. Thanks

Anonymous

Genetic Communities

Some months ago Ancestry introduced Genetic Communities to each DNA page. One of mine was Delaware River Valley, which of course, cuts through New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware (4th grade geography). Ancestry submitted write-ups for the region of the Chesapeake Bay and Virginia??? Since the addition of Genetic Communities, I have had very few DNA matches. Every day much time is spent on checking the "matches" on the 9 DNA pages, which I administer. Rarely do I have a DNA match. None of these people are related and most are from Virginia, North Caroline, the South or share my DNA. I have no southern ancestry. I am related to the original Swedes and Finns on the Delaware 1638 - **** and to the original Quaker settlers and those who came with Penn, including Pennsylvania Germans and Dutch. I have made two calls to Ancestry to voice my concern that they are trying to match me with people from the Chesapeake Bay and Virginia. I have had no matches by person descended, as I am, from the Hendrickssons, Gustafsson, Mrtensson, Lippincotts, Umstats, Van der Sluys, Pannebaker, Van Meters, etc. I have paid for 8 of the 9 kits administered by myself. I'm considering leaving Ancestry behind. They are a waste of money for me. In re another geographical mix-up for my Irish ancestry Generic Community is shown Derry and Inishowen. I have no ancestry from Northern Ireland - Derry. Inishowen is part of County Donegal, however, the write-up covers Inishowen only. I have ancestry from Inishowen, but also from other parts of Donegal. I was also given the gratuitous information that "all Irish have Viking blood"!!! Who are these people, who have such limited knowledge of geography and history. Patricia Richardson
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Reason of review:
Not as described/ advertised
Anonymous
map-marker Provo, Utah

Very disappointed in AncestryDNA

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AncestryDNA provided me with absolutely no information that I did not already know. I have not traced my family history, but I do know where my grandparents came from. According to my results, I am approximately 3/4 "European Jewish," which is considered to be a "region" or "ethnicity" by AncestryDNA. From research I've done, this describes a religion, not a region or ethnicity. For $99, and from the advertising I've seen, I thought I would learn something more about my genetic history and ancestors that could not be determined in any other way. What a waste of money!!!! The information I received could simply be determined by looking up the history of a surname.
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Reason of review:
Not as described/ advertised

Preferred solution: I contacted the company and it will not refund any portion of this test. I simply want to let others know about the likelihood of their being disappointed in results if they rely on the advertisements of AncestryDNA.

2 comments
Guest

My response Review #107****: AncestryDNA's category called "European Jewish" refers to genetic sequences common to the legitimate ethnicities called Ashkenazic Jewish and (to a lesser degree) Sephardic Jewish. These are not simply religious designations as you alleged.

Nor did you waste your money, because your test is useful in a variety of ways. For example, to learn the deep ancestral makeup of your DNA, upload your AncestryDNA data for free to GEDmatch and then use the ethnicity admixture tool called Eurogenes K36.

This will show what elements of your ancestry started in various parts of Europe versus which come from the Middle East and North Africa. Its categories include Italian, Iberian, Armenian, East Mediterranean, East-Central European, and more.

Bryant A Amx
reply icon Replying to comment of Guest-1352904

Thank you so much, I am at a lost with this European Jewish geographic map

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Anonymous

Please cancel my subscription

Writing to say I wish to cancel My subscription. Thank you Edwin Margarit.
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Reason of review:
Return, Exchange or Cancellation Policy
Anonymous

Should have used 23 and me. Ancestry sucks

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Ordered 2 kits one for myself and one for my husband. They seemed to have lost my husbands. I called once was told to call back in a few weeks. Called again and was rudely told that I was not authorized to talk on my husbands account even though I bought the kits and he was at work and couldn't talk at the time. So, I called a third time and it says- "were the experiencing technical difficulties and are not answering the phone." Should have gone with 23 and me. Ancestry is s joke.
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Reason of review:
Poor customer service
Anonymous

Ancestry-complete scam

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My ancestry has been traced back on my Dads side to the 1100s in Ireland.Took a DNA test with ancestry. com to try and find out what the rest of my ancestry was.The results came back that I had NO Irish in me!Pure bull,I know better.Wish Id of done research before wasting my money,dont waste yours!In addition they said I was mostly Scandinavian,which in itself doesn't tell you much,and no one in my family knows anything about us being part Scandinavian.I also know I have German in my ancestry but the results showed I had no ancestry from continental Europe.They couldn't have gotten it more wrong!Guess they just pull their results from a hat.
View full review
Loss:
$100
Reason of review:
Not as described/ advertised

Preferred solution: I know they wont refund money so I will try and find legitamate dna tester

3 comments
Guest

Stay away from ancestry. It is the poorest company I have ever dealt with.

Still waiting going on to 11 weeks for DNA results when I was told 5 or 6 weeks for results. Very poor customer relations. No results from stock answering machine answers. Hard to get to a live person.

This appears to be a scam. Call consumer agency and make a complaint!

Guest
reply icon Replying to comment of Guest-1328154

Even worse! These guys have that side kick from Ancestry called "Find A Knucklehead" (GRAVE) and these strangers go in and destroy peoples privacy ! Most unstable people on the face of this planet !

Guest

You can blame the VIKINGS for your no Irish bloodlines. The evil , barbarians called the VIKINGS invaded England , Scotland and cute little Ireland.

So when these two faced, Nothfaced killed off most of the British tribes on the British isles, all that was left was some big huge thieving gluttons called Norsemen . They polluted the bloodlines BIGTIME when plundering Great Britain.

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Anonymous

LONG wait times

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I had a simple question I wanted to ask Ancestry about something they sent me, so I had to search for their phone number this morning and finally something I could use (their customer service number is not prominent on their website if there at all). I was on hold for 22 minutes without speaking to a single human voice, at which point I finally hung up.

Most of us have better things to do with our time than spend time holding for a company that obviously doesn't care about our feedback anyway. This was to check out something that one of their purported partners has sent to me, asking me for information.

I just wanted to see if that was legit but couldn't get a person on the phone. THAT...is terrible service.

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Reason of review:
Poor customer service
1 comment
Guest

EVERY single time I call support, I get a message that says they are experiencing a higher than normal volume of calls right now and all their customer service representatives are busy helping other customers. THAT can't EVEN be an accurate statement given that this is their standard message.

Do they think we are ***? The wait times are ridiculous so I rarely get through and they no longer seem to have the live chat option. The support page does NOT answer most of my questions.

Seems ancestry relies on their CUSTOMERS to help their other CUSTOMERS via the message board. For my money, I expect a lot better than this.

Anonymous

DNA notice

Ordered 2 DNA test a number of weeks back. Yesterday I get email that the first test results is done and available. That was earlier than I expected. Well, I sure got 0 information. Says touch here, touch there. Nothing happened. They proceed to say very cunningly, set up your tree at Ancestry.com There was not one drop of information on my background readily available when I clicked on their email. The only thing I read, which was not at all informative, was the listing of many European countries that may be the background of my name. Gosh, I could have made that statement without paying $99.00. I sure don't know what the next email will bring, but it can't be worse. I now see why Ancestry .com is not the top website to do your DNA.
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Reason of review:
Bad quality
Anonymous

Promises Promises

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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 .
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Reason of review:
Bad quality
Anonymous
map-marker Provo, Utah

Credit card scam

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Signed up and gave credit card information. Within 15 minutes after sign up someone from ancestry tried to use my credit card at Wal-Mart for the price of the ancestry amount of charges. Complained to ancestry NO REPLY!! Ancestry is a Joke. Cancelled and would never recommended this company.
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Reason of review:
Poor customer service
Anonymous

AncestryDNA wants me to refer to friends - no way!

I will never refer Ancestry to a friend. I bought a kit for each of my family members - 6 in total - and we were all disappointed!

I sent a survey response to which no one replied. Such a scam. Shame on you, Ancestry.com! All of my family members are Cajun in some percentage or other, depending on how far we are from my grandparents, but Ancestry rates that as Great Britain.

So ridiculous. Cajuns are French Arcadians who left France generations ago and immigrated to what is now Nova Scotia/St. Lawrence area of Canada.

When the British settled in Canada they kicked the Arcadians out and they had to find new homes in Louisiana - the nearest French colony. Yes, AncestryDNA mentions this when you click very deep into their analysis, but I am not British nor do I have Great Britain in my ancestry!

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Reason of review:
Bad quality
2 comments
Guest

PEACE, even though 1 bag of *** is better than 2 bags of ***, a bag of *** is still a bag of ***.

Guest

Ancestry is much better than Family search! FS has some very rude and uneducated bullies who work freely for them........

these jokes think they are genealogists. They will take down your pedigree in a minute because they believe that their bad research is better!

Yes , and I am a Mormon as well, but do get tired of the bullies! Please get people who are a bit smarter to do research for you with some commonsense and education.

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Don Wrt

Unable to reliably synch Ancestry tree updates

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Updated by user Jun 26, 2017

The outage to customers continues, The arrogance of the development team to block users of their only viable product is beyond belief Month after month the beta product continues to be tested to the detriment of McKieve and ancestry.com customers.

Updated by user May 23, 2017

Interrupting normal service to test a problematic beta program

Original review May 17, 2017
Ancestry doing beta testing with live data has disabled FTM2014 synching. FTM2017 Beta version unlinks trees and fails to correctly link sources, then propagates the error during data synch or unlinks the trees inhibitin futre synching. FTM has been farmed out to McKiev.com and is no longer supported by Ancestry.com Contacted support, but was told "problems are expected when beta testing". Was unable to sync tree for a month. Made 34 pages of changes but unable to find all mods online. Cancelled my subscription to Ancestry since the system is no longer dependable. No alternative to synching trees other than beta testing is offered. BUYERS BEWARE
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Loss:
$1000
Pros:
  • Variety of records available
  • When they had a responsive customer service
  • Product and service when they worked
Cons:
  • Loss off a month of updates
  • Loss of functionality of working product for inferior product
  • Customer service
Reason of review:
Bad quality

Preferred solution: Separate beta testing and support the program that used to work

Anonymous

Scam

I know for a fact that I am half Native American. My Grandfather was paid by the US Government $13,000 during the Great Depression for being Native American.

My second Great Grandmother was full blood Cherokee & was driven to Oklahoma with her tribe. I even know the number the Government issued the tribe. She was 8 years old. Her parents were driving the wagon while she walked with other children.

Her parents wagon got stuck in the Mississippi river. The soldiers did not want to pull it out so they shot her parents and left it in a the river, orphaning my Grandmother. She I was sent on a stage coach that was transporting Abraham Lincoln to be adopted by a white family. Ancestry states that I was mostly Scandinavian.

It says I have 0 Indian.

I believe they are just searching your last name to see where the name came from. Received email of results 5217.

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Reason of review:
Not as described/ advertised

Preferred solution: Let the company propose a solution

5 comments
Guest

The Cherokee Indians that I have seen all look like they are Scandinavian. I also believe the vikings probably wiped-out the true blood line with these people.

They have proven in modern times that these viking scavengers and looters did come to the Americas in ancient times. Never ever trust those vikings!

Guest
reply icon Replying to comment of Guest-1327358

Hi Sam......

I had my dna done and It came out with Native American in me. However, my grandparents all came from England and there has never-ever been anyone in our family who came to America.

Also everyone in the family is with blue eyes and blond hair. I'd Like to know where the American Indian came from? Perhaps the Vikings brought some native Americans back to Europe a few centuries ago.... Something is just not right with this!

I had some some Scandinavian show up in my dna .....This makes me believe that the Vikings were out messen around with lots of people everywhere. Just as someone else has said they were!

Guest

Ancestry DNA is not a scam! It basically confirmed what I already knew about many of my ancestors and gave me new information that I was able to confirm through research.

They also put me in touch with previously unknown relatives who's relationship to me we were able to verify through careful research. Perhaps your ancestors were confused or misinformed about their heritage.

Maybe you were adopted! Whatever the case, Ancestry DANA is an awesome tool and I recommend it to everyone interested in their heritage.

Guest

I think the Vikings made it to America as well. The Vikings played havoc on all ethnic groups where ever they landed.

Scandinavian bloodlines mean one thing.... your ancestors were jumped and taken over by these bully guys from their big dragon ships--

Guest

I think you are wrong. The DNA is not a scam!

It is quite accurate! However, it does catch a lot of Bulls & Cows that have sneakingly snuck across,--- or rather JUMPED across the fence!

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Anonymous

Don't buy DNA test

Info came back mostly European, some Scandinavian, a little Irish and some misc. doesn't tell me much.
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Reason of review:
Not as described/ advertised
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