RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: melba_schmelba on Tuesday 19 June 18 13:20 BST (UK)
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Anyone notice some very strange issues with the search, i.e. putting in parents names to try and find baptisms, it will not bring all the baptisms, restricting it to a place will not find records you can find if you put in no restrictions, even though they match the place? ??? ???
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I was getting some strange results yesterday, in fact it's been unreliable for some time. I searched for Christian name Emma and the surname with a birth date and place as I have done before but I didn't get the results I used to, (I hadn't saved them to shoebox), not even the census!
In the past I have emailed them but they are so defensive and ask for URLs etc. and ask "Clear the cache" and when you tell them you have, they just say try again.
rayard.
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they are so defensive and ask for URLs etc.
May I ask how it would be possible for you to send them the 'URL' if you can't locate what you know should be there ???
Annie
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Other people have been having problems ;)
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=795309.0
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I've found, purely by accident because of my ineptness with touch screen computers, some really strange things happening yesterday with Ancestry. I currently don't have a sub for ancestry, so nearly all records should be unavailable to me, quite rightly! I have found, for instance, that I can search family trees, search results come back (complete with the blanked out bits) and then I can click on a tree and can view it or sometimes get the membership essential screen, which I should get every time. Curiosity got the better of me and I tried, for instance military records and discovered if I hold the view button and then open in new tab from the menu, randomly it will open a the document in a new tab or I get the membership essential screen, which again I should get everytime.
Initially I just thought that they had changed what you could view without a sub, but dont think thats the case!!
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I've found, purely by accident because of my ineptness with touch screen computers, some really strange things happening yesterday with Ancestry. I currently don't have a sub for ancestry, so nearly all records should be unavailable to me, quite rightly! I have found, for instance, that I can search family trees, search results come back (complete with the blanked out bits) and then I can click on a tree and can view it or sometimes get the membership essential screen, which I should get every time. Curiosity got the better of me and I tried, for instance military records and discovered if I hold the view button and then open in new tab from the menu, randomly it will open a the document in a new tab or I get the membership essential screen, which again I should get everytime.
Initially I just thought that they had changed what you could view without a sub, but dont think thats the case!!
Holy moly!!! What on earth is going on :o!!! Thanks for the previous thread post, yes, have discovered the same problem, in that it used to treat births and baptisms as one field, as should be the case as they are more or less equivalent, but, now, as has been said, to find all baptisms of one set of parents, you have to use the 'Any Event' field. But I think I have discovered another bug +/- years now can only be minus instead of plus - so searching for all baptisms of one first name in a parish in 1740 +/- 10 years will only deliver results from 1730-1740, not 1730-1750 as it should ??? ????
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I did a few tests to see if the problem re: +/- dates was correct, and it definitely only returned the minus part i.e. entering 1782 +/- 2 years only returned 1780-2 instead of 1780-4. However I tried again later and it didn't do it ::). However the birth/baptism separation is still there, and presumably won't change unless enough people complain about it.
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I've found, purely by accident because of my ineptness with touch screen computers, some really strange things happening yesterday with Ancestry. I currently don't have a sub for ancestry, so nearly all records should be unavailable to me, quite rightly! I have found, for instance, that I can search family trees, search results come back (complete with the blanked out bits) and then I can click on a tree and can view it or sometimes get the membership essential screen, which I should get every time. Curiosity got the better of me and I tried, for instance military records and discovered if I hold the view button and then open in new tab from the menu, randomly it will open a the document in a new tab or I get the membership essential screen, which again I should get everytime.
Initially I just thought that they had changed what you could view without a sub, but dont think thats the case!!
Looks like I can now access US records with a standard UK subscription!? ??? Did ancestry just sack their entire tech department and take on trainees for half the wage ????
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I'm starting to wish I hadn't renewed my sub!
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I'm starting to wish I hadn't renewed my sub!
Maybe we could get a few free months eh ;).
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I give up ! I've just been trying to search the 1911 census and getting constant " no results" , so I tried searching for surname Smith and no other details . According to ancestry there were no Smiths on the 1911 census. Can someone remind me why I am paying all that money for this rubbish ?
I can get results in a round about way , but the search algorithm seems to be shot.
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I'm starting to wish I hadn't renewed my sub!
Maybe we could get a few free months eh ;).
You will have more chance travelling back in time and meeting your ancestors than getting any refund or free months from Ancestry. They have stated several times on their Facebook page that it is not their policy to do this, claiming that it is a small minority that have been affected by their problems which have been going on for the last 3 months. You only have to read Trust Pilot comments (they now have the lowest possible rating) and on their Facebook page to get a taste of the contempt they seem to have for their suffering customers.
Simon
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Just been on Ancestry and there's a message on the homepage on the 'What's happening on Ancestry' section - stating they are undergoing maintenance.
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Up the spout:
Note: Originally, this expression was used to refer to items which had been pawned (= given to someone in return for a loan of money). The `spout' was the lift in which an item was taken from the pawnbroker's shop to the storeroom above.
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/up+the+spout
Martin
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I'm starting to wish I hadn't renewed my sub!
Maybe we could get a few free months eh ;).
You will have more chance travelling back in time and meeting your ancestors than getting any refund or free months from Ancestry. They have stated several times on their Facebook page that it is not their policy to do this, claiming that it is a small minority that have been affected by their problems which have been going on for the last 3 months. You only have to read Trust Pilot comments (they now have the lowest possible rating) and on their Facebook page to get a taste of the contempt they seem to have for their suffering customers.
Simon
Oh, well, lucky I have current subscription on offer then. There seem to be plenty reporting similar problems on the ancestry message boards - ancestry site comments section:
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/boards/topics.ancestry.ancsite/mb.ashx (https://www.ancestry.co.uk/boards/topics.ancestry.ancsite/mb.ashx)
Unfortunately it appears the bug that allowed us to see US records on a UK subscription has now been miraculously fixed ::)
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Up the spout:
Note: Originally, this expression was used to refer to items which had been pawned (= given to someone in return for a loan of money). The `spout' was the lift in which an item was taken from the pawnbroker's shop to the storeroom above.
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/up+the+spout
Martin
Thanks for this :), I am surprised I didn't wonder about the origin of this before!
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Unfortunately it appears the bug that allowed us to see US records on a UK subscription has now been miraculously fixed ::)
You should have kept it to yourself, they probably read what's written on RC ???
Regardless of who's been affected, if their records are not available to current subscribers for any reason then the subscribers should be recompensed in some way e.g. the amount of days the records were unavailable added to their subscriptions just as telephone companies do when lines are down etc?
I think anyone/everyone who couldn't access the records they should have had access to should email them with dates/loss of availability & ask for an extention on their sub for the days lost?
Annie
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Unfortunately it appears the bug that allowed us to see US records on a UK subscription has now been miraculously fixed ::)
You should have kept it to yourself, they probably read what's written on RC ???
So other people couldn't have benefit of it? Seems a bit selfish. Also I was not the first to mention it here. It's not at all surprising that the first thing they get off their bums to fix is to stop something we were getting for free.
Regardless of who's been affected, if their records are not available to current subscribers for any reason then the subscribers should be recompensed in some way e.g. the amount of days the records were unavailable added to their subscriptions just as telephone companies do when lines are down etc?
I think anyone/everyone who couldn't access the records they should have had access to should email them with dates/loss of availability & ask for an extention on their sub for the days lost?
Annie
I agree legally speaking. How to actually prove that you had the problems though, without recording screens etc, what with Ancestry apparently claiming that most issues are down to user's own systems, caches etc.
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I think anyone/everyone who couldn't access the records they should have had access to should email them with dates/loss of availability & ask for an extention on their sub for the days lost?
Not so much days lost, as frustration - having to refresh, or even re-refresh to get hints to show up; getting no results on a search and having to choose a dataset and search inside it to get results; having to use Any Event instead of Births or deaths for baptisms and burials to show up; wondering whether searching in your DNA results is actually getting all the results because of what is going on in the rest of the site - or whether some of them are complete mismatches because the site may not be working properly (loss of confidence in the site) .... Having to waste time deleting hints that are only matched on part of the name and on NOTHING else, and then go looking for the correct one it seems unable to find.
It's wasting hours of my time!
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I think anyone/everyone who couldn't access the records they should have had access to should email them with dates/loss of availability & ask for an extention on their sub for the days lost?
Not so much days lost, as frustration - having to refresh, or even re-refresh to get hints to show up; getting no results on a search and having to choose a dataset and search inside it to get results; having to use Any Event instead of Births or deaths for baptisms and burials to show up; wondering whether searching in your DNA results is actually getting all the results because of what is going on in the rest of the site - or whether some of them are complete mismatches because the site may not be working properly (loss of confidence in the site) .... Having to waste time deleting hints that are only matched on part of the name and on NOTHING else, and then go looking for the correct one it seems unable to find.
It's wasting hours of my time!
Suffering the same frustration. >:( >:( >:(
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I really didn't intend to respond to this thread but Ancestry Search (and hints) have been driving me crazy too. The search (casting the net wide but with specific names, dates, locations) either seems to show a whole lot of clearly irrelevant results (dates, locations) or 'no results found'. Forebears/FindMyPast seems much more focused on the searches I've recently done, even if they don't find anything. FMY quickly found 1871 census records that Ancestry (despite repeated attempts) has been unable to find.
I've had the FTM/Ancestry combo for years with FindMyPast on a pay-as you go basis.
My trust in the reliability/accuracy of Ancestry is waning.
Mike
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Mike -
Your experience matches my own. I discovered lots more by my own efforts in record offices. Very disappointing.
Harry.
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To add now complete chaos to the system it now appears some baptisms are linked to births, but some only turn up with "Any event", presumably ditto for burials and deaths, so now you have to search both ::).