Ancestry heading for meltdown?

[les_looking]

Certainly seems like, with the problems over the last few days/weeks/months,
you read all the blogs and seems like the whole of USA is up in arms about "improvements"
and they are expecting an upsurge with the WDTYA due soon on USA tv,
a number have lost their their trees, plenty are complaining about a new merge feature that is supposed to allow
a whole tree to be easily grabbed?

Some are saying you can see your own tree (couldnt for 24 hours) but no longer search public trees,
wrong amounts being taken from bank accounts and YOU need to notice it to get refunded,
a victim of their own success or a few to many lets see what this button does merchants?


OOPS sorry for posting in wrong place, could have sworn i had lol

[LizzieW]

They can't take money from my credit card as it expired end of December and I have a new one, thank goodness, although I don't think I'm on automatic renew, although I will check.

Thank goodness I don't have a tree on there.  Personally I think they should split the USA and UK companies and run them separately.

Lizzie

[les_looking]

They can't take money from my credit card as it expired end of December and I have a new one, thank goodness, although I don't think I'm on automatic renew, although I will check.

Thank goodness I don't have a tree on there.  Personally I think they should split the USA and UK companies and run them separately.

Lizzie

Yep sounds like a good idea to split them, obviously wouldnt be a great hardship to go to .com to search for world records,
i do have a tree on there, but have it in numerous places, just a pain because when i find new info i update all trees at once,
so if ancestry is down for a day or two you have to remember what info to add, as typical their tree is the only one you cannot overwrite

[Silvilocks]

They can't take money from my credit card as it expired end of December and I have a new one, thank goodness, although I don't think I'm on automatic renew, although I will check.

Thank goodness I don't have a tree on there.  Personally I think they should split the USA and UK companies and run them separately.

Lizzie

Two years ago they put my renewal through on a card that had expired 9 months previously 

[mothball]

I had a reply to my email (made yesterday evening, outside phone hours) from Ancestry for yesterday's terrible service.

They have given me a helpful response and a link to their own website in the help section which is very useful to know.

Moderators!!!  I wonder if this link can be put somewhere where others can find out how to get the best from Ancestry.  It includes all the browsers.

http://ancestryuk.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/ancestryuk.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=483

Steven

[Nick29]

I think you can get a distorted picture of things from blogs (and forums) 

Ancestry are always going through continuous changes to their sites, which means that there will be periods when people can't access, because servers have to be taken offline to be updated.  However, I have to say that recent additions to their site (i.e. the LMA records) have done more for me than any of the information gleaned from the 1911 census, so I'm not complaining about the occasional loss of service.  I suppose with such complicated coding of the web pages, it is inevitable that sometimes we will see problems with browsers.

I've always found Ancestry very receptive to my problems when I've got in touch with them, and I have to say that theirs is one of the more pleasant call centres to deal with.  I would urge people to phone Ancestry rather than email, because they are much easier and quicker to deal with by phone.

[les_looking]

not sure how a blog caused MANY people to not be able to search?
and if you try and search family tree's this is what you get
You are here:  Family Trees

phoning ancestry to be told yes we have a problem Houston ??
if they were that clear and upfront they would put something on their site,
and people shouldnt have to mail/phone for an expensive lack of service
their latest episode has lasted nearly 24 hours so if you had rung after an hour, 23 hours later?
a pleasant phone call/manner is not what people require, its an answer.

The amount of ££$$ they take, then sorry but they should not have problems that take this long.

[Nick29]

Well, I'm sure that if you have come up with a way to update software on a server without taking it offline, Ancestry (and a lot of other companies) would love to learn how.   And..... even in these days of ultra-reliabilty, hardware failures do occur, and there's not much anyone can do about it.  Some failures can affect some users and not others.  I'm not making excuses for them, but computers do break down, and there isn't much they can do, but fix them as quickly as possible.

What did Ancestry say when you phoned them ?  Did they tell you what the problem was ?

[les_looking]

rung them ? why would i ring them, when the WHOLE world was having problems,
to be told nicely/politley etc WE DON'T KNOW,

i have a mot machine and without it i would be up the creek, so have a backup,
my computers linked to it i also would be screwed without, so carry backups of the data,
if you are telling me a company like Ancestry don't have an alternative then something is seriously wrong,
only time i had a serious problem was a server in the USA caught fire, and again 2 hours later we had plan B,
those machines and computers are a serious part of the business, so at a cost i have plan B

If i had the resources of them i WOULD have a plan B