As my results have been live for some time I thought I would summarise my experience so far. First the positives. My original concerns that prompted my post have proved to be unfounded. The processing time was reasonable, communications good, and their support desk resolved an initial problem (my fault) quickly and effectively. On that basis, I cannot understand the Trust Pilot reviews that originally concerned me.
One of the major reasons I took the test was because 23andme results can feed in automatically to Genetic Affairs new cluster report Autokinship developed by EJ Blom that creates trees based solely on the level of matches. This worked seamlessly although whether it will produce leads will require a lot more work. Anyway, the 23andme part works well.
I feel their shared match list, termed relatives in common, is the best of all the sites although it is spoilt rather by the crazy terminology “DNA Overlap” which is set to yes or no for each match in the shared match list. As far as I can see a yes simply means that my shared match and I triangulate with that individual in the list and a no means they do not. Seems a very confusing way of avoiding the term triangulate.
As far as the negatives are concerned I endorse everything Jane says and could add a few more to her list. I have had three members contact me but I was unable to find common ancestors. I have received one reply so far from the messages I have sent. The low levels of recent log-ins and absence of trees suggest 23andme will be on a par with FTDNA, for me behind MyHeritage and very far behind Ancestry. That said I have had one success from the reply I got in identifying our MRCA for that match.
Worth doing? I guess everyone will have a different take on that.
