Thursday, August 22, 2013

Ancestry.com just doesn't work properly

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Ancestry.com is an expensive waste of time. The problem it has it is commits you to a monthly fee of about $30 and then allows you to look up information through its databases on your relatives.
Supposedly, you are able to collect the information and then use it for your family. But Ancestry.com makes it difficult to use the information that you find. Worse, it offers expensive options to "print" the information and makes it difficult to download the data once you find it to use on your own.
The system doesn't allow you to download the entire tree, for example. You can pay to print tree tree one family at a time. That is hugely expensive.
You can manually collect each document on your own and save it to a harddrive, but that defeats the purpose of having to pay every month to access and collect information. Ancestry.com intentionally makes it difficult to use because they want you to keep paying every month like alimony.
They will encourage you to purchase a software program called Family Tree Maker. The Windows version works OK. Not great. Just OK. The MAC version is worthless and has severe problems with programming bugs. The theory is you can create an Ancestry.com file on your family online and then "easily" download it to your computer and link and sync it to the Family Tree Maker.
Don't hold your breath. The MAC version continues to have sync problems. The tech writers who designed the program also didn't think you should know whether or not the program actually syncs. That's because I will bet the people who write these programs don't really use them. They only take your money and deposit it in their bank accounts. That's the extent of their involvement.
Your are royally screwed if you purchase the Family Tree Maker program from a Third Party. If it doesn't work, Ancestry.com, which affiliates with the software, will deny any connection and shrug their shoulders when you tell them it doesn't work.
What I have to do is find a weekend when I can sit down at my computer and download everything into a new file, and save all the data I collected and the documents, including the ones I uploaded on my own.
Most of the data that Ancestry.com offers is available for free. But you have to do the online searching on your own.
But the concept of paying a monthly alimony for life is outrageous. Ancestry.com hopes that you won't care. Clearly, they don't.
-- RAY HANANIA