Complaint Review: Family Roots

Family Roots is a company that makes products like rings and other heirlooms featuring family crests and symbols. Their target market is military personnel, their products are low quality, and they use deceptive advertising techniques.

My own story began in August 2012. I am a reservist in the United States Marine Corps, and I was finishing infantry training in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. A salesperson from Family Roots had set up a stand outside a general store on base. He showed me a book with pictures of products. He offered me a package that includes a sword, a banner with my family's crest, and a plaque that would tell the history of my family. He claimed that historians in the company would spend several months researching my family history. He told me that the sword would be made exactly like they were in medievel times, and also in the specific style of my country of origin (Germany in my case), and that it would be unique.  So I asked him if that meant it would have a full tang, a wooden handle, and have a blade made out of carbon steel. He said yes to all of those questions, and even said that the blade would have my surname engraved on the blade. He said that the package cost $1600 but that military would receive a 50% discount. At the time, I had no idea that Family Roots only actively marketed to military personnel, so I had no idea that the $1600 value was actually a mark-up value. The salesperson also told me that the discount also only applied while on a military base, and so I felt pressured to buy it then because I live in an ordinary civilian town and not on a military base.

So I signed up for a payment for the sword. But the payment worked very oddly. It deducted $50 dollars from my bank account twice a month. But the sword was not to be manufactured until after I finished the payments.

While I was still making payments, I researched the company online. I found out that it only targeted military personnel, the products were all of a low quality, and rarely fit the salesperson's description. I called the help-line to cancel, but was told that cancellations can only be made within the first 40 days after signing up for the product (not receiving it), and that the cancellation had to be done in writing. My only other option at that point was to stop paying Family Roots, but not get back any of the payments that I had already made. Since I was more than halfway done making the payments, I figured that I might as well keep making the payments and get the final product.

In May of 2013, the package finally arrived. It did not meet the description at all. The blade of the sword was made out of stainless steel, not carbon steel. The promised engraving of my name was nowhere to be seen. It was made nothing like medievel swords, which had a full-tanged blade with a wooden handle around it. The entire thing was made of metal, and in place of a tang, a rod extended from the blade and screwed into the fuller (bottom of the handle) which kept the hilt (the actual handle) fastened in place. I have another sword like this, and it cost only $70, with about equal quality. And there were parts on the hilt, certain figures of dragon-like creatures, that were painted with a golden paint that sort of seeped onto the rest of the hilt a little bit and looked cheaply done. In the middle ages, swords would be gilded, but not painted on like that. The worst part about it is, I found a picture of the exact same sword on the company website. So it was not even unique like the salesperson said. It was mass-produced.

The banner wasn't bad, it actually resembled the Fisher family crest that I have seen elsewhere, but it was still made out of cheap felt.

But the plaque was terrible. It was just a sheet of paper with some pretty graphics and a description of the earliest Fishers in Germany. But it had nothing to do with my close relatives. It was just general information that would have been put on the plaque of anyone else with the surname "Fisher". Practically all the info could be found with a quick search on Google. This did not seem like the work of historians pouring over records for months.

I called the help-line again. I told them about the discrepancies between the description and the actual product. They said that the blade did not contain the engraving because they stopped offering that feature before I finished making the payments, even though it mentioned the engraving on my receipt. They said that even though the salesperson lied to me about the product being carbon steel, I should be thankful because the blade was made out of the "finest quality Toledo stainless" steel. When I demanded my money back, they kept saying that my time to have done that was the first 40 days after signing up to get the sword. I explained that it's not a matter of me changing my mind on whether I wanted the product or not, the product was simply nothing like its description. They did not seem to care, and basically told me that I would have to deal with it.

I then spent the month of June doing training in California and then got busy with school, work, and my weekend training and gave up on getting my money back. Then someone told me about things like ripoffreport.com or the BBB and so that is why I am reporting this now. Family Roots is a despicable company that sells products for nearly ten times their worth to military personnel, many of whom are young, naive, and too busy to look into things like this. They need to have their policies reviewed, especially the one about not being able to return an unsatisfactory product because it can't be seen or touched until the cancellation period is already expired.

I have already reported this to the BBB, but if that doesn't get me anywhere hopefully this does.