- Report: #637860
Complaint Review: ancestry.com - Internet
Reported By:
denelle -
arlington, Texas, United States of America
Submitted:
Updated:
-
Author Not Confirmed
Why?
ancestry.com
Internet, United States of America
Phone:
Web:
www.ancestry.com
Categories:
Business Rating:
(0)
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ancestry.com fraud Internet
I've been on ancestry.com for only four months. Although I've gotten my money's worth 10 times over, before the changes, they are using some illegal tactics in advertising, changing the site constantly to impede finding records, transcribing documents incorrectly, and using unreasonable down time due to "updates" and "screw ups".
They boast about all the records they have, but many of them are duplicates, and even triplicates, so they are lying to customers.
One time the site was down for over 48 hours. They change the search format constantly! Now, what they are trying to pass off as an improvement is actually a hindrance! You can longer access records as quickly as once before due to the strange and difficult layout of the search page. I am beginning to think that they want you to have difficulty finding records, so people whose subscription is about to expire will renew.
They use volunteer help to transcribe documents. So, that's a disaster. I've seen the original documents in which the name of a county is very clear, but the person doing the transcribing interprets them as something totally different.
Some of the names transcribed show that absolutely no common sense is used. I've seen Archibald, a male, transcribed as "Archibalia", and Frank has been transcribed as "Freonk". How much common sense does it take to figure those two out? I have corrected censuses months ago, and they have yet to add my corrections!
Also, some of the records for people are actually on another page of the set of documents. When you click on the original document, it's another person's name, so you must scroll through the pages to find the person who are looking for.
In conclusion, what could be or once was a great site has turned into an unprofessional mess! It seems there is no leadership at ancestry.com!
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Anonymous
Littleton,Colorado,
U.S.A.
Outsourced
#2Consumer Comment
Sun, September 05, 2010
They do outsource transcriptions. I worked for a temp agency who submitted their agents to a data entry firm who pushed their reps to do as many documents as they could within the allotted time of a work shift and gave bonuses when they went above document quota.
One of the clients of this data entry company was Ancestry.com. I remember a keyboard mashing frenzy to push the documents out as fast as possible without regard to accuracy.
They use text recognition software to copy words from microfilm imported from the census office. The words are always jumbled up anagrams that need to be corrected by the data entry rep.
Sometimes the documents are submitted without correcting those jumbled up anagrams. I don't think Ancestry.com is all to blame. Some of the blame must go to the temp agency/ data entry firm hired to complete the task of entering accurate information.
I'm sure the company who designed their web template is also outsourced. Perhaps through the same temp agency. But, that is just speculation.
