RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Lidfam on Saturday 24 October 15 13:57 BST (UK)
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Not sure if this has been mentioned but twice is better than none at all, I suppose. I have just had a notification on FindMyPast's link that there is another £1 for a month offer, which will last until the end of the month. Have just used it to subscribe, so it is a genuine offer, but as always, don't forget to untick the auto renewal box in your personal details page and then click update. Got caught with that last free/cheap offer.
Dale
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Let me clarify
Its for a month but it ends in 7 days if I read it correctly?
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No, the offer to subscribe for a month ends on the 31st.
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Interesting isn't it, that Ancestry just had the same offer?
Naturally I took advantage of it. ;D
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No, the offer to subscribe for a month ends on the 31st.
Ahh makes sense :D. Thank you
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Thanks for the info. Dale.
Do you have a link please with the info?
Can anyone say if Ancestry still have the offer?
Annie
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Here in Australia, the offer ran out last Sunday I think.
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Ha!, FindMyPast trawling for new customers. ? ! :)
No surprise, and not many of FindMyPast's former, and disgruntled customers would be likely to be very surprised, or sympathetic.
Perhaps FindMyPast's April 2014 efforts to screw it's own site functionality and usability and former intuitiveness, and at the same time to screw and infuriate a huge proportion of it's own paying customer base, and cause many of them to publicly and very angrily and vociferously state that if FindMyPast didn't fix the mess that it had made of it's own site rapido, that they would not renew their subscriptions.
Literally overnight, FindMyPast trashed a formerly great, and much praised site, at least the British version was, but i believe that prior to April 2014 the new and "improved" junk version was the version that FindMyPast had already been sticking it's overseas customers with.
It took them several months to restore some semblance of functionality to the site, and they had to resort to pleading with their users to tell them what needed fixing, which was pretty much everything on the site, and their customers had already been bombarding them for over a month with specific information about what needed fixing, but FindMyPast had been arrogantly replying that the new site was really great and was an improvement, and that the problems with the usability of the site were imaginary and were a result of customers not being willing to be adaptable, before they had to eventually climb down and apologise for the catastrophe that they had created, and they also gave existing subscribers an extra months free subscription.
Even professional genealogists and researchers who were experienced FindMyPast users were complaining that the site was no longer fit for purpose, a phrase which got frequent use.
There were so many fixes needed that whenever FindMyPast tried to repair one feature, they seemed to break some other feature without realising the actual effect that their latest tweak had produced.
Prior to that there were hundreds of approving customer reviews of FindMyPast on product review sites, and a negative comment about FindMyPast was almost impossible to find, but overnight a flood of furiously negative customer reviews were posted and they just kept continuing at an incredible rate.
They even stopped answering the customer service phones for several weeks because of the constant flood of customer complaint calls.
Users renamed the site as Lostmypast.
The wikipedia mention of the debacle puts it very mildly in comparison with the level of outrage that was created and voiced loudly and publicly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Findmypast#New_user_interface_.282014.29 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Findmypast#New_user_interface_.282014.29)
I wonder what their balance sheet has been like since then, I must check that out.
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But apart from that, you think the sites OK?
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But apart from that, you think the sites OK?
I find the site a drag, not user friendly, takes too long to find what you are looking for having to jump back & forth.......not a patch on A*****ry in that respect.
I also find when you want to save something, it is so small when you open it, it is unreadable & enlarging only makes it fuzzy.
Soon I think they will be named "InThePast" as they seem to be losing a lot of members.
Annie
ADDED.....They should have listened to the site users not their computer Technology people as the customers were happy before the "great new site" & every chance the "Techy" folk don't use it to navigate so on paper it seemed good but "If it isn't broken, don't fix it" springs to mind.
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I agree, before the changes I used FindMyPast nearly all the time, now I rarely use it, before if I couldn't find something on Ancestry I could easily find it on FindMyPast, now it can't even find census entries that I know exist. Something has gone drastically wrong with it, so much so that over a year ago if you subscribed to The Times, which we do, you could get a whole year's subscription for free.
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I also find when you want to save something, it is so small when you open it, it is unreadable & enlarging only makes it fuzzy.
I have not had a problem with their downloaded images they have been easy to enlarge and are clear.
Yes there were problems when they revamped the site and in my opinion a couple still remain but the information available outweighs the niggles in finding it. It is still much easier than spending hours ploughing through records in record offices just to find maybe one piece of information as we did before these web sites got so many records.
Rosie
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I just wonder why they didn't listen to the paying customer in the 1st place................the site is a bit of a shambles. Ok with their cheap offers but never would I subscribe for a yr as it is like watching paint dry trying to find things..............as you say that you know exist but you need to know so much detail to get what you want.
I like A*try for navigating. Type a name & the list is there to view what you want......simple for anyone I would say.
Annie
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But apart from that, you think the sites OK?
Exactly as per what ammack said in post 9. PLUS they also went out of their way to further hack users off by censoring their complaints on the FindMyPast forum, which they then denied doing, but which everyone who was following the forum posts, and there were many hundreds of them, did not believe.
They caused further fury by making no response to floods of customers complaints for over a week and then only initially doing so via facebook. ! Then they tried to tough it out and claim that everything was great and that there weren't any serious problems, until eventually the site nearly went into meltdown with customer complaints, and after several weeks FindMyPast was forced to accept reality and apologise for the mess they had created.
It was all marketing driven, they wanted to get into bed with ancestry dot com in order to increase their share of the U.S. market and in doing so, they tried to make every national version of FindMyPast look, and behave, like a clone of ancestry, which has always been a clunker of a site,but all they really achieved was to swap a superb site for an unmarketable pale wreck of what it had previously been.
It works and some of it works very well and much of it is still superior to ancestry but it's only a fraction as good as it used to be and for new users it will take quite a bit of practice and fiddling to get the hang of it and to be able to get the best use from it.
It's certainly worth £1 although it's no longer as intuitive to use as it used to be, and some of the former features that were particularly useful were never restored, and the formerly superb customer service and prompt feedback seems to have vanished, and it's no longer even worse and more nebulous than ancestry, and FindMyPast did manage to achieve the seemingly impossible in April 2014 and actually did manage for a time to make it even worse than ancestry.
Many of the most useful and flexible features have vanished, and quite a few of them have been replaced with features that are bizarre in their inflexible nebulosity.
Currently ancestry seems to be preparing to attempt the same feat, by gleefully preparing to replace the already very badly implemented and run, and very technical fault prone ancestry site, with some creation that they're calling new ancestry, which is already in place and which users at least have the option of trying and at present they can still revert to the old version, but some records are only available via the new version, and most of the users who have tried the new version, seem to detest it, but ancestry, which constantly asks for feedback from the users about the new version, is of course nevertheless telling the users that it's really great, is a big improvement, and that they will really love it, and that anyway, they will soon have no choice, because soon the new version will be the only one available.
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I also find when you want to save something, it is so small when you open it, it is unreadable & enlarging only makes it fuzzy.
I have not had a problem with their downloaded images they have been easy to enlarge and are clear.
Yes there were problems when they revamped the site and in my opinion a couple still remain but the information available outweighs the niggles in finding it.
I will find out when I use the offer in a few days.
Yes it is better than trawling records but the fact here is that they changed a good site, ignored their "fee paying" customers who use the site & now losing good custom because the technical team say the new way is best. I think the customers know which is/was best but they chose to ignore that.
Annie
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Yes there were problems when they revamped the site and in my opinion a couple still remain but the information available outweighs the niggles in finding it. It is still much easier than spending hours ploughing through records in record offices just to find maybe one piece of information as we did before these web sites got so many records.
Rosie
I have to agree with Rosie. Yes there were some major issues when the new site was first launched, and some do still remain, but once you get used to how you need to search on the site, its relatively easy to find things. I still think ancestry's site is better and always have done, sorry but I don't agree it was ever the best site but I know I'm in a minority on here about that. ;) At the very least, ancestry has always allowed you to use more details to search on and the results page has always shown more information than FindMyPast's has ever done, either now or previously. Unfortunately with ancestors living in so many different counties, I've always had to have access to both sites once parish registers started to appear online. Ancestry has always been the main site I use, but I can still find what I need on FindMyPast most of the time, usually when ancestry's indexing leaves a lot to be desired or they don't have the records.
But, as Rosie, says its easier than having to visit Records Offices, something we've done a lot of as well.
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Agreed.
I can't find any reference to this offer. Can anyone supply the discount code please?
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I had subscribed to Ancestry and had no great dramas with it - I loved the hover feature that opened up a preview which stopped clicking into records that weren't relevant- something I feel I have to do with FindMyPast
I moved to FindMyPast after any changes and I find it easy to navigate and search - apart from the above niggle. I chose FindMyPast based on newspaper records being available on that site.
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My mother (who has a separate subscription courtesy of previous half price offers) never used the old FindMyPast site but has few problems using the current version, and in fact has told me how to find some things. :-X Something that has caused great amusement in the family because my mother, who admits it herself, is not very good at finding things on the internet. ;D
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"Yes there were problems when they revamped the site and in my opinion a couple still remain but the information available outweighs the niggles in finding it. It is still much easier than spending hours ploughing through records in record offices just to find maybe one piece of information as we did before these web sites got so many records. Rosie "
So basically what you're saying is that if someone is thirsty and they only have a muddy pool from which to drink, they shouldn't be too dissatisfied because the alternative of having nothing to drink at all is much less preferable, even though the muddy water could easily be purified and made and made as potable as it once was.
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Here in Australia, the offer ran out last Sunday I think.
Lucky you. ! When the FindMyPast crash of April 2014 happened and so many of the users of the British site version erupted, the users of the overseas site version which was basically the same as the new British site version, and which had been the only version that had been available to overseas users, were very surprised and shocked when they discovered that there had been a superior version which wasn't made available to them.
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Agreed.
I can't find any reference to this offer. Can anyone supply the discount code please?
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REPORT THIS POST AS SPAM (Use 'Report to Moderator'). DO NOT CLICK ON ANY LINKS IN THIS POST. DO NOT REPLY TO THIS PERSON.
]Can anyone?[/color][/color] [/color] As I can't find anything either.
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But apart from that, you think the sites OK?
Lidfam, I like your style ;)
But what on earth is the point of these lengthy rants about something that happened 18 months ago on a particular website? I have a subscription to FindMyPast and the changes weren't to my liking either, but I got over it. As far as I know nobody died or had a nervous breakdown, and there were few complaints about being forced to drink muddy water ???
Time to move on, I think.
Carol
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Try this link for the offer...
http://www.findmypast.co.uk/offer-halloween?dclid=COCJuLH93cgCFSN62wod1wAMVQ
This was on a shared post on faceook.
I was one of those who left this site as a result of their changes - I had only renewed an annual subscription 3 weeks before they changed everything and seem to remember being very vocal on their site and facebook page:0). They definitely cleansed their facebook page quite often - they did give me an extra 3 months on the subscription, but I went to An***try anyway - I found their family tree section was taking between 30 seconds and 2 minutes to respond every time you clicked to add anything - very frustrating - looking at it now it is still the same - takes 5 seconds or less on my current site.
I do find the FindMyPast search can sometimes help when struggling to find records on An...try - so occasionally use FindMyPast to do the search and with the info it displays and can then find the right record on an...try. Fortunately I don't need a subscription to do that.
I will not be going back to FindMyPast - besides, since moving to an...try, I have managed to get in touch with 5 second cousins from paternal and maternal side that I did not know before and the information we can share between us has been extremely helpful and opened up so many new avenues.
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I have not had a problem with their downloaded images they have been easy to enlarge and are clear.
Yes there were problems when they revamped the site and in my opinion a couple still remain but the information available outweighs the niggles in finding it. It is still much easier than spending hours ploughing through records in record offices just to find maybe one piece of information as we did before these web sites got so many records.
Rosie
I agree. I preferred the site the way it was before and there is still much that could be done to improve it, but I have found documents on FindMyPast that aren't available online anywhere else. I appreciate the many record sets that they offer and hope (for our sakes and theirs) that they will improve the site.
Regards,
Josephine
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To save going to FindMyPast, the code is SPOOKY15.
Where's the button to check to say not to renew? The box on
"My Account" to auto-renew is unchecked, but when you go to the 'pay' page it just seems to say they will automatically renew after the month - got caught like that before! :-X
Is there another one I need to find somewhere? Or more likely it's me not understanding the thing! ???
Thanks
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When logged in, go to My Account (top right hand corner of screen) and select personal details - bottom of that list is the auto renew check box - make sure it is NOT checked and then click Update.
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Thanks Bertie
Sorry - modified my post while you were very quick off the mark with your reply!
As you can see I had found the box in My Account - so I'll just make sure it's unchecked, click Update, and hope for the best!
Cheers
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No problem - Not that I don't trust FindMyPast or anything, but I usually checked regularly to ensure it didn't mysteriously get checked again (well, alright, I don't trust them after reading many gripes from people who swear they unchecked the box, to find it checked again!!)
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To give FindMyPast their due, they do seem happy to refund any not wanted renewals within 14 days if the worst does happen. I know my Aunt has had it happened to her a couple of times (although whether she clicked the save button on removing the tick is debatable) and has never had a problem getting the money back from them.
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Here in Australia, the offer ran out last Sunday I think.
Lucky you. ! When the FindMyPast crash of April 2014 happened and so many of the users of the British site version erupted, the users of the overseas site version which was basically the same as the new British site version, and which had been the only version that had been available to overseas users[/b], were very surprised and shocked when they discovered that there had been a superior version which wasn't made available to them.
Can you elaborate on that (the above bold and underlined)? I am with Findmypast UK, and not AU (I'm in Aus). I was a fully paid up subscriber with them( not anymore) , and still hold an account which I just use for pay as you go these days, and to the best of my knowledge I am and have been with Dot UK, especially when there was no such thing as an AU site until a few years ago.
The same as ancestry - I have never been a member of AU site ( although I can access it, because I have a world sub. I first had an ancestry sub with Com , this is going back to 2004 , I think ( this was before there was even a UK version available, so I had my sub through Com) , for the past few years I've had my Ancestry sub through ancestry Uk. I've been a subscriber for years (hate to add up the cost- yikes)
Way before Findmypast was in existence, I used to get relevant data from the Familyhistory site (a large umbrella site which the family history societies around the country put their census and parish records online - cost to view them were a mere pennies , for example 2p , 4p a record - Findmypast then took the family history records with the societies permission, and the site folded.
Basically,Are you saying that I as a subscriber to FindMyPast DOT UK had and have a different version to people who have ISP's in the UK (who have the same sub to dot UK)?
Are you saying they were giving a different version to people who have a sub with uk, but who do not have a British ISP? (if so, could you post a link to the info please)
If it is the case, I can't say that I ever noticed and have used my dot UK subs to FindMyPast both here and in the UK. I've never been a subscriber to an outside of a UK sub ( except in the very early days of Ancestry when there was only a Com and no UK).
If you are saying overseas versions of FindmyPast such as dot AU etc, Overseas we do have a choice and it's not the only version we can subscribe to. Overseas people can and many, many do, like myself have their subs through both ancestry and findmypast dot UK and not our country's version.
Or are you saying us overseas had a superior version , and it is the only version we had. If so, not really, plenty here subscribe to UK-I assume it's the same in the UK, unless they stop you in the uk subscribing to anything which doesn't have dot UK in it , you can subscribe to dot Au if you want to.
confused ???
Kind regards
Ps If you don't want to subscribe to any of the big boys, and if you're not in the Uk to search the RO's, you could always buy all the relevant county discs for your pre 1911 censuses, and parish record discs. you could use the catalogues online to order various records by snail mail, and join each family history society in your area of interest.it was what I used to do for some of the basic records, before these sites were about . In total they cost far more than some of these subs, and a far longer way to search. There are plenty of choices.
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Hi Cell
There is only one Findmypast, the various UK, AU, IE or.com are just different gateways to the same data. If you have a World subscription you can subscribe through any of the sites but if you want a lesser subscription you need to subscribe using the relevant website.
When FindMyPast decided to expand outside the UK they set up separate websites, with separate subscriptions, using the new software. Subsequently the new software was introduced on the old UK website and all the sites were then amalgamated into the one site we now have.
Yes, the new FindMyPast was a disaster to start with but I think it has now settled down although there is still room for improvement. One of the biggest mistakes I believe FindMyPast made was not to explain very simply as to why the changes.
Andy
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Ah thanks for the explanation Andy :)
Kind Regards
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So is anyone taking up the one pound offer? ;D
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Thank you Bertieburrell for giving the code - I've just used it ;D
My latest monthly sub on Ancestry has just finished and I wasn't going to take out another one for a while but now I can have a look around findmypast to see if there is anything new that is of interest.
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Hi, I have taken up the offer in the last few days. However, my experience has been that I can search for a particular person and nothing comes up, but if I search for this person (same details put in) on LDS, I get results which then direct me to Find My Past to see the information. This is usually census info.
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Thanks for letting us know about the offer.
I will probably take it up - I took up the last couple of £1 offers but didn't end up using the site at all as I don't seem to get along with it and can never find what I am looking for despite them purporting to have various collections of interest to me - I think when you look further they have sometimes have very limited records within that collection and whatever I am looking for is not included.
Never mind - £1 is worth a punt even if I don't end up using it - it's still good value. ;D
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Ruskie ( and others)
When looking at the record sets on FindMyPast scroll down to the fine print. eg Some records will openly state - as they do for Suffolk- '' 50 of 500 parishes on record'' so while it is limited , at least there is some openness.
Like most things it takes time to transcribe etc , and anyway as a business model , putting it all there on day 1 would send you broke real quick ;)
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Ruskie ( and others)
When looking at the record sets on FindMyPast scroll down to the fine print. eg Some records will openly state - as they do for Suffolk- '' 50 of 500 parishes on record'' so while it is limited , at least there is some openness.
Thanks David - I recall some time ago contacting FindMyPast with a question about the number of records they have in certain collections - it was ages ago, so I can't recall the reply (as I seldom use the site) but it was not as easy as your method, so thanks for that. :) Still, they do have it in the fine print and not upfront as I believe it should be (for example the way that FamilySearch displays theirs). :)
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Some of the parish register collections state the parishes included and dates. Word of caution, they are not entirely accurate. The Hertfordshire registers being a good example, eg, they claim to have Watford and Rickmansworth to 1900, but both are missing from 1800/1810 to virtually the end of the century. :-X So what's included is a guide but not necessarily that accurate.
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I am delighted to know there is another offer. :D Thanks ALL for alerting me to it.
I can fully understand why it would be maddening to find it all went crazy after paying a full sub, but I would not like to complain if I am only paying £1 per month, and I have done rather well out of the offers this year so far. :D
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I took advantage of their last pound offer and I am really glad I did. I found lots of information including the baptism of the daugher of my greatgrandparents . this daughter had died and I did not know her name as I got that information off the 1911 census. Plus found lots of newspaper articles.
Did take me awhile to figure out how the site worked but once I got use it I was ok.
Cheers
Anne
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Some of the parish register collections state the parishes included and dates. Word of caution, they are not entirely accurate. The Hertfordshire registers being a good example, eg, they claim to have Watford and Rickmansworth to 1900, but both are missing from 1800/1810 to virtually the end of the century. :-X So what's included is a guide but not necessarily that accurate.
If only taking up the £1 offer it's fine just to check out what they do hold (any/every where) but it would be so much more beneficial to all, if these sites had an index telling us what exactly they have before we subscribe for 6/12 months.
I telephoned ancestry many yrs ago prior a yrs subscription asking what they hold. The answer was vague.........."(depends what you are looking for)" basically & no £1 offers in those days i.e. could only find out after I transcribed.
I stayed with them for many yrs until I realised that "special offers" were being given to "non subscribers" yet nothing for us who were long term users/subscribers.
Annie
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Some of the parish register collections state the parishes included and dates. Word of caution, they are not entirely accurate. The Hertfordshire registers being a good example, eg, they claim to have Watford and Rickmansworth to 1900, but both are missing from 1800/1810 to virtually the end of the century. :-X So what's included is a guide but not necessarily that accurate.
Do they have any caveats for the missing years though? I used to get caught out with LDS microfilms, until I started checking the details of each film more carefully. They would give any missing years, even though the film title would give the overall start and finish dates.
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That would be a "get out of jail card" free...........i.e. how it's worded technically & pretty indecent of them to inform us of the "missing yrs" for what they are advertising "claiming" to have online.
No wonder people get exasperated as that kind of info. is misleading.
Annie
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I generally find that they make a big play of giving you the big picture (500000 records from x parish to 19xx) because it sells - they keep any omissions secret until someone points out the omissions or asks that they cannot find so and so - then the real truth (or as little of it as they can get away with) will appear (briefly, because it is bad publicity to leave that sort of thing in the open too long!)
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Give me the LDS microfilm system any day. Apart from convenience, you can't compare using the pay sites to going to RO's, the LDS family history centres, libraries and archives, in my opinion. At the very least, you will usually find someone sympathetic to share that eureka moment, instead of a "that's nice", or a roll of the eyes. ;D
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So is anyone taking up the one pound offer? ;D
Yes they are, and for £1 why not ?, and this is what some of them, and other FindMyPast users think about FindMyPast between January 2015 and July 2015 https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.findmypast.co.uk (https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.findmypast.co.uk) and the summary of the result of their feedback pretty much speaks for itself "Findmypast reviews Bad 1.6 from 0 - 10" but at least FindMyPast, unlike their initial and prolonged April 2014 debacle public silence, were publicly responding to these review site posts, and note this post about halfway down the page and note FindMyPast's response to it "Banned from their Facebook page.... So for telling the truth on Find My Past's Facebook page I have been banned from it." there were a lot of similar banning/censoring allegation posts directed towards FindMyPast in the Spring of 2014 which on the occasions that FindMyPast responded to them, their response was mostly one of denial, which many users then stated that they didn't believe. Facebook !!!, why would a major site like FindMyPast need or want to use a clunky and nebulous site like facebook as their main means of public contact with their customers, many of whom aren't, and don't want to be, subscribers to facebook, and especially so when FindMyPast have their own onsite forum. ? That use of facebook by FindMyPast was another cause of masses of customer complaints in 2014. The FindMyPast forum complaint thread had thousands of posts in 2014 and the quantity and fury of the complaints obviously took FindMyPast by surprise, so they were stuck between deleting the thread and appearing arrogant and indifferent, or leaving it up and taking the flak in unresponsive silence, eventually after several weeks, they did delete the thread, when it was already too late, and that just got them more criticism. Are their 2014 PR people still in post I wonder. ?
Is it not curious that there hasn't been a post to that review site since July 2015. ?
If any reader thinks that the extent of the 2014 disaster, which still hasn't been fully rectified, has been overstated here, just take a look at this 2014 13 page message thread on an independent genealogy site which FindMyPast couldn't censor.
https://www.british-genealogy.com/threads/81620-Find-My-Past-Searches (https://www.british-genealogy.com/threads/81620-Find-My-Past-Searches)
Or this 2014 review site, one star for every aspect, and only one review still visible, and you can bet that was originally hundreds of negative reviews, and FindMyPast used to get between 9 and 10 stars for everything. http://genealogy-websites.no1reviews.com/user-review-4020/findmypast.html (http://genealogy-websites.no1reviews.com/user-review-4020/findmypast.html)
However, there are those who say that the customers should be grateful that the current FindMyPast exists in any form at all, well if they are satisfied with the product, that's their right to feel so, but where do they get the right to tell other customers that they should hold the same opinion. ?
Note also the 2014 FindMyPast slogan of "FindMyPast just got better" and their response to the criticism of something that they said, and are still saying, is really great and far better than the previous version.
The FindMyPast site was made so much better, that they said that "We have a team working around the clock on site performance. We have already made a number of infrastructure investments and will not stop until the new site is at the least as quick as the old site." So perhaps the FindMyPast customers should be particularly grateful that FindMyPast didn't make the new version even better than they had already made it. !
Be content though, it's only a £1 now,...I wonder why ?...and hey, after all, it's better than nothing, so keep on praising FindMyPast just as customers frequently used to do when it was really great, and perhaps in the future FindMyPast will make it even better, so lets all stay super positive and upbeat.
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Pinetree:
I have agree I really enjoy going the the familyhistory centers but I have a 1 1/2 hour drive to get there and I don;t like driving there in the winter time. Have gone to Salt Lake city to the family history library there. Have gone there for a number of years with a group of friends. That is a 2 day drive from where we live in Canada to get there but that is part of the holiday.
But must say that I did use findmypast for the first time and did find lots of good stuff, as I can not always get to a center.
cheers
anne
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In post 42 ammack said "If only taking up the £1 offer it's fine just to check out what they do hold (any/every where) but it would be so much more beneficial to all, if these sites had an index telling us what exactly they have before we subscribe for 6/12 months."
It might also be nice if FindMyPast and other sites didn't also give some record sets titles that are misleading as to the exact nature and range of the records that those record sets actually contain.
It would also be nice if FindMyPast didn't state that a major UK record set which does exist, and which has been transcribed, and which is and has been publicly available for several years, both as transcriptions and also as original document images, doesn't exist, even though they were told more than a year ago that was the case, and even though they afterwards deleted their non existence statement, without of course bothering to inform the customers that those records do exist.
Check out the British shipping passenger lists if you want to figure out what that one is about.
"but it would be so much more beneficial to all, if these sites had an index telling us what exactly they have"
They do have such an index, they always did !, but you just try finding it, I did, but it sure wasn't easy, and for a new user, there isn't much of an indication that it even exists.
I'll post it if you want me to, I actually had to bookmark it so that I could easily find it again without having to hunt for it.
Now on the old and apparently in need of drastic improvement FindMyPast that index was pretty obvious, and super useful, I would even say vitally essential, oneof the best and most useful features of the site in fact, and very compact and quick and easy to grasp, a real one stop shop in fact, and ancestry has always suffered from the same flaw, but even with the current FindMyPast list of records index, some records which do exist as separate record sets, are super hard and sometimes impossible to find, because the new improved version of FindMyPast has helped it's users by lumping related record sets into the same bucket, which was one of the main things that the customers were screaming at FindMyPast about in April 2014, but did FindMyPast listen to them ?, yes of course it did, and then it ignored them.
The most truly bizarre aspect of that situation is, that even though some record sets have been lumped together and can no loner be searched separately as individual record sets by means of the usual search facility, they can be searched as separate record sets, at least after a fashion, by means of an alternative search method.
For example, just try finding and searching the UK death records for deaths at sea.
As for searching records such as UK birth records, for say just people with the name John Smith, sure you can do that, and you'll be given all of the John Smith birth records that match your search criteria, and that was always the case, but now you'll get an added bonus, because the resident over eager to please Labrador that now operates the extremely powerful, and potentially very flexible, FindMyPast search engine, will also give you every birth record within your search criteria for anyone called John William Smith, William John Smith, etcetera.
That's an improvement though over the April 2014 version which would also have given you, sometimes literally millions of search results for everyone with a similar name in any country.
Never mind though, because as the 35 1759 baptism records of the obscure parish of Hookum Falookum in the Marsh are still thankfully available, if that is you can find them, then all is well, so no complaining.
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I generally find that they make a big play of giving you the big picture (500000 records from x parish to 19xx) because it sells - they keep any omissions secret until someone points out the omissions or asks that they cannot find so and so - then the real truth (or as little of it as they can get away with) will appear (briefly, because it is bad publicity to leave that sort of thing in the open too long!)
X ACT LY ! and ancestry plays that game as well, and I'd be mighty surprised if they were the only sites that did that, the corporate mantra is obviously, quantity sells, or at least it makes a good selling point, so forget quality or usability, because apparently it's still better than a trip to Kew, that's probably why ancestry can claim to have London electoral registers, which they do, even though they've been so badly trashed by being transcribed with text reading software that was so inferior that those records are so garbled that they're barely usable.
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That is a 2 day drive from where we live in Canada to get there... cheers anne
[/color]
In the vastness of Canada does that not count as an average grocery shopping trip to the supermarket. ? ;)
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So, just in case you were wondering, as I was, what the financial effect of trashing ones own site and then trying to tough it out, instead of fixing it is, well, no surprise, it isn't good.
Some people say that we should be grateful for half a loaf, because that's better than no loaf at all, well if the FindMyPast finances keep heading in the same direction that they were heading when they published their latest figures in February 2015, there may soon be no loaf at all, and btw, bear in mind too that this company had been steadily growing since 1965, http://www.findmypast.co.uk/content/company-history (http://www.findmypast.co.uk/content/company-history) and the original hierarchy really knew what they were doing and how to do it, and in 2003 FindMyPast was awarded the Queen's Award for Innovation, and it even continued to grow and expand after it was sold in 2007 to the publishers of the Beano Comic https://www.beano.com/ (https://www.beano.com/)
Perhaps they should have stuck with a management recruited from the Beano characters aka "the Menace Squad" and it's hard to imagine how they could have done worse than the present media based management team, and the management and the techy bosses were purged and replaced by a team brought in specially to push through the partnership deal with ancestry which led to the 2014 site trashing.
Anyway, here are the FindMyPast February 2014 figures, and I'm guessing that there weren't many smiles in the boardrooms of either FindMyPast or their parent company the publishers D.C. Thompson, on the day that these figures were released, and you can pretty much bet that the 2016 results aren't likely to be an improvement, more likely that they'll probably be worse, and the 2015 results probably provided the motivation, and the need, for your £1 offers, and after all, a successful business doesn't usually give it's product away at less than it's usual achievable market value if it doesn't have to.
My guess is that if the FindMyPast revenues continue to fall, that in 2015 someone, probably ancestry, or google, or amazon, will step in with a takeover bid, and that if that happens, I suspect that D.C. Thompson will be very quick and eager to offload FindMyPast, and guess what the site will look like if any of those outfits get their hands on it.
If I was to give any financial advice to either a current or prospective FindMyPast customer, it would be this,...don't be in too big a hurry to take out a one year, payable in advance, subscription to FindMyPast, and btw, prior to the April 2014 site trashing, a 6 months subscription was available, but that was changed to a one year subscription just before the site was wrecked.
FindMyPast February 2015 figures...
https://www.duedil.com/company/04369607/findmypast-limited (https://www.duedil.com/company/04369607/findmypast-limited)
https://companycheck.co.uk/company/04369607/FINDMYPAST-LIMITED/financial-accounts (https://companycheck.co.uk/company/04369607/FINDMYPAST-LIMITED/financial-accounts)
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... £1 for a month offer, which will last until the end of the month....
I am on the site and can't see it. Subscribing only offers me the regular price. I must have eaten from the Dim Tree this morning.
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There is a voucher code in one of the posts on this thread - I used that and it worked
Sue
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There is a voucher code in one of the posts on this thread - I used that and it worked
Sue
Cheers ... and "Oh gawd, I've got to read the whole thing?" :)
I'll go look for it.
EDIT: Found it on page 3, provided by goldie61. The code is: SPOOKY15
Then there's the unsubscribing bit, provided by bertieburrell:
"When logged in, go to My Account (top right hand corner of screen) and select personal details - bottom of that list is the auto renew check box - make sure it is NOT checked and then click Update."
Cheers!
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PerQuist , are you a subscriber to FindMyPast?
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PerQuist , are you a subscriber to FindMyPast?
I am guessing Per Quist is no longer a subscriber to findmypast........ but he/she might just as well be because the anger contained is going to lead to a heart attack either way!! :-\
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PerQuist , are you a subscriber to FindMyPast?
I am guessing Per Quist is no longer a subscriber to findmypast........ but he/she might just as well be because the anger contained is going to lead to a heart attack either way!! :-\
May I refer m'learned friends to reply #22 dated October 25 or 26 (depending on your time zone).
'Chill pills should be made available to all who need them' - discuss.
Carol
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PerQuist , are you a subscriber to FindMyPast?
I am guessing Per Quist is no longer a subscriber to findmypast........ but he/she might just as well be because the anger contained is going to lead to a heart attack either way!! :-\
May I refer m'learned friends to reply #22 dated October 25 or 26 (depending on your time zone).
'Chill pills should be made available to all who need them' - discuss.
Carol
Does my learned colleague subscribe to the theory that flames can only reach higher with more fuel and encouragement?
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Yes.
Goodnight, I'm now off to watch a movie.
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Cheers ... and "Oh gawd, I've got to read the whole thing?" :)
I'll go look for it.
;D Sorry about that SC - I didn't realise the thread was as long as it is and I was on my way out but thought I'd do a quick reply. I think there must be a few posts containing the voucher code because that wasn't the one I saw. Never mind, so long as you have it!
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Thank you so much for bringing this to everyone's attention. I was able to sign up for the deal! Hurray!
Regards,
Josephine
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Thanks used the code it time ;D
Used to be a subscriber, that ran out last July, which coincided with a break in FH searching. The 10% offer they send to lapsed members didn't tempt me. Sowill try this, though not sure I have enough time to fully use it yet, but worth a browse for the month.
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The only problem I have with FindMyPast is every time I look up World Records there isn't one sports one
:D
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The only problem I have with FindMyPast is every time I look up World Records there isn't one sports one
:D
Nor does FindMyPast have a world record for the most p*ssed-off subscriber >:( Could I nominate PerQuist!
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The only problem I have with FindMyPast is every time I look up World Records there isn't one sports one
:D
Nor does FindMyPast have a world record for the most p*ssed-off subscriber >:( Could I nominate PerQuist!
When I think of the amount of information I have gleaned for the princely sum of 3 pence per day......
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[/quote] Nor does FindMyPast have a world record for the most p*ssed-off subscriber >:( Could I nominate PerQuist! [/quote]
You could, but in order to get the most deserving winner, the list would have to include tens of thousands of other pre April 2014 subscribers, and perhaps rather than title it "p*ssed off", maybe "dismayed and aware of the shortcomings that have been needlessly introduced into FindMyPast", might be a, less catchy and pithy, but more descriptively accurate title.
As for people saying yippee, I found this or that on FindMyPast, well great, but that's not the point, the real point is not what can still be found on FindMyPast, but what could have been found on the old FindMyPast which can no longer be found on the new FindMyPast.
People who are post April 2014 subscribers to FindMyPast won't be aware of that, but prior subscribers will be, although some of them who only need a small portion of the FindMyPast record sets may be satisfied with the new version, but there are many thousands of factually aware pre April 2014 subscribers who aren't satisfied.
Taking something and making it less functional and productive than it formerly was isn't either an improvement nor a cause for celebration or satisfaction.
Nor is it, nor is any comment about that, a matter of any individuals personal opinion, it's a factual matter about the state of the usability, productiveness, and effectiveness of the site pre and post change.
Personally speaking, I happen to believe that purchasers of any service should be as aware and as informed as possible about not only what service they will receive, but also about what they won't receive and about what they once could have received that they now no longer can.
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I'm with you Per Quist - I subscribed in 2013 and renewed the annual sub mid March 2014 (I had not looked at News etc. so the new website was a shock). Whilst I was not aware of a lot of the data that could no longer be seen, I was particularly vociferous about the quality of the web site (so maybe I could be a contender for your title philipsearching?) - it was patently obvious that it had been thrown together by techies with no thought about how it would be used. What really got my Goat was the number of dreadful, basic errors on the pages that showed they had not even bothered to do any sort of testing or quality assurance before releasing them - I do not believe all of those have been corrected yet and, at the time, there seemed to be an aura of complete indifference from the Company over this mess. Looking back at some of the comments I got back from them then it was a " we know what we are doing you, customer, do not so shut up and keep paying us" attitude - so I left them along with (judging by their fall in revenue) several thousand others. I get most of what I need from other sites, and have since got in contact with 4 second cousins I never knew just by putting my tree on the Ancestry site and making it available to the public. I have used their £1 for 1 month offer, just to look at the 1939 registry info - but looking at it, it does not really give me anything extra that I do not already have, so is not worth the money to me.
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Thanyou bertieburrell, not for agreeing with me, but for addressing the issues of the topic and the comments about the topic, and not the poster of the comments or their motives for making their comments, or their right to have or to express their views without being told that merely having or expressing any views or facts about a topic is a rant.
Your experiences all sound soooo familiar. Their techies get flak, and often deservedly so, but the actual underlying technology is really powerful, and potentially very flexible, if it was applied properly, but it's like a car with a powerful engine connected to the wrong sized wheels by an inadequate gearing system, but it has really all been caused by the new marketing clique who now call the shots, and who's business acumen seems to be on a par with their technical skills and lack of understanding of, and indifference to customer requirements.
There just seems to be a fundamental lack of common sense with much of what they do and with how they do it, one just looks at some aspects of it and thinks, WHY would you want to do that and WHY would you want to do it in that way, really they just couldn't have messed up more effectively if they had deliberately tried to, and yes the tweaking is still going on, and things that weren't broken are still being broken, and things that are broken aren't being fixed.
At the time professional genealogists were commonly using the phrase "not fit for purpose" and senior I.T. professionals who specialised in product testing and database management were saying exactly what you said about the lack of testing or quality assurance.
I can't think of any product, either online or offline, that received such frequent and consistently high praise and customer loyalty from so many of it's customers, and instead of treating that as the valuable asset and resource that it really was, they just treated it with contempt and threw it down the drain, until that is they were forced to admit what a mess they had made of the site and pleaded with their customers for ideas about how to restore at least some of it's functionality, which is exactly what the customers had already been doing for a month.
A £1 offer isn't likely to reverse their financial problems, and if those problems persist, as they seem likely to, the eventual outcome seems pretty obvious, and if that happens doubtless the media professionals who created the mess will walk away with substantial termination bonuses.
I'm not in the least p*ssed off, I'm angry, and more than I'm angry I'm frustrated about what a bad thing has been needlessly done to what was such a great thing, and I'm particularly frustrated that not much is being done, or is likely to be done, about it.
If it does hit the skids, that would be the biggest tragedy of all, because even in it's present state much of it is still better than any equivalent, it's like the NHS, sometimes it bombs, and bombs really badly, but when it works well it can be superb, and the particular tragedy with FindMyPast is that so much of it's present problems could so easily be corrected if the people in charge had the will and the humility to admit that they got it badly wrong.
Of course though, mustn't grumble, that wouldn't be British, best to leave complaining about poor quality products and services to those American folk, they seem to think that is a reasonable and valid way to respond to such issues.
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If Australians don't like anything they don't complain- they just don't go back.
Works for me.
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Thanyou bertieburrell, not for agreeing with me, but for addressing the issues of the topic and the comments about the topic, and not the poster of the comments or their motives for making their comments, or their right to have or to express their views without being told that merely having or expressing any views or facts about a topic is a rant.
..................
I'm not in the least p*ssed off, I'm angry, and more than I'm angry I'm frustrated about what a bad thing has been needlessly done to what was such a great thing, and I'm particularly frustrated that not much is being done, or is likely to be done, about it.
.................
Of course though, mustn't grumble, that wouldn't be British, best to leave complaining about poor quality products and services to those American folk, they seem to think that is a reasonable and valid way to respond to such issues.
Clearly we have different views of the meaning of being p*ssed off. I apologise if I caused offence.
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If Australians don't like anything they don't complain- they just don't go back.
Works for me.
Ditto :)
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If Australians don't like anything they don't complain- they just don't go back.
Works for me.
Ditto :)
Yep, just don't go back.... What was it that Albert said about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results each time ........... Yep, just don't go back,
;D ;D ;D ;D
I still cannot fathom what the fuss is over this 1939 Register.
Cheers, JM
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May I just state .... this is the best £1 I've ever spent.
:)
Not one to usually be "sucked in" to signing up for stuff, special deals/prices etc ...(I'd rather companies simply provided stuff at the lower price all the time) .... I signed up.
What a lot of fun I've had! Fabulous fun, all for £1. I've been on it for hours every day pawing through .....
Not really found anything/much that I didn't already know (and hadn't got from the free weekend recently), but it's nice to have lost the "sense of urgency" when you have just a free weekend to fit it into.
Being more relaxed, it's enabled me to look more deeply into some things I'd have previously skimped on.
£1 ..... best value ever.
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May I just state .... this is the best £1 I've ever spent.
I agree, StanleysChesterton.
I'm working on an extended family tree for one of my lines, so as I learn more about the various branches and their descendants, I'm able to positively identify them in records. It's great to have this opportunity to look for these folks, particularly in the military records.
I have subscribed to FindMyPast for longer periods in the past and will again if they add record sets that pertain to anyone in my or my husband's lines.
Re. changes to websites. I don't have any insider knowledge, so this is all speculation, but in my experience, companies hire software specialists to do the work of redesigning websites and rewriting/coding programs. The executives who make the decisions aren't usually computer programmers and don't usually understand the nitty-gritty of what's involved. In some cases, the people in suits tell the programmers to do something that won't work out well; in some other cases, they trust coders who don't/can't do what they've promised.
If the programmers don't deliver the product that they promised, and can't fix what they've broken, the company has to deal with the mess/whatever's left behind, and potentially angry/dissatisfied consumers.
Most companies will have either an internal communications expert or they will hire a company to advise them on what to say when things go wrong. Again, executives rely on other experts to help them shape their messaging. This is an art, not a science, and it isn't always done well.
I am 100% certain that the executives at FindMyPast didn't set out to make their website worse: they doubtless hired people whom they believed would improve their services and therefore enhance their business. No matter whose idea it was or who thought these changes were a good thing, they probably paid a huge chunk of money for work that, in the end, made their website clunkier and ticked off a lot of users (at least some of whom left and won't be going back).
Yes, one might think that people who make important decisions about changing their company's software programs/search engines would actually be conversant in the use of those programs/search engines, but such is not always the case.
This might be used as one of those scenarios given to web-based companies on what not to do. Only time will tell if FindMyPast can recover from their mistakes.
I guess the crux of what I'm saying, though, is that none of it was personal and I'm sure most (if not all) of it has been sorely regretted by FindMyPast, no matter what their messaging might say.
Regards,
Josephine
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I can't find any new £1 offers but if you need particular access to US/Canadian records then a 12 month US sub to FindmyPast is only $34.95
Access to UK census but not parish records.
https://www.findmypast.com/starter
Also you can get 4 months of Ancestry at the moment for £20.
The main link to the offer seems to have been taken down but this one still works. Won't last long though.
https://secure.ancestry.co.uk/subscribe/signup/register/O-23302
Found it here,
http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/ancestry-4-months-premium-membership.html
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I can't find any new £1 offers but if you need particular access to US/Canadian records then a 12 month US sub to FindmyPast is only $34.95
Access to UK census but not parish records.
https://www.findmypast.com/starter
Also you can get 4 months of Ancestry at the moment for £20.
The main link to the offer seems to have been taken down but this one still works. Won't last long though.
https://secure.ancestry.co.uk/subscribe/signup/register/O-23302
Found it here,
http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/ancestry-4-months-premium-membership.html
This is an old thread .................
are you sure - this one seems to be dated January 2016
http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/ancestry-4-months-premium-membership.html
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I can't find any new £1 offers but if you need particular access to US/Canadian records then a 12 month US sub to FindmyPast is only $34.95
Access to UK census but not parish records.
https://www.findmypast.com/starter
Also you can get 4 months of Ancestry at the moment for £20.
The main link to the offer seems to have been taken down but this one still works. Won't last long though.
https://secure.ancestry.co.uk/subscribe/signup/register/O-23302
Found it here,
http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/ancestry-4-months-premium-membership.html
This is an old thread .................
are you sure - this one seems to be dated January 2016
http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/ancestry-4-months-premium-membership.html
I overlooked the January date but all I can say is that you can definitely still purchase a four month sub for £20.