RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: issi on Wednesday 30 October 24 23:50 GMT (UK)
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Hi, I'm wondering about subscribing to billiongraves for a short while as they've hidden their images behind a paywall. I've seen some people's bad experiences about trying to unsubscribe from them. Does anyone else have any good/bad experiences of unsubscribing from them? Are they ok, or should I avoid?
Many thanks for any help.
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Hi,
There is no need to pay, take out a paid sub to see the images.
I transcribe for them. If you volunteer to transcribe ,(or if you want to just take photos and upload them) you earn points for every one you transcribe , when you reach a certain number , you can use these points to have a sub account to view the paywall records for free. Although I have never felt the need to use , activate my accumulated points
I am just looking at my last email from them, as I haven't been actively transcribing for a couple of months ,.since August by the looks.of it:
" Congratulations you have earned 1 free months subscription to BG Plus for transcribing 1223 pictures in August 2024. To activate your free month"
That may seem like a lot of transcriptions within a month, but it's not really - as many of those are just me reading through already transcribed graves ( they need to be double checked by more than 1 person to be submitted ), ticking the transcriptions if correct , and altering some of them when they are incorrect. Although, I did transcribe an entire cemetery once that I noticed in the menu that hadn't been transcribed by anyone , (you can chose which cemetery to transcribe), it is a small local cemetery near my father-in laws home. It was pretty easy to transcribe that particular lot as most of the graves were pretty new and very easy to read. What was interesting with that one ,I kept coming across many people my hubby once knew
( they were elderly people when he was a child ).
Regarding if is it easy to unsubscribe from them, it should be, but I've never felt the need to delete my account with them as they're not a spammy company, and Ive never needed a paid sub.
You can take out a paid sub, but why do that when you can get it for free if you volunteer?
Kind regards :)
PS
Excuse all the typo's in my reply lol ;D.I.am typing on my phone
edited to add this:
PPS. I've just googled the reviews to see what problems that some.people may be having with them. ( as I've never had any problems with them at all)
It seems most of the bad reviews are about paying for a sub and them taking money out every month , like said above if you transcribe you do not need to pay for
their sub account to view the records . Some of the review's say they are inundated with spam from them, not true- well not true in my own experience as I have never received any spammy emails from them full stop, I had to go back to last August in my emails to find one of their very few emails from them.
Kind regards
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Hi, thank you for this reply. I've been looking but haven't found anything saying how many points you get for a transcription, and how many you need to be able to view an image?
I did look at transcribing a stone (4-sided memorial) but it had multiple surnames and it wasn't clear who had which surname at times (like a son having a different surname than his parents), and I couldn't see how to relate someone on it to someone not buried there who I'd already added as a parent to one of the other names, and then my work ended up in 2nd pass when I navigated away and I couldn't find how to demote it back to 1st pass. Wish there were some examples one could work through and then compare results to see what was wrong.