Stupid Ancestry hint

[MollyC]

Which is why subscribers rightly expect the person who picks up the Ancestry phone to be on top of that, not trailing along with the rest of the "anything goes" group.

[coombs]

And then someone else who received this hint says "yep, that nonsense checks out" and adds it, so the algorithm gives itself a pat on the back.

Yes like they have traced back to a John and Elizabeth Smith who lived in rural Somerset in the early 1800s and there is a burial flagged up on the Ancestry hints of an Elizabeth Smith in rural Norfolk in 1810, and a note says "Wife of John", and they think "Yes she must have died in Norfolk then".

[Siely]

I had several strange hints including a High Sheriff of Nottingham, Essex Lords / Knights and Mary Tudor !

(John Hacker followed his father as High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire for 1674)

No explanation was forthcoming, I closed my account.

[Forfarian]

Ancestry isn't interested in providing accurate information. Only in exploiting other people's "research", no matter how inaccurate, for its own profit. But that so-called hint takes the biscuit.

[andrewalston]

I provided appropriate feedback for my phone conversation, explaining that gaslighting was inappropriate, and that retraining about the real world (besides customer service) might be necessary.

A week later, I disconnected this Iris Spencer from the tree, being replaced by an Iris who had a matching 1939 Register record (found using FindMyPast), marriage and death entries.

The stupid hint remained for a further 10 days, but now the offender has hints which relate to my other Iris.

I have still to receive an email allowing me to submit technical details. In fact the only emails have been those promoting their DNA product.

[coombs]

Often we can hit brickwalls in the 1800s and early 1900s, so imagine how it will be in the 1700s or before where records get more sparse. Many famous people of the time cannot be traced before they became famous, or their first marriage. Yet many will just accept Ancestry hints and think it solves the mystery, whether in the 1500s or 1900s.