I do love ancestry.com. I credit the website for getting my research off of the ground and providing me with well over half of my source material. That being said, their customer service is horrible. They never check their own bulletin board system. The comments on their blog are an unmanaged mess. When I asked the genealogy community for some ancestry.com advice on Twitter, I received a trite reply from @ancestrydotcom directing me to their customer service. So after months of no leads, I decided to take the tweeted advice and email customer service. Here is my email, regarding an Italian collection that was added earlier this year...
Earlier this year a new collection was added, Potenza, Basilicata, Italy, Civil Registration Records, 1861-1938. This was an exciting addition for my research. However, the village in Potenza from which I have ancestors, Bella, only has records dating back to 1923 and only death (morti) records. This is a quarter century after my ancestors left.
My questions are;
Are there more records for the village of Bella than what has been added to the collection so far?
Do the older records, marriage, etc exist?
Does Ancestry.com have the rights to them?
What would be the time frame to see additions to this collection?
Is there someone that works at Ancestry.com that oversees this collection or collections of Italian records that I could be put in contact with?
Thanks!
Seems like some fairly straight forward questions. Perhaps, it is crossing a line to involve a content manager with what they consider a customer service issue, but I have seen some ancestry employees interact with the general public in non-ancesty venues.
Anyway, here is their reply;
Dear Tony,
We appreciate your message.
Ancestry.com is constantly undertaking projects to add new site content in order to help you to be successful with your family history research. However, at times various issues cause these projects to be rescheduled or reprioritized. If you wish to keep informed about new content being added to Ancestry.com or submit feedback regarding Ancestry.com content, you can visit the Ancestry.com Blog at http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/category/ancestry-com/content/.
If there is anything else with which we might assist you, please let us know.
Susanne
Member Solutions
Ancestry.com
Thanks for the canned response that answered... how many was it?... oh yeah... ZERO of my questions!
Taneya
Amy Lee
I know it was frustrating for you, but so glad to see I'm not alone. At one point customer service had the nerve to verbally over the phone to tell me I had major errors in my tree... Though I heavily document well beyond the point of proof... I still pay my membership & keep coming back, because lets face it...where else am I gonna go to go d records? However, their customer service could use a dose of bedside manners, & a lot of training seminars!
ooooh -- i hate customer service responses like this! how frustrating when they don't answer your questions. It's also bad when they give you incorrect information. I unfortunately had an encounter with one of the well known genealogy libraries just yesterday that was less than optimal.
Replyuggh..