General Chat

I am horrified with the new format for the same reasons that have prompted so many of you to contribute to this thread.

I emailed them almost straight away, which has led to a exchange of emails between Feedback and myself - but of no help. I am being offered somewhat patronising technical advice, while ignoring the subjects of my complaints completely.

In fact, the replies have been so off hand that I thought I must have been the only person with a complaint. Thought this morning I would look at community postings (for the first time) to see if anyone else had complaints about the new design. Surprise, Surprise!

It is hard to understand how any business in this day and age can expect to prosper without taking into account the needs and interests of its target customers. I don't think they even bothered to identify their target!

We are a pretty specialised group of people and I would guess, in the main, of a much more mature age group than those who use the Friends Reunited or Friends Reunited Dating. We have specialised needs with regard to clarity, readability and simplicity. We don't need all the bells and whistles, useless crap and garish colours which are presumed to attract the young. Our focus is on family information - pure and simple.

The site owners are running the new format in tandem in conjuction with the old. I don't think it would that difficult to allow the link to be made available to us and give us the option of using Classic View, as many other websites do.

I also agree with the poster who said that the GR powers that be wouldn't read these postings. So bombard them with emails!! Demand that they take our views and age-related disabilities into account!! If they want our money, then they have to provide the service that we want.

Let's become UsersUnited!!

It's our money that supports this site. And they need it. Friends Reunited now offers free registration - so you can send and receive messages by simply registering. Not sure about Friends Reunited Dating. But these sites must be losing subscribers to Facebook (which is no use to us, of course).

Don't give in - stand up! Email them. And if you get one of their standard replies that don't really address your concerns, email them again. And again. And again.

They will have to take notice of us at some point. Or they fold.

I find this new layout quite depressing, I usually look here to help with depression not aggrivate it .

I've sent a message to GR.

Dee x

Wombat and Ron, you have hit the nail on the head there. Any of us on this site who are employed (whether self-employed, full-time, part-time or whatever else) - and even those who aren't - know of that golden rule, "The customer is always right".

(Admittedly in my time during college as a supermarket shelf-stacker I faced customers who saw that little rule as a licence to throw tantrums and sulks that a toddler would be embarrassed about, but there is still something in it.)

If, for instance, I took some photographs for someone, sent them copies and they didn't like the results, I would consider it the very least I could do to offer to retake the shots (at a discounted rate or even for nothing if need be) in a way that made my customer happy with what I'd done.

So I am surprised, really, that so many standard replies are being sent. (When I e-mailed them listing my impressions of the changes and why I didn't like them, I got the "We are so sorry to hear you don't like . . . , however our design team have worked very hard on it" e-mail which I suspect is the standard response.) If I had a complaint from a customer and I replied with, "You asked me to do a day's shoot and I did it so you paid me, therefore you have to have what you're given" I wouldn't expect them to ever use me again.

I guess the designers are long gone, sunning themselves on a distant beach, laughing all the way to the bank. Wonder how much they got paid for causing all this chaos ???

Does anyone know how to print out a page from your tree without the green background? I'm wasting loads of green ink and it's very difficult, in fact, nigh on impossible to read!
Ann.

Hi Ann
To remove colour
tools
internet options
accessibility
tick ignore color
ok
You can reverse the process by removing the tick.
Jim

Is anyone else having problems accessing Census info. My membership ends in April and I am also thinking of not renewing. I have come to a complete standstill with tracking back any further than 1901. Now finding this a complete waste of time and money. GR have replied to my e.mail advising it's probably because I am Internet Explorer 6 rather than 7. Surely this is their problem not mine. No one asked them to change format. As was rightly said "If it ain't broke - don't fix it".

I don't access any census info through this site, as it is too expensive.
IE6 is on the way out, Vista uses IE7 and IE8 will be out next year, supposedly as will Wndows7, which won't use IE6. Try using Firefox to see if that helps, you don't have to stop using IE6, but just use Firefox for GR. It is stand alone and will not interfere with IE. It is also customizable.
See http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp for statistics on which browsers are being used.

Rosalind

Thank you very much, Jim! I appreciate that help.
Ann.

Happy New Year to you!

If you are having problems Avril perhaps some of us can help you get further back?

Sometimes a few others looking can get through a brickwall.

Good luck
Sue