General Chat

For all who have accounts in Ancestry too. An ethical shocker. If by accident a different user account, not your own, is signed in on the computer where you are accepting from, your acceptance will go to that different account. But in their system a tree invitation can only be accepted once then is gone. The acceptance of your invitation can actually go to the wrong person's account, by accident: that happens if your email but a different user account are signed in on the same computer. There is nothing to make sure it only goes to you. You don't know this danger exists before it happens. Then after it has happened, that's it, the invitation is gone.

The inviter does not know it has happened, they just think the invitation was accepted - I now realise this happened to one of my invitations. But worse than that. Not all inviters or trees display a username, so you might be left not knowing one. Then, only if you are a full paying member have you any means at all to initiate a contact. This includes if you do a member search on the inviter's real name - you can only find them if they have a public tree, and then if you find them you can't message them unless you are a paying member. But many folks who are free Ancestry users without knowing it's possible for this situation to happen, may not be able to become paying members even if they want to - because only folks with bank debit cards can do it, and nowadays it's surprising who may not have one. I have seen a bank not want to give one to an old lady with no debt history at all. You need a card even to get a 14 day free trial from Ancestry and they only let each person do that once. Anyone without a bank card, using Ancestry without knowing this can happen, could be left totally powerless to contact an inviter whose invitation has gone astray. Nor will the inviter know it has happened.

Not all inviters display a username. If you are left without a username for the inviter, their support service will go in 5 days from "if you could call us on... with the username for the owner of this tree once we verify your account details we can accept this invite for you" to "Unfortunately our privacy policy does not allow us to contact that member on your behalf nor to have the invitation resent to you". No explanation even of grounds to have such a privacy policy, when it's common sense that they have an e-address registered for every user so must be able to contact them. What sort of practice is that, capable of cruelly leave folks cut off from a warmly writing cousin who had been keen to make contact and who won't even know it happened?

All our friends and contacts using any tree sites need warning about this. Paying users of Ancestry should demand safeguards before being willing to stay with them. What service are you paying for, if this disaster can happen to your invitations and you would not know it?

Topics here recede down the list so quickly, and I would not be allowed to keep reposting it, that its content needs prompt saving and passing on by all who see it.

Maurice, You would be better posting this on the Genealogy chat board really as General chat moves faster and is probably the least relevant board for genealogy matters.