On 18/04/2026 7:10 am, J. P. Gilliver wrote:[]
By no means exclusive to telecomm.s! The odd time I decide to buy a
year's Ancestry, the process (I always do it by 'phone, more chance
of offers) always ends with "anything else I can do for you?" to
which my reply is always "yes - cancel the sub. you've just set up
for me". I get the year I've paid for - but that's the only way to
turn off auto-remew. (OK, I can do it any time during the year, but
_I_ have to do it. So I do it on signup. No, there's definitely no
"loyalty discount" on renewal, unlike FindMyPast - if anything,
there's likely to be a rise.)
John, when your (cancelled) year runs out, can you then re-subscribe and
pick up (last years) Family Tree .... or do you have to start from
scratch again??
I do my Family Tree stuff on Tribalpages.com
I would have thought whatever portion of that months payment
remains gets credited towards the Annual Fee.
So if monthly fee was $30 and annual fee was $250, if customer
were halfway through the month, create a $15 credit on annual
account, then require $235 payment.
Something like that.
Many companies don't, though.
Or don't the companies tell "their" operators that they can??
The worst (though I _think_ it has been stamped on) is where there
are two parts to the contract (e. g. 'phones and broadband),
I still have a landline phone and my Internet connects wirelessly to the
box the hangs off my wall socket and feed the phone.
For a long time I would get a text/email from my landline phone company telling me that my phone credit had fallen below $10 so they were going
to automatically deduct $10 from my bank account/credit card to boost my balance.
Can't say I've received such a text/email in quite a time (twelve
months or more). I rarely actually use the Landline phone as a phone
.... just Internet ... which I pay about $40 a month for.
they stagger the expiry dates (e. g. one for 12 one for 18 months),Sound reasonably .... but how about some Customer Loyalty bonuses
but the price they give you is discounted when you take both from the
same company. Thus stopping one when it ends means the remaining one
goes up in price, possibly to more than the combined was, and there's
an early termination fee.
In fact, by contract or other requirements, a new plan signupWhy have a gap?? Surely that might incite the Customer to go
after cancelling an existing contract may have a waiting period
for the same person or residence - e.g. end of billing cycle, one
month or longer(3 months) after the end of the current billing
cycle.
looking elsewhere.
Partly, to stop people taking advantage of "new customer" offers by
cancelling existing. Again, I _think_ there are moves to stamp on
over-discounted "new customer" offers.
instead??
(SGB added)
On 2026/4/18 15:17:15, Daniel70 wrote:
On 18/04/2026 7:10 am, J. P. Gilliver wrote:[]
By no means exclusive to telecomm.s! The odd time I decide to buy a
year's Ancestry, the process (I always do it by 'phone, more chance
of offers) always ends with "anything else I can do for you?" to
which my reply is always "yes - cancel the sub. you've just set up
for me". I get the year I've paid for - but that's the only way to
turn off auto-remew. (OK, I can do it any time during the year, but
_I_ have to do it. So I do it on signup. No, there's definitely no
"loyalty discount" on renewal, unlike FindMyPast - if anything,
there's likely to be a rise.)
John, when your (cancelled) year runs out, can you then re-subscribe and
pick up (last years) Family Tree .... or do you have to start from
scratch again??
Yes, they retain your data (so far, anyway) - you can even access it
with a free "guest" account (you just can't access _other_ records); I
think they realised that if they ditched all the data of anyone who took
a break, nobody would come back, or at least a large enough proportion wouldn't.
I do my Family Tree stuff on Tribalpages.com
I wouldn't keep my master tree on _any_ company's site (Ancestry,
FindMyPast, My Heritage, ...) - both _in case_ they decided to lose it,
and because you could only access it while still paying (apart from
limited "guest" type access if any); I keep my master tree on this
computer, backed up once a week and month in various ways. I do upload a _copy_ (a GedCOM) every few years, but even that's a pain: if you use
(say) Ancestry's feature to link people in it to (say) records or
photos, there's no way to transfer those links to a new tree you upload (other than manually, which isn't practical if your tree is big [mine's
77xx people after 40+ years, and that's quite small as I only add what
I'm fairly sure of; some people have ones many times that]).
I would have thought whatever portion of that months payment
remains gets credited towards the Annual Fee.
So if monthly fee was $30 and annual fee was $250, if customer
were halfway through the month, create a $15 credit on annual
account, then require $235 payment.
Something like that.
Many companies don't, though.
Or don't the companies tell "their" operators that they can??
There's always _some_ latitude allowed to the operators, but it's fairly strictly controlled.
The worst (though I _think_ it has been stamped on) is where there
are two parts to the contract (e. g. 'phones and broadband),
I still have a landline phone and my Internet connects wirelessly to the
box the hangs off my wall socket and feed the phone.
For a long time I would get a text/email from my landline phone company
telling me that my phone credit had fallen below $10 so they were going
to automatically deduct $10 from my bank account/credit card to boost my
balance.
Can't say I've received such a text/email in quite a time (twelve
months or more). I rarely actually use the Landline phone as a phone
.... just Internet ... which I pay about $40 a month for.
they stagger the expiry dates (e. g. one for 12 one for 18 months),Sound reasonably .... but how about some Customer Loyalty bonuses
but the price they give you is discounted when you take both from the
same company. Thus stopping one when it ends means the remaining one
goes up in price, possibly to more than the combined was, and there's
an early termination fee.
In fact, by contract or other requirements, a new plan signupWhy have a gap?? Surely that might incite the Customer to go
after cancelling an existing contract may have a waiting period
for the same person or residence - e.g. end of billing cycle, one
month or longer(3 months) after the end of the current billing
cycle.
looking elsewhere.
Partly, to stop people taking advantage of "new customer" offers by
cancelling existing. Again, I _think_ there are moves to stamp on
over-discounted "new customer" offers.
instead??
I guess they find they get enough retention through lethargy (especially where automatic renewal is involved) that it would not be cost-effective.
At least UK legislation a few years ago made it compulsory for them to
show you what last year cost, in the renewal notice; I'm not sure if
that only applies to car insurance, though.
On 18/Apr/26 17:18, J. P. Gilliver wrote:[]
At least UK legislation a few years ago made it compulsory for them to
show you what last year cost, in the renewal notice; I'm not sure if
that only applies to car insurance, though.
Well worth signing up with one of the European Ancestry web sites, e.g.
DE, FR. Worldwide membership is a lot less than the standard UK site
cost and your subscription is valid to log in on the UK site
(Windows 10 removed from followups)
On 2026/4/19 20:21:8, john wrote:
On 18/Apr/26 17:18, J. P. Gilliver wrote:[]
At least UK legislation a few years ago made it compulsory for them to
show you what last year cost, in the renewal notice; I'm not sure if
that only applies to car insurance, though.
Well worth signing up with one of the European Ancestry web sites, e.g. DE, FR. Worldwide membership is a lot less than the standard UK site
cost and your subscription is valid to log in on the UK site
Interesting; thanks. I've occasionally wondered about trying to sign up
to the offers lostcousins mentioned, but they're usually US, Canadian,
.au, or .nz; hadn't thought of .de or .fr . How much less?
On Sun, 19 Apr 2026 21:14:21 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver"[]
Interesting; thanks. I've occasionally wondered about trying to sign up
to the offers lostcousins mentioned, but they're usually US, Canadian,
.au, or .nz; hadn't thought of .de or .fr . How much less?
Saw the discussion and checked - 6 months worldwide - Ancestry.uk
GBP99.99, Ancestry.fr EUR59, local library if you are lucky, GBP0.00
I can get to a library that still offers access.
A different John
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