I would love to try Geni Pro to be able to make use of Smart Matches from MyHeritage. What I would like to know, if i subscribe for a year and make use of smart matches to link people into my family tree, what happens if I then cancel my Geni Pro subscription after a year? Does all that info stay linked or am I forced to keep paying?
13 comments
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Mitchell Louis Krog Please can anybody answer this as I cannot email Geni support without first subscribing to Geni Pro.
If I subscribe for a year, even 2 years and use all the smart matching features to build my tree further, what happens if I should then cancel 2 years later. Does all that information stay linked or does it get taken away from me when I unsubscribe?
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STEPHEN Eduard Suess I subscribed to GENU Pro and frankly I haven't a clue what it gives me. I do get smart matches but most come from MyHeritage (which owns GENI) and they dole out a tiny bit of information, but if you want more you have to subscribe to them (another $120) and then you get hooked into looking things up and then you realize you only get a little bit and they want another $100 to look up more and even after that there are more "levels" of "expert search" you can do for more money... Seems rather endless... and yes, frustrating. So if you really want to know - be prepared to spend several hundred $'s a year. My suggestion is to do it for a year and get ALL your searching done in that year and then drop it....
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Mitchell Louis Krog Thanks so much for the reply Steven, I figured as much but so glad you were willing to share your experiences with me. I will probably go with it paid for a few months and collect the data I need and then cancel again. Have some loose ends to tie up on our family tree. Much obliged. Have a great day.
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Clifton Jeffrey Walton, Mr. Pretty sure I've been scammed. I've got no service for my money!
I subscribed as a Pro member but I can’t get access to any smart matches or documents, I just get diverted to MyHeritage it wants me to pay another subscription to view them. I don't even get the tiny bit of information as above.
I uploaded my DNA results from Ancestry.com and the status just says “will be processed soon”
I logged a help ticket and haven’t had a response.
So I am not even getting the priority help that is listed as a Pro member benefit.
I’ll give it a few more days only and will report it as a scam with ACCC.
But I am pretty sure I've just blown $150.
DO NOT SUBSCRIBE
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Jeff, Geni Curator Clifton, Geni Pro does not give you access to Smart Matches or Record Matches - that's a MyHeritage Data subscription. Please look at what a Geni Pro subscription provides you: https://help.geni.com/hc/en-us/articles/229706367-What-are-the-benefits-of-a-Geni-Pro-membership-
Geni Pro provides access to Tree Matches, which are matches to other Geni profiles. It's a power user tool, not a research tool. Smart Matches and Record Matches are for research and require a data subscription from MyHeritage. https://help.geni.com/hc/en-us/articles/229707427-What-is-a-MyHeritage-Data-subscription-
This is all in the FAQ.
As for DNA, that's not a pro feature, but they are still working on the parser for Ancestry. It's not broken - it will be processes when they complete the parser.
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Lisa Leone Anderson Jeff, How does one access the 'enhanced search' that is a 'feature' of the Pro membership? Just listing the features does nothing. The support feature is mainly useless--I have checked many questions and they were never answered. I do not see that I am getting anything from my Pro membership that is of any value. It all seems like a giant scam to me. I paid for the year so I guess I am stuck but I STRONGLY recommend to anyone NOT to buy the Pro membership.
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Iris Heltne I am commenting here because I have a similar problem. It has been 8 months since I cancelled my pro-membership. I still get the same pretty much daily smart-match (ha-ha, we know something you don't) irritating emails that made me cancel geni in the first place, and I still get no geni-match suggestions, just as before. I will not renew my geni membership until geni starts sending me geni-suggestions, and pigs will fly before I PAY for MH. They are annoying enough when they don't take my money!
And to the main question above here, absolutely nothing changed in geni when I cancelled, apart from the logo by my name, that no longer reads "pro", now it reads "basic", and the "upgrade-button" is bright green. :-) -
Lisa Leone Anderson Thanks, Iris! I feel the same as you. Did you cancel before your renewal date? If so, did you get a pro-rated refund? I just joined and don't feel the paid upgrade is worthwhile.
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Iris Heltne I just cancelled my bank withdrawal so they couldn't automatically take the money out of my account like the year before. I didn't find the "cancel my pro-membership-button"... They sent me a few(!!!) payment-reminders.
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Mitchell Louis Krog So glad I asked this question and thank you all for your answers, I certainly won't be paying for any pro subscription whatsoever.
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Pamela Jordan Steward I'm finding it very difficult to find my way round the Geni site. I paid a subscription last week for a year and now I really wish I hadn't. My tree is spoilt by people adding wrong family members to it. I didn't know it was going to be like this. I've read since that you don't own your tree anymore as it belongs to anybody. How can this be? Somebody else has nicked all my 22 photos to put them on their own tree. I have no idea who this person is but its so rude to just take them without asking me first. I can't see the point of this site. If Geni and My Heritage are amalgamated why do we have to pay subscriptions for each site? The more I log on to Geni the more frustrated I get and even more angry!!!!
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Lisa Leone Anderson I share your frustration to some extent, Pamela. I save any photos I find online and have used them on trees and saved to my computer in case Geni/Ancestry dissolve. Others have used photos I have put on websites or Facebook. As long as they are using them for a legit purpose I am not upset about it and it did not occur to me that someone else would be upset if we are all working on genealogy. I think it's very misleading that the sites that are owned as one "corporation" are not more truthful about what we get by subscribing. I agree with others who have said join for a year and get all you can and then quit. That is what I will be doing because I feel I was mislead when I upgraded to paid memberships. I have received very little for my money. The BEST part for me is finding cousins and being able to be Facebook friends with them and get to know them and in a few cases I have met them in person and I love that. I am not going to rely on any website to "store" my info--I am putting it all in Excel and will have it if the websites run themselves out of business with their greed! :)
I just went to see your tree, to see if we are related, and I see that your tree is private and I am always disappointed when a tree is not public. I may be in the minority but I feel there is much less chance of finding relatives without a public tree and I have been so grateful for the help of family members I did not even know existed before I got involved in Genealogy. -
Clifton Jeffrey Walton, Mr. There seems to be a common thread of disappointment with services provided over a long period of time by a lot of people without any change to the way business is occurring. A lot of misleading information is given out to get people to pay out money. I can only guess that Geni still engage in 'less than full disclosure' tactics because they are making money from it. I must admit that I did get a full refund without any difficulties when I complained but I have also reported Geni and other genealogy sites to the ACCC here in Australia because at the bare minimum, it is not clear upfront to many people the service they will be getting when we pay our money and additional costs that may occur and do occur almost immediately when you try to compare a smart match given to you. My complaint is only one, but if enough people submit official complaints in writing to the Consumer Affairs watchdog in their country, then sooner or later, questions will be asked about how these people do business.
Another word of advice - DO NOT PAY FOR A DNA TEST WITH ANYONE - they do not disclose ethnicity - they are a bigger disappointment than any of this - all these new pay for fee DNA matches only tell you if you are related to other people that have also paid for a DNA match and have agreed to have their results used. The claims some of them are making about tracing your family back "thousands of years" is completely false. Unless a thousand year old person offers up their DNA for testing and signs the release of information, you will not be DNA matched against them!
All these people discussing this topic, please, please, please, put your complaints in writing to your local Consumer Affairs Watchdog.