Genealogy Chat

About a week or so ago a new facility appeared on the GR homepage - Access to Britsh censuses from 1841 onward. Great but the catch was that it's user pays._ Here in Australia we're supposed to spend $10AUD to buy 50 credits that must be spent in 7days. But does anyone know how much you get for 50 credits? Before I found FreeBMD I subscribed to a similar service to get access to GRO Indexes, but we had a much longer time frame to spend them. To night I got an email from GR announcing that they had turned up a possible relative. When I clicked on the link it led straight to some 54 possibilities-all on census and each with the nag screen demanding prepayment for credits. Is this really being helpful or is it just targetted marketing of a captive clientelle ie SPAM. I regularly use our local LDS Family History Centre, partly because they have free access to Ancestry. Last week LDS received a letter from Ancestry out of the blue stating that the free access will be stopped at the end of March. To rejoin will cost $1,000. As there are some 30+ centres in australia, that's >$30,000 pa. Not to mention what they would receive from the USA, UK etc. Not a bad little earner. Seeing that the announcements on GR and Ancestry were essentially simultaneous, does anyone know if/what commercial arrangement has been made between these two near monopolies? BTW what are members in other countries being asked to pay to buy credits? Nick

50 credits cost only £5.00 GBP, and are valid for 7 days- Never bought any so dont know but BDM are free on ancestry. You need credits to access via here. Greed springs to mind

We have to pay for credits here in the UK to use the census records etc on GR.. Im not sure I would call it greed, at the end of the day they are a company, and they are not going to last long if they give things away for free. Have you not considered getting a subscription to Ancestry? I believe they do pay per view etc plus monthly and yearly ones. Alternatively if its not something that is possible for you then there are lots of kind people on here who would be willing to do lookups for you. Also ancestry offer access to the complete BMD 1837 - 2004 for free. Keep an eye out for there offers as well, quite often they do free access for x amount of days.

ancestry charges £9.95 per month to be able to access census records, bmds are free. However gr charges £9.95 per annum, so it does work out around the same. But like you say if you pay to view records on gr it runs out after 7 days, I was caught out with this and lost near enough £9.00 after buying 100 credits. I will not be doing this again!!!

I bought Family Tree Maker 2006 ....................... that gave me 90days free access to Ancestry [UK not worldwide] Yearly membership to Ancestry UK is £79.95. Worldwide membership is £199.95 When my 90days free access is up I'm going to take out a years membership ........ there's no way I can do all the research in 90days LOL .... but it gives me a good start. Angie

You can get 14 days free trial with ancestry - you have access 24/7 to all census and lots of other information. Buying credits is an expensive way to search.

GR have certainly come to an arrangement with Ancestry, but what the details are, I do not know. However, GR is a profit-making business, so they have undoubtedly pitched the price of credits at a profit level. It was only a matter of time before Ancestry closed the loopholes whereby people could access the information for free. Cut out the middleman and go staight to Ancestry - why pay anyone else (i.e.GR) to reroute you? As for the 'we have found your relative on the 1871 census' - unless your ancestor has an extremely rare surname, it just means they have found all the John Smiths, not particularly YOUR John Smith. This facility is about as useful and accurate as hot matches. OC

And isn't it interesting, OC, that they never find the one you're desperately searching for? For instance, my 3xgreat aunt, Ursula V Bowman who I couldn't find for ages until I realised her name had been mistranscribed as Wenta T Bowman on Ancestry. I would never find her with the names Genes sends to me.

Hi Nick As you live in Oz, you would not have to pay the VAT on your Ancestry sub. My years sub worked out to about £56. Terry

An annual subscription to ancestry is very good value ... especially when I have a day off work and can search and search to my heart's content ... :-)

So - even one month's sub to Ancestry at under £10 has got to be better than buying credits on GR. You can find out a lot of information in a month if you get organised. OC

One interesting fact emerges from what Ancestry are proposing to do - it gives the lie to the assumption by many people that Ancestry is the commercial arm of the LDS, does it not Liz

Liz If Ancestry isnt the commercial arm of the LDS, then I will eat my computer! The Directors of Ancestry are all LDS church members, and Ancestry's head office is in the same suite of offices as the LDS. LDS CHURCH members will no doubt be able to view Ancestry for free - just not the rest of us. OC

Yes O C - I had second thoughts about my own idea soon after I posted. It would appear logical that Ancestry would have to broadcast their intention of charging the LDS for access in order to placate the numerous people who use the LDS, and to stop them from complaining when the LDS initiate their charges. Third thought is - it is sheer greed.Do they anticipate getting membership fees for both sites? I suspect they do. Liz

Surely the intention is to stop free access to Ancestry in LDS centres..........not to start charging for using the LDS site online............. Reg

The LDS CANNOT make any charges for the information they hold on the IGI. This was one of the terms under which many C of E Bishops allowed the LDS to film records - on the solemn promise that these would not be used for 'profit making' AND that they would be freely accessible to all people, of all denominations. The LDS have kept this promise for over 100 years and if they were to break it, then that would be the end of any church organisation in the world giving them access to film and publish. The LDS will never become a fee-paying site, or organisation. Ancestry of course, have paid for the rights to publish parish records etc.to the Diocese concerned. OC

I did'nt know that the LDS accces to church records was conditional upon being non-profit making - one learns something everyday. Liz

Hi Nick, here 50 credits on GR costs £5, as has been said. Checking a census return costs 5 credits, but you have to check the name you have, followed by the rest of the household, so to get the full household, it costs 10 credits. Some things cost 3 credits - I think that might be for the original documents. All these are printable, of course. It's expensive if the names you're looking up are popular, or are the kind of names which get wrongly transcribed and you don't have enough information to make good guesses.

In view of the number of threads there have been about GR's charges, I'm surprised anyone is still using their links.................all the advice on all the threads has been to avoid using GR links as there are better, and often completely free, alternatives. Reg

Thanks to all who replied. It's a pity GR couldn't have been more up front with their charges, rather than expecting us to buy the credits before finding out the fine detail of pricing. I was wondering about the slight price advantage here vs UK-your VAT. The link between GR and Ancestry is still intriguing. A member of the LDS here once told me that the church had done a lot of the original work and that Ancestry had agreed not to charge-maybe there was a sunset clause. I believe LDS are frantically trying to put together some alternate access to other databases. I'll ask further. Thanks again too to those who have offered free access to Ancestry. Nick