General Chat

Speechless for once.

I've voiced my views on this disgraceful omission by the high heid yins at GR - several times :-| :-| :-|

Alas GR's Terms & Conditions do not permit me to to express what I really think by using a vocabulary I learned while spending several years on construction sites ;-)

Hmm.

Aren't you denying us the right to choose.

Why haven't you given us an apology/explanation on here. You have an Announcement board - why not use it!

You are denying me the right to receive information for which I have paid for - haven't I?

Hello Everyone.

Copy of my letter to GR yesterday and there reply sent at 2.56 today.

To the Management of GR and not “Support Team"

To say that I’m annoyed with you GR would be mild; I’m actually b disgusted with your attitude over the absence of The Remembrance Poppy which we wear with pride.

Our Queen was advised on security issues regarding attending The Remembrance Service at the Cenotaph this morning and declined because of what the Poppy Emblem means to her and everyone else that chooses to wear one and for this act our Queen was applauded.

You GR a family history site with Military Records available for a charge of £14.95 which is an addition to my Platinum Subscription and you could not be bothered to place a Poppy on your home page.

You say that you had to require a technical release and you had no time BUT you could have told everyone instead of members finding out from Facebook which I do not use, I’m a paid up GR member and we should of all been told.

Shame on you, I’m sure that 99.9% of GR members feel the same as I do at your lack of compassion in remembering our war dead by not displaying a Poppy, it’s not just for the Fallen but also the sale of Poppies help to give injured Service Men & Women a better life.

To wind me up even more, you sent me this morning your Nov newsletter “LETS REMEMBER TOGETHER” with a beautiful banner of Poppies across the top, are you trying to cover up your decision to give Facebook a Poppy and not GR , it will not wash with me, BUT a public apology to GR members might help.

Shaun ( a very disgruntled paid up member)



Reply at 2.56 today.
Dear Shaun

I can see that you feel strongly about this issue.


I just wanted to drop you a line to acknowledge receipt of your email.

I will write again with a more detailed response tomorrow.



With kind regards,

Nicky Doran
Head of Customers
Genes Reunited

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shaun

poppycock

Good one Ann :-D

I got the same reply as Shaun to my email of yesterday




I repeat AnnC's word .......................


POPPYCOCK!!!!!!!

The staff at GR must have thought about putting a poppy on FB so WHY NOT on here..

It's a load of BULL they are sending in the emails....

I'm even more annoyed now................I got exactly the same email today in reply to me asking them on Friday to hurry up with the poppy as they always had to be reminded. I sent the email before I found this thread.

I wonder what the "more detailed response" will be tomorrow.

I wonder why they put up a poppy last year if they don't think one is needed this year.

Kath. x

It must have taken them several days to come up with that "standard letter" to all us complainers :-)



This is the email I have just sent to Nicky in response to that "standard" reply ...............

I know it won't do any good, but ........................


Dear Nicky

You are quite correct that I feel strongly about this issue

I consider it an insult to members of GR.

I have been a subscribing member of GR since 2004, I have been angry and upset at various actions of GR at times during those 10 years, but I have never before felt so ashamed to be a member of your site.

Tomorrow IS November 11th .............. and no matter what you do in the UK, tomorrow November 11th is when we in Canada hold ALL our Remembrance Services at the local Cenotaphs in villages and towns all over the country. Tomorrow, November 11th, is when all our veterans and serving men and women parade proudly through the streets.

Princess Anne is representing the Queen at the National Cenotaph in Ottawa .............. the exact same site where an unarmed Canadian serviceman was gunned down last month while on honour guard.

Remembrance Day this year means even more than usual to Canadians of all stripes.

Personally, my grandfather and uncle both fought in WW1, and both were lucky enough to return home. I had relatives who fought in WW2, most of who were also lucky enough to return home.

Almost exactly 70 years, on Christmas Eve 1944, I was a toddler cowering in the basement of my home with my parents and grandparents as a V1 rocket landed on a row of houses approximately half-a-kilometre away ................ killing 27 people.


And you, a family genealogy site, did not have the decency to put a poppy on your Home Page ............ something that you have done in the past.

Are you surprised??

There are members who are even more angry than I am.

I will wait to see what "more detailed response" you will provide tomorrow.


Hoping


--------


I couldn't decide how to end it ......................... "with best regards" or similar just felt soooo wrong!

I decided to leave it with the single word "Hoping"

Hello Everyone.
Thought you would like to see email from GR.
Will be replying to it later in the day.

Dear Shaun


I‘d like to apologise for the unintended offence our omission to add a poppy emblem to our website has caused.

We concentrated on including poppies and paying tribute to our fallen heroes on our newsletter and our Facebook page this year and, quite honestly, had not anticipated the disappointment of not also including the poppy emblem on the Genes Reunited website would cause.

By the time that we realised our mistake, we were too late to make a technical release to our website. We can see by the reaction to this news on our community boards that some of our members have found this difficult to understand but I can assure you that it is the true position.
As a longstanding company, we greatly value the support of our members and it was clearly in our interest to resolve this issue so believe me when I say that if we could have added a poppy to the website late last week or even early this week, we would have done so.


Rest assured that this has made us look at this differently and you can be sure that poppy emblem will be returning to the Genes Reunited website in November next year.

I do hope that the length and detail of my personal response has demonstrated how seriously I have taken your email.

With kind regards


Nicky Doran
Head of Customer Services

In my view there should have been no need for apologies.The poppy logo should never have been omitted.
I have been a member now for more than 7 years & there has always been a poppy.
Why not this year which is arguably the most important so far.
What sort of people are running this site???

The poppies have now gone from the FB page.

Does that mean that the Genes FB page is run from the otherside of the world where it is already tomorrow ( Wednesday). ;-)

I got the same email as Shaun :-)




As to why this year was difference ..................




IMHO, it was because Phil Moir and Estelle are no longer associated with GR, and thus we have lost the people who really cared about the site and the members.

My reply to the above email.

Dear Nicky,

Thank you for your reply to this unthinkable behaviour by your employers BUT although you are Head of Customer Services I do not think you or the genes support team should be having the buck past to you; to apologies, when it’s the managers and directors place.

I’m sorry if I come over rude but it is not directed at you, I do not wish to know about Paying Tribute on Facebook because I subscribe to GR and for the 100th Remembrance Day there should have been a Poppy on the home page of this site and there’s no getting away from it.

The build up to this year’s 100th Remembrance of the Fallen has been in the making for most of the year with press releases and coverage from the national news; I assumed that GR was going to make it a special day for Genes Reunited Subscribers but they decided to ignore us and concentrated on covering it on Facebook although they had probably decided to do this months ago, we should have been told as we are paying members to this site.

The Managing Directors of this site who have made these decisions should put an apology either on general chat or announcements board instead of hiding in the back ground and expect you to do the apologising for them.

But sadly because of the attitude and blatant refusal by the senior management of this site to do the honourable thing by apologising to your members for not Honouring the Memory of The Fallen Men & Women on this 100th Remember ace Day I will not be renewing my subscription .

Thank you again for your correspondence.
Shaun

and this is the response I have just sent back to Nicky

I had to wait until after the morning Remembrance Services here were over before I could think what to say


Dear Nicky

The omission of the poppy on the GR site was definitely offensive to a lot of people .......... and I know of at least one person who has said they will not be renewing their subscription because of it.

It was unnecessary .......... and most certainly not understandable to most of us.

Why on earth would you have "concentrated on including poppies and paying tribute to our fallen heroes on our newsletter and our Facebook page this year"??

Those of us who pay subscriptions to post and help on your own main site, are the ones who have helped to make GR's name over the years, we are the ones that you cite as your "wonderful members" who are so helpful, we are the ones that you use at WDYTYA time in London .................. and you never "thought" that it would cause offense???

It is, of course, made much, much worse by the fact that this is the 100th year since the beginning of WW1 .................... and somebody in your company never "thought" that omitting the poppy on your subscription site would cause "offense"?? That "somebody" had time to work out all the details of several different postings and tributes on FB, but not on how to put one little poppy on your main site, when strangely, somebody else was able to do that in previous years??

I'm sorry, but that person should be fired!!!


As for the "I do hope that the length and detail of my personal response has demonstrated how seriously I have taken your email" closing paragraph ................ I know of at least 2 other people who have received the exact same email ........

........... so it is hardly a "personal response" to me is it?

Rest assured that your offence of omission this year will take a long, long time for me to forget ................ and I am sure that many, if not all, of the other members who have been so upset will be watching very carefully next year. If, that is, we are still members of GR, and if GR is still in existence as a separate site.


I do know that you are only the frontline person who is taking the flack for this ........... I am assuming that the "somebody" responsible for the terrible decision is somewhat higher up than you.

I do however hope that you are passing on all this information to those in management.



Sincerely

Sylvia xxxxxxxx
Member since April 2004

No time?

November 11 happens every year. It's on the calendar.

It was a conscious decision.............NOT an oversight.

today's email


I think they really did not appreciate what a mistake they were making, nor what a hornet's nest it would raise.

-------

Thank you for your email Sylvia

I can see from this and your posts on our community boards, what an emotive subject this is for you.

As acknowledged in my previous email, we have made a real error of judgement in not adding a poppy emblem to the website.
I have been part of the Genes Reunited management team since the website was launched and I had truly not envisaged the reaction to us not adding a poppy emblem to our website.
We spent a lot of time writing and producing our Remembrance Day newsletter to honour our fallen heroes but should have also planned a website release to add the poppy emblem which has been used in previous years.

Sylvia, I know that you are a longstanding customer of ours and that You & I have previously corresponded on various issues. Please be assured that all of your feedback has been read by our whole management team and the seriousness of our mistake has been recognised.

If we could go back and do things differently, we would of course, have added a poppy to the website. As it stands, all I can do is assure you again that there will not be a repeat of this mistake next year.

That just leaves me to thank you again for your continued interest in and support for Genes Reunited Sylvia, it is very much appreciated.


With kind regards,

-----

My renewal due in Jan - after last year's upset - different rates for members and nothing but important issues (to members) being ignored, really is it worth renewing?

Years ago there used to be numerous pages posted in an evening - nowadays lucky if there is a second one. :-( :-(