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Should I bite the bullet - a MyHeritage dilemma

Bob Spiers

Bob Spiers

LostCousins Superstar
Those who have been Forum members for a time know I have had nothing good to say about MyHeritage. So bad was my experience when I was a member (early 2000's) that I vowed never to touch them again. I won't go into detail this time round as I have posted before on what led me to this conclusion.

But things move on and although I do not have a subscription I have my Ancestry DNA results lodged with MyH and I keep getting 'Smart matches' for my own and my wife's DNA. Most never get past first base (given my way of working) but I have to date had two very good contacts. Subscribers can contact me and I can reply to their messages. I have to admit I am handicapped in not having a subscription as I often need to contact them.

To cap it all one MyH contact is enamoured with their photo feature enhancements (I think called Deep Nostalgia and MyHeritage in Color). I can only access these with a subscription. Then bottom line they are offering me a 66% (yes sixty six percent) 12 month discount offer to take up their 'Complete Plan' which covers everything.

So cutting it short -a rarity for me - is anyone a full time subscriber to MyHeritage, what are their views on it's Data Base - I am not interested in their their DNA side - and is it worth adding to my subscriber list, which currently is Ancestry & FMP. Thank you.
 
I have the same views Bob, they want money for everything. I don't find their family tree side very good but I have uploaded my DNA there when it was free. I wouldn't join again.
 
Bob Spiers said:
bottom line they are offering me a 66% (yes sixty six percent) 12 month discount
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I only got an offer of 50% off from Myheritage!
Then today I got an offer from FTDNA for 55% off Myheritage Complete Plan - so it's going up.
Maybe tomorrow I will get the same offer as Bob.
I too wondered about it, but was put off by Bob's previous experience.
 
Katie Bee said:
I only got an offer of 50% off from Myheritage!
Then today I got an offer from FTDNA for 55% off Myheritage Complete Plan - so it's going up.
Maybe tomorrow I will get the same offer as Bob.
I too wondered about it, but was put off by Bob's previous experience.
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Yes a better offer will be forthcoming I am sure. I heard again from MyH again yesterday. Clearly they knew I had taken the offer to the point where the next step would have been acceptance but held back so they emailed: "Hi Robert, we noticed that you were interested in purchasing a Complete plan for Spiers Web site. great choice...." (then going through the advantages all over again).

I am pretty sure I will not take up the MyH offer, which I know will upset one of my two MyH contacts (R). He does not have, and tells me he cannot afford an Ancestry subscription and I think his MyH was gifted to him by family. Believe it or not he will be 90 this year. He had been over the moon to discover a DNA match having only recently learned his father (previously unknown*) had been a Spiers; my second cousin, once removed. I had not fully researched the common ancestor, but did so hand in hand with J. Piece by piece - pooling his knowledge and my research - I helped track down this mysterious absentee father and reveal further relationships and a final bigamous marriage.

Short history:
*R was born out of wedlock his father(J) having been a Lodger with his widowed Mother. R was given his mother's surname. J was a married man and had left his wife. He moved away before R was born and into further unmarried relationships whilst his wife, still living, had reported his disappearance. I finally discovered him via the 1939 Register in a town 100 or so miles away, the same occupation and birth date and a (almost certainly) a bigamous relationship. (R actually uncovered the marriage himself). His father died in 1956; his first wife lived on to 1987 and his bigamous wife to 1995. His mother died in 1984.

J has come to terms with the full story eager to learn so late in the day what had happened to his father. We now swap emails and I look up things for him when he asks. It is just a shame that the pleasure it has given me to find J (and as I said one other although far less problematic) will not overcome my reluctance to take on a MyH subscription.
 
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I too keep getting "smart matches" from MH but each one I check gives me no information that I can use so I just ignore them. Not having a name for my paternal grandfather, nor any hope of ever learning it, means all these matches are of no help. I scroll down and see no familiar names so just delete the message. I already pay for Ancestry and FMP; when I did have a subscription for MH I learned nothing.
 
canadianbeth said:
I too keep getting "smart matches" from MH but each one I check gives me no information that I can use so I just ignore them.
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If I was to keep statistics -which I don't but from memory - 5 out of 10 will be from US based contacts and I rarely if ever even find a surname that I recognise (and by this I mean from my Tribal Pages name index) and even then will like be Smith, or given a recognisable surname but no matching first name, and most likely data eras will be wrong.

The remainder will be UK based but the same rarely a matching surname, wrong date eras. But they all get fair scrutiny, before abandoning. Then of course -as you will see from the above posting - a UK based contact not only shows my own surname, but on closer inspection of his Tree - a match with my own. Bingo. I have had two such in the 2/3 years MyH have had my DNA, The other contact was a more distant relationship, but quite worthy of following up.

But joining MyH (again) - no sir, or madam.
 
I have a slightly different issue with MyH. I have uploaded my own DNA there and also a relative's DNA. The issue is that although I can see everything I want to with regard to my own DNA, I can't see very much information about my relative's DNA matches unless I make a payment of about £35. Does anyone know whether this £35 is a one-off payment and whether it will give me the same access to my relative's DNA results as to my own? I am currently stuck with the half of my relative's tree that they don't share with me and have everything crossed that the 1921 census might help with this. So, waiting a few months might make the access much more useful if it is time limited. Meanwhile, though, it is increasingly frustrating that I can't see my relative's shared matches to my other confirmed relatives - not only for me but for my other relatives too!
 
Sue_3 said:
Does anyone know whether this £35 is a one-off payment
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That's how I've seen it described by in the past.
Sue_3 said:
whether it will give me the same access to my relative's DNA results as to my own?
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Presumably you uploaded your own DNA when there was a free offer? In that case it should put your relative in the same situation.

Am I right in thinking that you and your relative originally tested at Ancestry? If so I'm not sure you're going to learn much at MyHeritage - although they have a reasonable DNA database it's not integrated with family trees in the way that Ancestry's is.

But if one or both of you didn't test with Ancestry you'd probably do better putting the £35 towards that.
 
peter said:
That's how I've seen it described by in the past.

Presumably you uploaded your own DNA when there was a free offer? In that case it should put your relative in the same situation.

Am I right in thinking that you and your relative originally tested at Ancestry? If so I'm not sure you're going to learn much at MyHeritage - although they have a reasonable DNA database it's not integrated with family trees in the way that Ancestry's is.

But if one or both of you didn't test with Ancestry you'd probably do better putting the £35 towards that.
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Yes, I tested with Ancestry and asked my relative to do an Ancestry test as well, which I paid for and manage. I uploaded both my DNA and my relative's to MyHeritage (as well as to several other sites) and without having to pay. However, I cannot see any details of my relative's shared matches on MyHeritage.

Although I do agree with you that MyHeritage has much less to offer in some ways, it so happens that we have a number of fairly close cousins who have tested at MyHeritage and whose DNA is not in the Ancestry database (as well as others, like us, who have tested with Ancestry and also uploaded to MyHeritage). This means that I am finding it very helpful to be able to identify my shared matches at MyHeritage, some of them being long lost cousins who have been very willing to collaborate and others being people who are also in other DNA databases - including Ancestry - but who either I don't have a match with there or who don't have any trees there but do have them on MyHeritage.

I know that there are more 'false positive' matches on MyHeritage, but I have also found some who are just distant cousins where the paper trail clearly supports the link, but either their DNA isn't on Ancestry or, because it's below the 20 cM range on Ancestry, the shared matches don't show up there. Hence my frustration - which is shared by some of my other cousins - that I have no way to see anything much about my relative's matches on MyHeritage. We want to know more about the matches they share with me and currently it's a locked door. This is why I want to pay the £35 and I just wanted to be sure that I wasn't going to be disappointed, either by the amount of data I can access or by getting another bill later.

As before, the only reason to delay would be if the access was time limited / required a further charge at a later date - as that might make it better to wait until the 1921 census is available.
 
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I still haven't paid the £35 for full access to my cousin's DNA matches, but I probably will, as and when it becomes a priority. Since my last post on this topic I complained to MyH about something else and as they couldn't fix the problem I had they gave me a month of free full access, which gave me enough time to answer my most immediate questions about my cousin's DNA. I am only interested in the DNA information as they don't seem to have any records I need that aren't already included in one of my other subscriptions or freely available elsewhere. That might be different for other people, depending on their specific interests and which other subscriptions they have.
 
Bringing this posting up to date, I have had no less than 5 reminders from MyH of their 70% offer. I know the last 3 reminders were prompted when they detected I had 'opened' the offer email. I should have realised from this happening on other (none MyH) occasions when tempted to explore offers further; such activity can be detected. Even if I had been tempted the words - will auto renew (at of course the true cost) were enough to stop me in my tracks. I am aware that there are ways to cancel this happening, but - just as before - I will not be taking up their offer despite the temptation of an 'all in' subscription only costing £69.

Have others been tempted?
 
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