MyHeritage -- Snaps Up Geni.com

Mike Stangel
REALLY? I wouldn't have paid $600 for any membership. I bought a LIFETIME membership because is SEEMED like a great value, considering I'm not yet 40 and could imagine working on my tree for years to come.
I do thank you for the link though, I will be contacting Geni Customer Service.

Terms of Services says: "If Member has a question about a cancellation, Member should contact Geni at orders@geni.com "

Mike's link brings to: A) Comment: "If you have a question regarding Geni's premium subscriptions, please email subscriptions@geni.com" and also B) has link supposedly telling how to cancel Account - BUT if you follow it, "http://help.geni.com/entries/466686-how-do-i-cancel-my-premium-subs...; you are told: "Credit Card Users" "If you would like to cancel your subscription you may do so under ‘Account Settings’ and Geni Premium Account. There you may select 'Make changes to your Geni Pro/Plus Subscription' and then finally check the 'Yes-Cancel' box at the bottom of the page. You will then see the new expiration date on your main Geni Premium Account page. " - HOWEVER - I did this, and the ONLY thing it allows me to Cancel is the Automatic Renewal. So looks like HELP needs updating again or ???

So - We can contact Charles directly, follow what it says in Terms of Service and send e-mail to orders@geni.com or follow info in Mike's link and send e-mail to subscriptions@geni.com -- do they all go to the same place? Will one be handled differently from another?

I believe the orders email address and the subscriptions email address both go into our help desk system, which is better than just contacting Charles directly. I'd use the subscriptions email address.

I don't think this discussion is off topic at all. I'm still thinking that the pro subscription in general should be LESS money since they gave a benefit away to others for free. I'm hoping that we see a completely different membership structure once they get their feet underneath them.

Beth Marie Beeman get their feet out from under neath them? more like get their head out from under the sand!

I have a Geni Pro account and a MyHeritage account. I checked both sites and I found Geni seems to work the same for me no new search benefits. And on MyHeritage web site they say you must pay for access to get more info and do major searches; they also say each website is separate but their paid premium members can search profiles of Geni's data base. Why can we not use their major search with our pro paid account. I also thought I was buying a lifetime membership that is why I WAS a walking ad for Geni. I received the email from Geni but have not gotten any major access to MyHeritage. Unhappy was looking for better search features with the connection of both sites (not connected-only in deed or sale???) Hoping things improve soon!

Also. Did anyone notice that they are now limiting the size of the gedcom that you can download? Only 10 times the number of profiles you have added.

The change in gedcom size is here: http://help.geni.com/entries/22555371-december-6-updated-privacy-pa...

Also there is a link to a change in the statement of their Privacy Policy.
The privacy page now says "Private profiles are intended for living relatives and minors. Public profiles are intended for deceased relatives and public figures." It is not clear if Geni users can choose not to follow those intentions, or are those intentions mandatory?

Personally, I will be horrified if I can no longer make my deceased relatives private back to 3rd great-grandparent and out to 4th cousin -- especially with the policy in place allowing any Pro to edit or merge any Public Profile on the Big Tree, and given that I am attached to the Big Tree.

Question/Suggestion: Why will MyHeritage and Geni not do what other companies do and grandfather us in, consider going back to the table and working on this Please!
I agree with this post from a Geni customer. They promised us when they stopped offering Life Time Memberships that those of us who had bought Life would be grandfathered in, it would be for Life. Absolutely promised it!

Michael may I suggest your comments are not conducive to a dialogue? Should I be un-following?

I am concerned also as Eldon is about receiving money back for a purchase that is no longer the same. Once purchased a product should not change. I will be doing most of my family tree work from my personal computer via my own software. PLEASE GIVE US CHOICES OF RECEIVING OUR MONEY BACK OR GRANDFATHERING US IN WITH PRO ACCESS. I have enjoyed Geni until now.

Michael I understand your thinking but am still hopeful that something can change here.

I'm glad I downloaded my GEDCOM the other night before the change in policy.

Yes and sorry to say its seems bo be a reapeat of major changes without notification as before seems as if there is goign to be alot of unhappy GENI members again...

I have got to much work involved in my McKee, Todd, Turley, Vandeventer lines and others to fully leave but wonder just how much benifir Geni and MyHertiage is going to be. I opened a basic account and have a major problem and of course submitted a help ticket so far response has been nil only thing I know is to delte account and info and see if can do under my guest view account from another person.

By way I was excepting this buy out sooner than this after the big crash etc. etc. just took a little longer than i thought it would....

I agree that a refund does not in fact solve the problem. I'm added over 18 thousand profiles (and yes, these are manual adds, not GEDCOM imports) and I know that I won't be able to get them all out and build elsewhere since I was doing what the site promised - building the big tree. And quite frankly, that is what I want to keep doing, and yes, I did expect to be able to keep doing it as long as my interest continues. The proposed "compensation" might seem like a good deal to those who proposed it since the current dollar value is higher, but I would never buy a MyHeritage subscription, because it does not meet my needs, so to me, the compensation is not worth a single penny. Also, just because the value of something was not priced higher before does not mean you can go back and charge people more after the purchase. I am not the least bit happy and hope that Geni finds a way to give customers what was promised to them!

Private User How do we contact you directly if we're unhappy. Because I sure am!

If they want to discontinue "Lifetime Subscriptions" that is one thing, but those of us that purchased them should be grandfathered in, plain and simple!

This is bait and switch, and I cannot believe that it is legal. I did not want a MyHeritage subscription and I don't care how much it is worth. I WANT WHAT I PAID FOR!

For the ones who haven't got any e-mail regarding the Lifetime subscriptions:

"Thank you for being a loyal Geni subscriber. As you may have heard, Geni is now part of the MyHeritage family. We’re truly excited about joining forces with such a great partner and have been thrilled with the response we’ve received to this news.

As a lifetime subscriber, we have some good news and some bad news for you. The bad news is that MyHeritage doesn’t support lifetime subscriptions; we are replacing your lifetime subscription with a 5-year Geni subscription that starts today.

The good news is that we are giving you a valuable gift – a 5-year MyHeritage data subscription (a $600 value) – at no additional cost to you. With this subscription you can take full advantage of MyHeritage’s SuperSearch search engine for historical records.

Your MyHeritage data subscription has been added to the MyHeritage associated with your email address. If you have trouble logging into MyHeritage with this email address, use the "Forgot your password?" link to reset your password.

Try MyHeritage’s SuperSearch now

With SuperSearch you can search over 4 billion records including birth, marriage, death, burial, census, military, immigration, yearbooks, and newspapers. In the future, we’ll automatically notify you of historical records that match profiles in your family tree on Geni; adding these records to Geni as sources as simple as clicking a button.

Thank you again for being a loyal Geni subscriber, and we hope this gift will help you in your family history research!"

Indeed it is bad news. But I don't really understand, if Geni and MyHeritage are going to be operated as two seperate websites, why can't we stay with the old subscription system (even if free users have all the features)?

Jaak Tulp I still have not received the Lifetime "offer" email. I also wrote a private message to Private User stating the same and have not heard anything back. Very, very upset along with the other Lifetime members here at Geni.

Private User

"Indeed it is bad news. But I don't really understand, if Geni and MyHeritage are going to be operated as two seperate websites, why can't we stay with the old subscription system (even if free users have all the features)?"

What I don't get is, what good is a pro membership at all now?!? When all free members can do the same thing?

Why would they make this decision, just simply to upset everyone? Are they going to make everyone pay something at some point?

Some of you may have missed the BusinessWire release on the Geni acquisitrion:

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20121128006115/en/MyHeritage-...

It should be noted that Geni founder David Sacks along with Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) partner Adam Fisher and others sold Geni to MyHeritage, and are now members of the MyHeritage Board of Directors. Noah Tutak was a hired hand working for a privately owned company.

Jill Anne Bogdanowicz-Wilson In my view there's a difference in giving basic users more features, and in transforming a lifetime product to something very not-so-long, nearly in contrary to the product description, certainly not what I bought. In my case I'll lose nearly 60 years of my subscription. And as a student I'm can only work with genealogy periodically the next ten years, so a five year subscription is simply not interesting.

As the customer service manager I am sorry to see that some of our users are so unhappy with the email about the changes to Lifetime subscriptions.

The MyHeritage data subscriptions and historical records is one of the things we are really excited about here at Geni. Getting records for our users has been one of our biggest challenges and we are really happy to know that in the coming weeks we'll have matches to historical records and in the future they'll be able to
easily add records back to Geni profiles. Other Geni users will then be able to view those records as sources.

While we can no longer honor the lifetime subscriptions we were hoping that our users would be just as happy and excited as us about getting the data subscription. That being said if you are not satisfied then we welcome you to email us at subscriptions@geni.com so we can work with you towards a satisfactory solution

In thinking that Geni was a relatively young and successful enterprise, I naively purchased a lifetime membership without ever bothering to read a lifetime membership contract or agreement, if one even existed at the time I purchased my lifetime membership earlier this year. Perhaps we should start this discussion by determining whether an agreement or contract for lifetime memberships even existed at the time we each purchased our lifetime agreements. Hence, the Big Question -- Does anyone know if a written contract or agreement that establishes our legal rights as members exists?

OK, as i see here then this is quite typical behaviour for any company. If a customer is unhappy then you do the least to make the customer stay. I think the best solution would be that if the lifetime subscription has to be cancelled and the customer will not accept the "compensation" then Geni has to refund the unused part of the purchase. I think it is fair enough? Users should decide for themselves what they want to purchase or not. That´s my opinion, but of course everyone should decide for themselves as already said.

A lifetime membership should not have to be cancelled! A lifetime membership should be honored by the takeover company! I don't think that most lifetime members want to cancel their memberships, they just want the membership honored by the new company, My Heritage! Hence, My Heritage, in taking over Geni, should be honoring all lifetime memberships! Before being purchased by My Heritage, Geni should have assured that all of its lifetime members would continue their lifetime memberships under the new parent company!

Besides just losing money and gaining enormously on profile contribution, I truly don't understand why My Heritage does not want to honor lifetime memberships!

Special attention to definition 3:

life·time
[lahyf-tahym]
noun
1.
the time that the life of someone or something continues; the term of a life: peace within our lifetime.
2.
Physics. mean life.
3.
for the duration of a person's life: He has a lifetime membership in the organization.

And look here; David Prins gets it:

http://help.geni.com/entries/20460143-what-is-the-definition-of-lif...

And I guess Joe Rosenburg only won a 6-year membership last year. Sorry, Joe! At least you didn't pay for it!

http://www.geni.com/blog/win-a-lifetime-geni-pro-account-370946.html

Another thing I'm trying to figure out is, is there even a difference now between a basic user and a Pro? Is the functionality all the same?

Could Geni do a side-by-side infographic to better illustrate these changes?

Guess what?! I'm a Lifetime member and I didn't even receive the "offer" email. My father purchased me a Lifetime membership last year because he knew how much I enjoyed genealogy and I couldn't afford to pay monthly let alone yearly. Sadly, my father passed away this year. I know he would be upset that Geni is doing this to me. Shame on Geni!

I was told by a Geni staffer that they would try to find out what they will do about those of us who received Lifetime membership as gifts. Wow! I may get kicked twice!