Nice to see someone offering a suggestion.

I do agree that it would be nice if Ancestry rewarded loyal customers. Perhaps a discount based on how long people have been with the site? eg get a reduced subscription on your third, sixth, ninth years of usage etc…..

Whilst I understand that Ancestry might want to offer “enticements” to try and obtain new customers I do have some sympathy with your comments above. It was obvious from the posts last time Ancestry ran a freebie like this that a number of people had already used a free offer and were annoyed that they couldn’t have another one!
And, as you mentioned, these are often the people who lurk on other websites asking for lookups because they’re not prepared to pay to access the information that they want.

>>>>Findmypast are in the process of uploading 8 million searchable Welsh parish register records to their site. They have also had the full 1911 census on-line for a couple of years. What are Ancestry providing for us????<<<<

You haven't provided any sort of response to any of our comments.

Martin's original question:- "what do members get for free"? is something neither Jay nor myself responded to.

However, many companies now use "enticements" to try and attract new customers and, very often, they are not available to existing customers. One of my colleagues at work has recently got a deal on her new SKY subscription that I didn't get when I signed up.

There's nothing to stop members posting on here if they are unhappy about not getting anything whilst other get free access. Anyone can make a suggestion about what they'd like to see Ancestry do for loyal subscribers.

But, look at the posts above. Moan, moan, moan. Not one person who has said that they are unhappy has provided one single suggestion about what they'd like to see Ancestry do to reward loyal subscribers.

I would be interested to know what Ancestry think of Jay’s “If you don’t like what you get for your money, don’t stay” suggestion, because my annual Worldwide Subscription renewal is due this week!!!

I note from the June Round up that the West Yorkshire PRs alone covered 8 million records which is equivalent to the Welsh PRs that BroMaelor mentioned earlier. When you add in the Dorset PRs and the London Wills (all with scanned images) I can only assume that if Ancestry is feeding us “morsels” the FindMyPast subscribers are being fed “crumbs”.

Going back to the lack of images question I have a distant relative on my tree who was married four times, three of them prior to 1837. From the 1841 census I knew that his wife was called Eliza ~ which is hardly an uncommon christian name. Using the IGI I tracked down 3 possible marriages between my male relative and women named Eliza or Elizabeth. When I visited the Archives to look at the potential marriages I was reduced to comparing his signature with those on the other marriage entries I knew were accurate. Neither of the witnesses listed were family members nor had they been witnesses at any of his other weddings. That information, of course, wouldn’t have been captured by any sort of indexing or transcription system ~ it’s something that you can only see from looking at the original records, fiche or scanned images etc.
If BroMaeler’s waiting for the Welsh PRs to go up (s)he might soon realise how invaluable scanned images are when you’re dealing with fairly common names. Sometimes a signature is the only thing you can go on.

With PRs on here I made quite some headway when the London PRs went up. I was a bit more concerned when Ancestry added Liverpool because it looked to me as if they might just be adding cities and I didn’t think that would benefit me hugely.

You can imagine how pleased I was when the Dorset PRs went up, mainly because I took it as a sign that Ancestry were looking at getting more county-wide PRs on the site rather than just cities. This was depsite the fact that Dorset was no use to me whatsoever as I have nobody on my tree that was christened, married or buried there!

Thankfully West Yorkshire was added soon after which has allowed me to add in over 50 christening, burial and marriage entries for various people on my tree.

I’m just hoping that July brings another PR collection and that I manage to make further headway with whatever it might be!

I have knowledge of the latter as I was one of a team of LMA conservation volunteers who helped prepare the original documents, by numbering, flattening and cleaning them ready for the camera work. Though other commitments have prevented me from helping with more of this work, it is nonetheless continuing. AND it all takes time. So not only the necessary legal paperwork has to be dealt with but so has the preparation work before anything appears on the website.

One can of course suggest the directions one would like Ancestry to go. I could do with Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Sheffield and Tameside in particular. Always bearing in mind that it could be many, many, many months, or even a two to three years, between suggestion and realisation.
Jay