Ancestry.com.au vs Ancestry.co.uk prices

[Richard in Perth]

Hi all

Am thinking of getting back into my family history after a bit of a break. Looking at taking out a new sub to Ancestry World, I checked both the sites Ancestry.co.uk and Ancestry.com.au. The UK site offers an "Annual Worldwide Membership" for £155.40 whereas the AU equivalent has an "Annual World Heritage Package" for a whopping $449.95 Not only that, but when I select the UK one and choose "upgrade", the quoted price is only £135.13 (presumably because I'm overseas so don't pay VAT) - which converts to around $220 at the current exchange rate. So can anyone explain to me why there is such a huge discrepancy? I assume that the two packages are identical, as they both claim to offer full access to all Ancestry's records. In that case, why on earth would anyone subscribe via the AU site, when they can get the same deal for half the price at the UK site?

[BC]

It looks like a " rip-off " so might be worth contacting them and asking for an explanation

[kylejustin]

seems to be the easiest way to make money, if the prices are not the same in each country. i find you have to look at the us, uk and aus sites to find the cheapest one for ancestry.

[MarionH]

Hi Richard,
I can answer you on this as I have just been through the process. My renewal was due - the UK and USA sites were cheaper - but when I went to renew through Australia the larger amount of $440 odd came up - I queried this and I was told I was an "existing" member hence the higher rate!!!
I cancelled my sub - and by chance about three weeks later got an email from Ancestry USA offering 30% off. When I entered the email address it changed the price - so I came up with a different email address - and with the exchange rate it came down to a lot less!
So - worth setting up a new email address - then check with the prices in all three countries!! (I did complain to them that they should reward loyal customers not give a bonus to new customers!)
Cheers, Marion (in Perth!)

[grumpy]

I don't really know what they have done to us. Up to a year ago the subs for ancestry.uk were cheaper if you lived in Oz
rather than UK, price seemed to be the same Oz price in dollars and UK in pounds, which of course made our subs a lot
cheaper. If they are going to persist with this pricing I will be giving A the flick after being a member for 10 years.

David

[angelina]

Can you get one of the avanquest offers on amazon sent out to you - mentioned in 'cheap world ancestry' thread below this one. i know someone has said they have run out but maybe worth watching amazon to see if another offer comes out.
I got the 6 months premium with FTM2011 for about £30 and didnt use it for ages and when i did it worked fine.

[Richard in Perth]

Thanks all for your replies.

Marion - I used the same email address for both sites, and it's also the same email that I used when I subscribed previously. Therefore both sites would have "known" that I was an existing member, so that in itself doesn't explain the huge price difference. I used to be subscribed via the UK site, and I only checked the AU site this time as I remembered the forum discussion from a while back about it being cheaper. Well it certainly isn't any longer! I'm not really that bothered as of course I will simply subscribe via the cheapest site at the time (which seems to be UK at the moment). My question was more from curiosity really, and also to forewarn others who might be thinking of taking out a sub on the AU site to shop around!

Angelina - thanks for the tip. It's probably way past time that I upgraded my FTM anyway (I am still using v11 believe it or not) so I may shop around for a package. That would at least defer the cost for another 6 months!


Incidentally, for the previous year I have had a sub to FindMyPast but I really hated it. I found the searching to be less flexible than Ancestry (especially the parish records, which are a pig to use on FMP - why can't we search by parish?). I also missed the overseas records and now that Ancestry have added more English parish records with images (especially Liverpool & W Yorks, which are two of my areas), it's a no-brainer.

[JBee]

Definitely see if you find a cheap FTM 2010 or 2011 with 6 months ancestry on it.

Try via Amazon or Avenquest.

[clematised]

I find the new family search website is brilliant to use and once mastered it is excellent at finding things.

https://www.familysearch.org/

Once the page opens you need to scroll below the search boxes and it lists Countries of search.
Go to Europe on this list
next an A to Z list comes up and for England Births and baptisms click on the link for it to get a new set of boxes
always go for the advanced option and add details but less is more (brings up more options) and never let it use the ANY option always select the Birth option as Any never works.

Start to add details and if you know the parish then just put that as it will list all births for that parish or you can narrow it down by inserting surname and parish.

I know it is a bit long winded but they have during the last year uploaded millions more worldwide records which this process will narrow it down.

It is worthwhile reading through what is available so you know in future what is on the site, they are constantly adding to it too.

Hope this helps

Edna

[grumpy]

I also think that they have got rid of millions of duplicate listings which can only be a good thing. The site is a Edna says with the exception
that they don't have specialised records that FMP and Ancestry has, like ww1, county records etc. Then again not everyone needs those.

David

[clematised]

David they work on the 100 year rule so only show records that are beyond 100 years, I found my Mothers baptism and that of her siblings in Liverpool which is what David is looking for.
Yorkshire has some readable records which are not indexed and the actual records are visible but takes a lot of work to follow them.

Both places are what Richard is looking for so no subscription req'd but play around with them until they become second nature and you will find the ones you want.

Edna

[Glen in Tinsel Knickers]

A year or two ago it was about half the price for the subscription via the Australian site compared to the UK, my thread from way back then showed how the UK sub was around £120 compared to around £65-70 via the .Au site, call me a cynic but was the special offer to tempt new customers and then recoup the costs with higher prices in later years?

I'm still debating what to do about a new sub, Ancestry have never offered me an incentive to come back (now been 3 years without) and FMP looks tempting but without pc access at home it's debatable whther a sub would be worthwhile with limited internet time.

[GallowayLass]

I'm still debating what to do about a new sub, Ancestry have never offered me an incentive to come back (now been 3 years without) and FMP looks tempting but without pc access at home it's debatable whther a sub would be worthwhile with limited internet time.

That's if you can actually use the FMP sub away from home. Am still very disgruntled about this. I have an FMP sub and for the last 3 months I've been unable to access it at any council public pc. All you can get is the freebie 1911 schools census project version which is exactly that. This is a ti-up between FMP and TNA to provide school children in England and Wales with free access to the 1911 census. Very worthy, yes, but in my council area, the ip addresses of every council pc have been put in the offer system not just those in our schools. There is no way of bypassing the freebie to log in to the full site, believe me, I've tried !! I've also complained to FMP but they say it's a corporate issue and they're not interested. The offer was meant to last till end of June but it's still going on and to add insult to injury - my council isn't even in England or Wales - it's in Scotland. So I can go down to my local library (which I do quite a lot) and use ancestry library version or if I want to, go to ancestry.co.uk and login with a sub in the usual way. The urls are different. Why can't FMP do the same thing?? Seems "simples" to me.

I have tried to tell FMP that I'm being denied access to what I've paid for and want a refund or an extension to my sub to cover the missing months but they don't want to know.

Make sure your local library/archive centre or other council pc facility isn't part of the schools census project before you part with any money for a full sub or buy any credits (you can't even use these on affected pcs). Until they pull the plug on this scheme you are restricted to home use/a pal's pc/independent netcafes etc.

[Glen in Tinsel Knickers]

That's if you can actually use the FMP sub away from home. Am still very disgruntled about this. I have an FMP sub and for the last 3 months I've been unable to access it at any council public pc. All you can get is the freebie 1911 schools census project version which is exactly that. This is a ti-up between FMP and TNA to provide school children in England and Wales with free access to the 1911 census. Very worthy, yes, but in my council area, the ip addresses of every council pc have been put in the offer system not just those in our schools. There is no way of bypassing the freebie to log in to the full site, believe me, I've tried !! I've also complained to FMP but they say it's a corporate issue and they're not interested. The offer was meant to last till end of June but it's still going on and to add insult to injury - my council isn't even in England or Wales - it's in Scotland. So I can go down to my local library (which I do quite a lot) and use ancestry library version or if I want to, go to ancestry.co.uk and login with a sub in the usual way. The urls are different. Why can't FMP do the same thing?? Seems "simples" to me.

I have tried to tell FMP that I'm being denied access to what I've paid for and want a refund or an extension to my sub to cover the missing months but they don't want to know.

Make sure your local library/archive centre or other council pc facility isn't part of the schools census project before you part with any money for a full sub or buy any credits (you can't even use these on affected pcs). Until they pull the plug on this scheme you are restricted to home use/a pal's pc/independent netcafes etc.

Well the Scottish Borders Council library pc setup hasn't changed greatly since the browser upgrade in March, the upgrade brought in google chrome as an option but they still use an old version of IE so there are problems both ways. Still no way to upload images to FB, TP, Photobucket or Flickr but at least I can now get onto FTF and visit threads I have started or contributed too. Familysearch.org coverage is a bit patchy, some days it works fine and others it gets blocked by webguard?????

I'm debating a cheap laptop for home but the only way I can get online would be via the dongle route and whether it's viable or not I'm not sure, not really willing to spend a few hundred quid to find out either.