I Want My Money Back Ancestry.com

For those of you that didn’t know, I took a DNA test at Christmas in 2017 via Ancestry.com. Six weeks later, I was so shocked by the results I wrote the following post: Are there blondes in Syria. My DNA results were absolutely shocking. Here were my results:

Ancestry Results January 2018

Ancestry Results June 2019

I receive an email earlier this summer explaining that though my DNA doesn’t change, the technology does and I had updated results. Ok, fair enough. I thought I’d even celebrate my heritage on July 4th by making the following shirt. It details out exactly how I’m broken up:

Ancestry Results October 2019

Then I get ANOTHER email:

At no cost me? Oh gee, thanks Ancestry for not charging me for you being WRONG! People don’t get DNA tests, thinking that it sorta, maybe, might be, right. And God help us if these ass holes go into the paternity testing business.

Jerry, you sorta, maybe, might be the father. But we’ll update you like every 6 months on the likelihood. Until then, just keep paying child support.

So what are my results now? Take a look:

Like I don’t care if it says I’m 100% alien, I’m just tired of it switching. What if I saved up all my money to do one of those heritage trips and visited the middle east, only to discover I’m not even middle eastern? Do you catch my drift here?

I sent a general inquiry to Ancestry.com and received a wonderfully generic response back. I then argued with the following:

So it’s fair to say that my first & second results were wrong. It would be one thing if my results became more pinpointed because of the new techniques as well as analysis but my results change entire continents. The first result, I was 11% middle Eastern. The 2nd and 3rd results, I’m not.

So when will my results be final because this is pretty agitating? As a consumer, I purchased this product with the understanding that the first result was the final and accurate result. I don’t want something that says I’m American Indian and in six months, I’m Asian.

This is false advertising and I plan on filing a report as well as spreading the word about how faulty this test is.

Regards,

Angela

I don’t plan on filing a report because I’m done being annoyed. For good measure, I’m going to use a different DNA company and see what results I get back from them and if it changes too. I read you’re suppose to treat your results as a living document, meaning they will change over time. That’s just stupid because we will never feel confident in any of the results.

Am I making sense here or am I just being a bitch? I don’t think it’s wrong in wanting accurate results.

P.S. I never heard back from ancestry.com and my last message to them.

7 Comments

msnyder1970 November 4, 2019

Nope just a money making racket. That’s just ridiculous. For me it was pretty accurate each new time but I didn’t much care for these people might be in your family tree bullshit. Usually they Weren’t

josypheen November 5, 2019

I think it’s pretty cool that they update the results as they become more and more accurate. They never promise to be 100% accurate, they just do the best they can with the knowledge they have at the moment. This way is cooler than them never telling you.

p.s. I think you are more English than I am(!)

itsgoodtobecrazysometimes November 7, 2019

There is a tv programme in the Uk that did something on this, they used 3 different companies and got completely different results all 3 times

- hotmess November 13, 2019
  
  That’s completely nuts. Do you remember the name of the program b/c I would like to watch it!!!
  
  - itsgoodtobecrazysometimes November 13, 2019
    
    Its Watchdog, its the most recent series if you can find it. Here is an article based on it though
    
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/tBX9dq9V9qWV687ddP6lK9/dna-ancestry-kits
    
    - hotmess November 13, 2019
      
      Thank you! Googling now!
      
      - itsgoodtobecrazysometimes November 14, 2019
        
        welcome