BillionGraves

*** UPDATE *** PayPal agreed with my complaint and the full price has been refunded. Should you experience this - regardless of stated policy - I recommend opening a dispute with PayPal or your CC company. Certainly, there are people who are quite satisfied with the product. However, everyone needs to be aware that signing up begets a NO REFUND POLICY. It took about an hour of test queries with KNOWN RESULTS for past research to learn that the system is of no use to me. BTW, I teach genealogy at TCU. I immediately asked for a refund and learned of the NO REFUND POLICY. I'm waiting for PayPal to force a refund this week. An ethical company would not be so deceitful. This is a planned ripoff as most of us are accustomed to web businesses who offer trial programs and quickly refund payments. I used Evernote and after harnessing its power to organize my genealogy notes I no longer needed it. I cancelled and expected no refund on the annual subscription. It worked and support was like rubbing the genie's lamp. Absolute commitment and friendly staff. The company surprised me with a full refund! That is how one gains massive word of mouth exposure.

I signed up last year at a reduced rate so that I could determine if the information provided was helpful. It was not. I have been using Find A Grave for several years which has much valuable information. and expected that BillionGraves would have even more information available. BillionGraves had less information and was not useful to me. I stopped using it almost immediately. Much to my surprise, two days ago my PayPal account was charged $29.97 as a "preapproved payment" for another year of service. It's very difficult to find information on how to cancel. I've written to "support" and have not heard from them. Signing up is easy. Cancelling it not! . My advice is to avoid signing up for BillionGraves or you may end up paying for a service you are not using. -------------------------------- BillionGraves has now responded, almost a week after I wrote, informing me that they sent me a renewal notice on May 12, for renewal on May 28. I checked through my back emails and found it. I never opened the email and deleted it because I was not using the service. They will not issue a refund because they gave me notice. Their site does not make cancellation and easy process and they will not bend the rules for a dissatisfied user.

BillionGraves.com is advertised as a free service. It was free, however it wasn't very good. I searched for something I knew, namely my father's burial place. BillionGraves.com showed me a picture of his tombstone and some sparse information. Then they also showed the tombstone of a WOMAN with the same surname, but completely different first name. There was none of the additional helpful information that you see on findagrave.com, which also supplies a memorial number, to help you store information in your genealogy program. The real problem with BillionGraves.com is that it is a bait-and-switch website. Along with my father's burial information, there was a list of four subscriptions sites -- Archives.com (with 4,805,968 hits), OneGreatFamily.com (with 1,060,000 hits), GenealogyBank.com (with thousands of references), and Newspapers.com (with hits in many states where my father never set foot). An impossibly high number of promised hits should be the researcher's first clue that these are bogus sites with inefficient search filters. Of course all four subscription sites promise a "free trial offer." But you have to give them your credit card information first. Then you have to remember to cancel before the trial period ends. My advice ... stick with findagrave.com. They aren't selling anything.

It wasn't until I was checking my bank statement that I discovered I even had a subscription at Billion Graves. My card had been charged with my knowledge with no warning, no reminder, no email, nothing. My email to their "Priority" support only got me a copy-and-paste reply that had absolutely nothing to do with my questions. My second email didn't get a response at all. Do NOT sign up here folks! You'll get no support and no refund when you're charged without your knowledge.