ancestry.ca

Very disappointed

I’m writing this review from the perspective of someone who purchased an Ancestry DNA kit as a Christmas gift for her mother, and the experience was incredibly frustrating from start to finish.The website claims you can purchase a DNA kit as a gift and select that option during checkout, but there was no such option available. The entire checkout process was confusing and not user-friendly. It was also unclear what was actually included with the DNA kit purchase, and whether a paid subscription was required to register and use the kit. There was no clear explanation of what features are included by default versus what requires a membership.I was required to create an Ancestry account in order to purchase the kit, which made no sense since the kit was not for me. I ended up purchasing a kit that included a 3-month trial subscription for an additional $1, but again, there was no point in the process where I could indicate that this was a gift.Because of this, I contacted customer service via online chat, and they were not helpful. I was told that my mother would need to create her own account and then I would have to contact customer service again to have the subscription transferred to her. Alternatively, I was told I could just give her my login information. Neither option is reasonable or intuitive for a gift purchase, and it should not require multiple customer service interactions to fix something that should have been set up correctly in the first place.I was also explicitly told by customer service that the 3-month subscription would begin when the DNA kit was activated/registered. This turned out to be false. The subscription actually started on the date of purchase, December 8. This morning, I received an email stating that the subscription will automatically renew on March 7 for $69.99 for three months.My mother is blind and needs assistance to complete the kit, so this is not something that can be done quickly. As a result, most of the subscription period has already been wasted. On top of that, the kit took over two weeks to arrive, meaning the subscription was active before the kit was even in our hands. Since this was a Christmas gift, the time between purchase on December 8 and Christmas Day was also completely wasted.Activating a paid subscription before the recipient even receives the kit makes no sense, especially for a product that is commonly purchased as a gift. It feels poorly thought out and frankly quite slimy.The subscription pricing is also absurd. $70 every three months is extremely expensive. I have cancelled the auto-renewal, and at this point the subscription likely will not be used at all, as I doubt we will be able to get my mother fully set up before it expires.Overall, this has been a very disappointing experience. I will not be recommending Ancestry.ca, and I will be actively warning others about how poorly their gifting and subscription process is handled.

Date of experience: Dec 08, 2025