04 January 2014

The genealogy websites I subscribe to: Ancestry.com's new World Explorer Plus Membership

This morning I woke up early on a beautiful snowed-in Saturday in Chicago and remembered a post by my genealogy blogger friend Dick Eastman. Get well soon Dick.

You can read his post here: A New "World Explorer Plus Membership" on Ancestry.com?
This new deal, includes access to everything on Ancestry.com "World Explorer" and full-access to two of their other paid websites: Fold3.com and Newspapers.com.

I was a little hesitant to "upgrade" because I already had subscriptions to all 3 websites. It sure would be nice to save a little cash and a little trouble by combining the 3 bills into 1, I thought. The problem is that all my subscriptions would end at different times. My Fold 3 was up for renewal in February, but the others not until September and November. I decided to call them anyway and see what I could do.

They were so helpful! Turns out that they issue a "refund" for the remaining time on my "World Explorer" membership and then put any remaining days with the other two subscriptions on hold. Example from an email they sent me after I made the change:

"Hi Michael_McCormick,
Thank you for your purchase of an Ancestry.com World Explorer Plus Membership. Included in your recent purchase is continued access to your existing Fold3 All-Access Membership.
The remaining time of 28 days on your initial Fold3 Membership will be stored as a credit and will automatically be applied to your Fold3 Membership should you choose not to renew your Ancestry.com World Explorer Plus Membership in the future."
The price for the full year World Explorer Plus is a hefty $389, but when you use them as much as I do it is quite nice to consolidate them into one billing cycle. It is also more affordable to me than the typical person because it is partly a business expense.

They don't include Archives.com in this subscription, presumably because they want to market that website as a low-cost option that is not part of the expert bundle.

Well, perhaps I will turn this into a series of at least one more. 




1 comment:

  1. Thanks for posting this review. The link to Eastman's site is dead, but the information on ancestry.com's World Explorer membership was helpful nonetheless.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for your kind and thoughtful comments.