| Search Effectiveness: |
|
| Ease of Navigation: |
|
| Features: |
|
| Technical Support: |
|
| Help Files / Documentation: |
|
| Ease of Joining / Registration: |
|
| Value for Money: |
|
| Overall Star Rating: |
|
Loved, loved, loved FMP. Simple search, user friendly, great data sets and best of all, simple accurate results. Images opened in their own window so you could easily refer back to the transcription page. Search by address? No problems.
Not any more. The site has been 'improved' but it has proved a disaster with a lot of dissatisfied subscribers who are now finding the site counter intuitive and clunky. Endless clicking, several ways to search for a record but each search page asks for different criteria. Sometimes you will see 'date of birth' sometimes you will not and its up to you to find the best search for you. Sometimes you end up with 0 results and sometimes 107,986 or somesuch ridiculous number. The reason for this, FMP's customer service tell us is because we are not searching properly. Thousands of us who have been researching for many years on many formats - we're doing it wrong! The Society of Genealogists had to have an FMP 'expert' go in and give them a tutorial so what chance for you, the lone, home based family history enthusiast? So many people have unchecked the 'auto renew' subscription box because currently a sub at FMP is a complete waste of money.
Whoever redesigned the searches is clearly not a researcher. Ever worked in an office where someone in IT has designed a form for us in another department? They didn't come and ask what you wanted from the form, they just did it. Then you, for whom the form was designed comes to fill out the form on the computer and find bits are missing or don't function properly and you know its not fit for purpose. That is FMP at the moment I'm afraid.
If this review is not getting its message across let me tell you this, FMP have given many, many people extensions to their current subscriptions. If that's not an admission of some kind of failure with the new format I don't know what is.
Avoid - at least until they've sorted out the mess.
In summary, I would not recommend FindMyPast.com to a friend.
|
