Find A Grave Reviews

(based on 53 reviews)

26 of 56 people found this review helpful

Findagrave plays on human fragilities. More precisely emotion. FindAGrave entices bereaved families to make memorials for deceased relatives only to take over and appoint one of their contributing editors. In my case it was a dysfunctional woman, Megan Heyl. Not only did Megan Heyl take over the memorials she added info from the net that has nothing to do with a memorial including but not limited to divorces, multiple marriages, out of wedlock children to name a few. What a sicko. This kind of data is "time sensitive, personal data bordering on tabloid" and really has no business on a memorial site. Megan Heyl's response "that info is public record. Therefore she is just doing research." Even worse FindAGrave encourages this kind of behavior by reinforcing it with brownie points that supposed to get these psychopath major contributors into Mormon heaven. . In theory these major contributors r supposed to turn family memorials back to the families when asked but they never do. If you object or complain you are banned and blocked from the site and threatened with police action. I am 75 years old and thought I had seen it all... (Read the full review)

In summary, I would not recommend Find A Grave to a friend.

25 of 54 people found this review helpful

FindAGrave is pure grossess. They play on emotions. You create a Memorial for a deceased loved one. Then they boot you out or ban u. Then have one of their major contributers take over ur memorial. Once you r booted out the personal data is cateloged and deceased loved one is rebaptized into the Mormon faith. Yes Virginia. FindAGrave is manned by Mormons.

In summary, I would not recommend Find A Grave to a friend.

25 of 54 people found this review helpful

I use to love find a grave and never had a problem with it.

I thought if you don't want to manage the memorial any more, you can transfer it to #8. Some contributors who passed away had it transferred to #8 thinking it will be safe there forever. I recently found out #8 is transferring memorials to anyone and not relatives or have any connections to the deceased and not using the relationship guidelines. Alot of those memorials are transferred to contributors who have no connections to the deceased and only care about numbers and tampered with the memorial. Contributor #8 betrayed our trust.

In summary, I would not recommend Find A Grave to a friend.

28 of 54 people found this review helpful

REALITY/EXPERIENCES of Find A Grave:
1. Filled with memorials that are regurgitated information from online obituaries without credit to the source of the information (plagiarism) most of the time containing private information of living relatives/survivors without their permission.

2. There is a great deal of false/incorrect and embellished information with no source documentation. It is NOT a reliable genealogy source.

3. Encounters of "contributors" -volunteers who post obituaries, take photos, etc. who are territorial, rude, engage in harassment, refuse to transfer, report others for no reason to get accounts closed, circumvent the rules, etc. are more common than not on the site. Find A Grave is a territorial hoarder playground of who can amass the most memorials with no regard to the affect it has on family members. Deceased family members are immediately posted to Find A Grave by strangers hoarding memorials adding to the pain of grieving family members. The grief is exacerbated by hoarding contributors seeking memorial numbers.

4.The site makes money from the advertising of which families have no control over (unless you want to pay to remove the ads); which generates more money for the site. It successfully employs FREE LABOR to make it money every time... (Read the full review)

In summary, I would not recommend Find A Grave to a friend.

24 of 50 people found this review helpful

As someone who has researched all sides of my family tree, Find A Grave is a cleverly disguised money maker for the owner filled with inaccurate information. Ads on the memorials generate revenue for the owning entity (alleged to be the cleverly disguised business entity of Mormon Church--headquartered in Lehi, Utah). Sources list the "owner" of the site as a business entity in searches to find the actual ownership.

Inaccurate information is provided by a largely proportionate group of territorial posters who have no ethical problems about stealing "memorials" from each other with zero regard for family relationships.
Too many memorials are guesses at burial information with no source documentation. It has and always will be a numbers game of who can post the most memorials until Find A Grave removes that aspect. There are literally "contributors" who sit at their computers adding memorials from the internet 24/7 who have zero interest in the people they post or how doing so affects grieving families. The ethical reality that most families would strongly object to the information copied and pasted about living relatives and their families, locations, and relationships. Additionally, many devout Catholics and other religious families would not want to... (Read the full review)

In summary, I would not recommend Find A Grave to a friend.

33 of 65 people found this review helpful

New entries on Find-A-Grave should be restricted to family members within the first 30 days of death. There are family members on Find-A-Grave who would like to manage their own memorials and not risk losing them to number-seekers who don’t care and don’t respect the deceased.

In summary, I would recommend Find A Grave to a friend.

30 of 57 people found this review helpful

I was required to give every line a star but I have not needed tech support and there has been no exchange of money so that is a little bit of an unfair way of rating. I have been managing many of my family's Memorial Pages for some time and have been appalled at some of the complaints seen online as I have never had a complaint, a bad experience with other members or any problem at all--until I did. There is a small percentage of nasty, competitive members with ego/control issues who have turned the site into their own Personal Olympics. Some want to have the highest number of photographs, some want to have the highest number of created memorials, and some want to have the highest number of pages managed. Unfortunately, a man in the last group thinks he owns about 60 Memorial pages of my family members, refuses to edit them or transfer them to me--both violations of policy. When we agree to manage pages, we agree to transfer memorials to a family member when requested to do so. He won't edit anything at my request (this would involve actually doing something instead of just "owning" the... (Read the full review)

In summary, I would recommend Find A Grave to a friend.

32 of 61 people found this review helpful

One of find a grave's bored house wives decided to cruise a local cemetery to see how many memorials she could compile in a week. She decided to pick on my deceased Grandmother. All the info is inaccurate. She just assumes my Grandmother was born and died in the area of this particular cemetery. WRONG!!!!! I was in the hospital room when Grandmother died. I signed the death certificate. I planned & paid for the funeral Furthermore I paid out money for the tombstone. Will "findagrave" make the corrections????? No. If I want anything changed I have to contact one of their experts. To that I say "FUDGE" bigtime.

In summary, I would not recommend Find A Grave to a friend.

53 of 88 people found this review helpful

I volunteer(ed) to fulfill photo requests, nothing more nothing less. I contacted the person maintaining a memorial for clarification as she did not post a location within the cemetery. I called the cemetery office to obtain and was told that person was not buried with them. I contacted the person again who maintained the sight and she informed me she assumed the person was buried there as closest cemetery to his death. She has yet to remove the information. She advised me she was a member of the local Genealogy society (not sure what that has to do with anything and didn’t impress me) and then she told me I had two choices: 1) contact the state for copy of the death certificate or 2) contact the funeral home. What? I volunteer to take photos. This was not research I was doing - I volunteer to fulfill photo requests. I chose option 3- I’m out. I’ve gone to the forum for assistance and been demeaned and scolded. Have they forgotten these are volunteers? I’ve seen numerous errors, info and data unsourced, wrong obits attached to wrong names,... (Read the full review)

In summary, I would not recommend Find A Grave to a friend.

50 of 100 people found this review helpful

Find-A-Grave is certainly not a fun or reliable place to be. Use this site as you would any other source, question it, but in the case of Find-A-Grave, question the validity of the information even more than other records you may find.

From it's onset, Find-A-Grave was set up to be competitive and it's fanatic contributors became very territorial.

In November 2010, I traipsed through foot deep wet leaves in the 38 degree drizzle of upstate New York to obtain photographs of my ancestors and relatives gravestones for three days in 5 cemeteries. I thought that I would be contributing to what I thought was a great project. Within two days, I was attacked by someone who is probably a 10th cousin (I had to go back over 300 years to find a common ancestor). This 10th cousin sits in the middle of a cornfield in western Nebraska and professes to know more about where my ancestors are buried than I do (the cemetery has a website listing burials). The problem is that she also made assumptions that perhaps the next older generation would also be buried there too, and listed them in... (Read the full review)

In summary, I would not recommend Find A Grave to a friend.