Family Tree Maker’s Fall Newsletter Makes Me Feel Vindicated!

Well, well,  I’m feeling pretty righteous!  I recently received the Fall Newsletter (which, BTW, is the ONLY newsletter that Family Tree Maker has emailed to me this year so it correctly should be labeled as the “First Fall Newsletter” since Software MacKiev bought the rights for the Microsoft version which is what I formerly used.)

The newsletter was designed to notify the public that they are running behind and don’t have the synch ready as they had earlier stated would occur before the end of 2016.  Okay, glitches happen and I am pleased that the organization is taking ownership that they will not be able to meet their self imposed deadline.

IMHO, this is a major step forward.  I’ve been blogging for quite a while about my frustration with FTM not syching with my large Ancestry.com tree.  Every time I called customer service they would blame Ancestry.  I’d call Ancestry and they’d tell me to call FTM.  I’d wait a day or two and try again as I was hoping whoever was on duty would have the knowledge to assist me.  I posted for help, too but no one seemed to know what the problem was.  The only “help” I ever received was twice when I was emailed a useless pdf that supposedly would get the synch back but that never worked, either. The final time I called, the rep tried to tell me I couldn’t follow instructions.   So much for service! That was the day I switched to Legacy Family Tree’s standard edition.

But back to the newsletter… I quote, “…So, should you get the latest build right now then? Well, it depends. The improvements are mostly in stability and performance. So if FTM is crashing or has slowed to a crawl with large trees, then have at it. ” Finally, they admit that the product doesn’t work well with large trees!  Now it’s official who owned the problem and I don’t blame Ancestry.com one bit for cutting the prior company owners’ off last December.  What a nightmare it must have been for Ancestry staff to have to take all those calls from unhappy FTM users!  I also give kudos to Ancestry’s staff for handling the calls I made to them in a professional manner.

I tried to link to the newsletter but I don’t see it posted on their website so I’m providing the link to sign up to their Mailing List instead.

I would like to see FTM offer a goodwill gesture by providing the new version for free to anyone with a large tree to make up for the wasted time and lack of support.  FTM could determine the size of the tree for the offer.  For now, that’s the only way I’d be back.