countrymer has a very good point. Shouldn’t this new information become part of what we already pay for?

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Yes, this is ridicules to pay additional cost to access this data. Companies buy Companies all the time and is usually a benefit to the customer. Unfortunately I have time before my membership expires . . . I’ll have to see how all this rolls out, but in truth if this really is an EXTRA cost, I’ll be looking elsewhere too. There are just too many good Genealogy sites out there. I work for a large corporation; once you lose a customer it’s hard to get them back, especially if a contract is involved. As a business decision, I hope you change your mind on passing this cost onto your loyal customers.
i agree with all the above comments. If a person is a premium user then this new data should be part of the package he is already paying for.
I already pay a premium for My Heritage. I am certainly not going to pay any more to access this data. I should be looking for another genealogy. To much
I really hope that Family Link will really re-consider expecting the My Heritage Premium payers to fork out more money for the added information due to the new acquisition with My heritage. If not, they might find themselves loosing a lot of loyal customers to the competition that are like hungry wolves out there.
Dear countrymr, nathanjhunt, Darryl, michael, Helle, Lucia, Lyn,
Thank you for your feedback. We understand your point of view.
It is not possible for us to offer the historical data for free to existing MyHeritage subscribers. Why not? Because a lot of the historical data comes from partners that require royalties on its use by customers. For example, views of UK census records require fixed royalties to the official UK archives. We cannot give all our subscribers this data for free, else the content partners will not get paid, which is not possible. We also cannot subsidize these content partners by paying them, so that our subscribers could get free data. This would lead us to incur additional, significant costs, on top of everything we have paid to do this acquisition.
We plan to stick around and be able to provide you a reliable platform for your family heritage, for many years to come, and be a destination that you can count on, while so many other companies are falling apart.
For an introductory period, for those interested in the historical data, we are making it possible for PremiumPlus members to purchase access to the historical data for 75% less than it normally costs, and Premium members receive a 60% discount. These discounts are very substantial, and they reward those users who are loyal subscribers on MyHeritage. Details are being sent to our users by email. Although we don’t profit from these low price points, it still allows us to pay out the content partners and cover the additional costs associated with this service and its staff. We are also providing discounts to loyal customers of FamilyLink and WorldVitalRecords, on the services provided by MyHeritage, that they have never enjoyed in the past. Nobody is being forced to pay for the historical records, and the regular subscription prices aren’t increased. So we are not forcing an extra expense on our users. Consider it as adding another product to our portfolio. The historical records are an exciting new perspective added for our users, that was never available before since our products went live in 2005.
In the future once the historical records are rolled into MyHeritage, we’ll do our best to offer a bundled subscription that is as attractive and competitive in the marketplace as possible. We will also apply our Smart Matching technology to locate relevant records automatically for users who have their family trees with us, which adds value.
When a new service is added that incurs significant extra cost to us, we cannot give it free. When that is not the case, our policy has always been to give it to our subscribers for free. For example, every time a new version of Family Tree Builder is available, upgrading to it from former versions is free, and premium subscribers automatically enjoy all its new premium features. Unlike all other companies in the genealogy market, where upgrading to a new version of genealogy software costs money. We are aware that some of you will still not be satisfied with this answer, but we have tried to describe the constraints under which we are operating. Fortunately, large numbers of users have taken advantage of our 60% to 75% discounts for Premium and PremiumPlus users and will be enjoying the extra value of the historical records. For the rest, we’ll do our best to offer a good bundled subscription deal in the future once the historical records are integrated into MyHeritage.
Sincerely,
MyHeritage teamI’m rather confused about this too. When viewing the 75% discount it says there is an expiration of December 7, 2011. That doesn’t seem like enough time. Also, the page only mentions WorldVitalRecords. Would I still have to pay separately for access to FamilyLink? Are they just the same website with different prices? What happens after December 7?
Dear Robert,
The 75% discount is offered until December 7, 2011. It pertains to one year access to WorldVitalRecords. We may extend this until the end of the year to give users more time.
This is the introductory period mentioned. Access to the historical records will be for one year once you take it up. Sorry for the confusion between the discount offer period and the data access period.
The WorldVitalRecords data will include all the FamilyLink data so you won’t need it separately. Hope this clarifies it for you.Sincerely,
MyHeritage teamThanks for the reply 🙂
I’ve been very busy with work and only just found this out. I’ll have to compare your prices to using a UK based site such as FindMyPast for access to the information. This amy also affect my long term decission to contuniue my Premium membership.
countrymr
November 25, 2011
I am a Plenum Plus Member why am I and thousands of other members being asked to pay to have access to the records of your new acquisition ?
Sounds to me like your are trying to fleece the loyal Customer Base you already have , your decision will effect my decision when it comes to renewing my Account !