If you want to save money on your Ancestry subscription, I have two tips.
TIP ONE:
If you already have an Ancestry subscription, you can save lots on your next renewal. Here's how:
Let your Ancestry subscription lapse (or delete/invalidate your credit card information, if you are on auto-renewal). You will receive a series of automated emails reminding you to renew your subscription. Ignore them! Let your subscription lapse.
What happens? Your membership will default to the basic free membership. Your trees will all still be there, but you won't have access to search the databases for a few weeks. You're on a short Ancestry holiday.
After a week or three, Ancestry will then send you an email to renew your subscription at a discount to win you back. My email was entitled "Come back and save 20% on a subscription".
That's not a bad return for taking an Ancestry holiday for a few weeks...
I'll leave it for a while to see if they improve their offer and report back.
TIP TWO:
It may also be worth your while to compare prices in other countries. It is quite possible to renew your ancestry subscription on a different country site.
If, for example, Ancestry UK is offering better terms than Ancestry USA for the same level subscription (check exchange rates as they have shifted around recently, giving you the opportunity for real bargains!!!), log in to your now basic level (i.e. free) user profile on the foreign site and take out a new subscription there. Do the maths to see which is cheaper.
You'll be paying in the local currency (only your credit card company cares), but the access you'll get is exactly the same (worldwide is worldwide - but some local branches have different combinations of territories that are included in their basic offer, so check what you get).
You can log into your UK (or German or French or Australian or whatever) account from ancestry.com the same way as you would with your US account and everything will be in English.
The only thing that will be in the local language of your subscription are the service emails telling you that they have found more matches or account management emails. You'll get these in French, Italian, Spanish or whatever. Of course, if you buy a 'foreign' domain subscription in the UK, Ireland, Australia, US or Canada, they will be in English.
With the Australian dollar at record lows against the US dollar, this might be a good time to become an honorary Australian subscriber... Whatever you do - check the exchange rates at the time.
Happy researching.
Matt
