Last week ANCESTRY announced a Holiday Special 7 Day Free Trial
Membership in Ancestry HomeTown, the world's premier on-line
genealogy / family history web site. The Free Trial Membership
program
was successful beyond anything we could imagine. This resulted in
disappointment and frustration for many who either could not access
the
site or had difficulty doing so.
The extremely heavy response identified five weaknesses in our
system: 1) The capacity of our communications link was exceeded. 2)
Our 16 existing servers approached capacity. 3) We experienced a
machine failure that knocked us out of service for a few hours. 4)
Some
folks experienced access problems because of browser incompatibilities
and/or refusing cookies. 5) We exceeded the capacity of our Member
Services department to respond to your needs.
WE HAVE IMPLEMENTED CORRECTIVE ACTION
During the next week we will: 1) Have a new communications link that
can handle many time the traffic that tried to come to us at the
peak of
the promotion (and can be rapidly increased to any level required).
2)
Double the processing capacity of our equipment (with the ability
to bring
additional equipment on line within hours). 3) Eliminate every
possible
single point of failure in our system. 4) Begin hiring/training and
make our
Members Services support team available 24 hours a day Monday
through Saturday.
We grossly underestimated the impact of our promotion. We apologize
for any inconveniences to you, your family, your friends and your
associates.
We invite you to experience ANCESTRY HomeTown at
http://www.ancestry.com. We offer many free databases and services
in addition to the subscriber section of the library. The World
Tree and
Social Security Death Index are ALWAYS FREE.
We wish you and yours a most happy and prosperous New Year. May
your family history research be fruitful.
Dan Taggart, President
ANCESTRY
Member Services
1-800-ANCESTRY (1-800-262-3787)
email support(a)ancestry.com
end message
We are grateful for your assistance in spreading the word about
Ancestry HomeTown.
The new servers will be here Monday. Our T-1 access will be
multiplied
by the time the new servers go on-line. I believe you are aware
that a
number of new features and services will be announced in January. We
are ordering equipment for those services next week.
I am pleased that Dan and Paul are honoring their commitment to do
what
ever it takes to give our members a good experience. We didn't guess
right about the load the free offer would bring, but the have approved
every request to strengthen the site so there is NEVER a recurrence.
Best Regards
Graham Hawkins
ANCESTRY & ANCESTRY HomeTown
Director -- Member Services
801-426-3630 ghawkins(a)ancestry.com
Member Service Department
1-800-ANCESTRY Support(a)ancestry.com
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Shirley Hornbeck - shornbeck(a)tminet.com
Web Authoring and Design Service - Personal Web Pages/Sites
My web pages: <
http://users.tminet.com/shornbeck>
THIS & THAT GENEALOGY TIPS:
<
http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/5643/tandt.html>
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