Bill Gamble and I have been trying to figure out how to merge our trees for sometime now, with absolutely no success. Last night I added a line he had to Ludwig III of Wuerttemberg to mine, but I only added the names, because there were no dates or places which were available, at least not to me. I figured I would add those later through my own research. I've gotten two messages from Bill today, and because of what I did (completely unaware I was actually merging our trees), he has a huge mess.
I have asked, and complained to Geni concerning how to merge trees, and their complete lack of clear instructions. I have received no reasonable response. I have studied the FAQ's list for months, and still was not able to figure it out. This is a serious flaw in the Geni website, which definitely has to be cleaned up. How can newcomers to the Geni site figure anything out when they take months, sometimes, to respond, weeks at their speediest, like 7-8 weeks, and your FAQ's answers are almost completely useless, because they don't give a straightforward answer to any question. For that matter, neither do the people who answer the emails with questions. I had one question one time, which took many emails back and forth before I got a straightforward answer. That took place over three or four months, for ONE SIMPLE question!
Even though you have high standards for correct connections and data, you have extremely serious flaws in teaching people how to USE your website. Bill Gamble has lost centuries, not to mention whole families of information, because Geni REFUSES to fix these flaws.
I have joined the collaboration pool just today. I know these are issues you deal with. You're not taking the complaints seriously, and if you don't start taking them seriously, Geni is going under, despite their high standards, and they will be taking their sister companies down with them.
High quality is worth nothing, if there is no service!
Get onto Bill's problem now, because I have no clue how to help him clean up that mess. I commend your high standards, but your system stinks. Who wants to buy a membership in a site with so many extreme flaws? You can't expect people to even WANT to put out their hard earned money for someone who offers NOTHING in the way of service.
Extremely Sincerely,
Sylvia M. Hertel
Lead, S.D.