Gedmatch no longer accepting FTDNA kits

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  • georgian1950
    FTDNA Customer
    • Jun 2012
    • 987

    Originally posted by jeffcdal View Post
    I appreciate your thought here Jack, however it is fairly clear at this point that FTDNA was the instigator of this incident and that they have issued misleading, and quite possibly false, statements in their response to customers regarding this issue. Perhaps that is a failure of their PR machine, but I see it as a fair indication of the overall ethos of the company.

    Poor communications, bad customer support and less than stellar tools indicate a predatory company whose business focus lies outside what they promote to their existing and potential customers. Like I said before, I don't want them to benefit from my data so long as they seek to injure other parties with whom I work.
    FTDNA and GEDmatch both have been instrumental in my research and I want to see a solution. Given today's twisting of acceptable behavior, it could be that the corporate lawyers for FTDNA have told management that if you don't do this, you are flinging the doors of the treasury wide open. If that is the case, I don't know how FTDNA adjusts.

    My big fear is that we have already seen the Golden Age of genetic genealogy. I have written off 23andMe and I do not trust the data manipulations of AncestryDNA.

    Jack

    Comment

    • RMAC
      FTDNA Customer
      • May 2015
      • 5

      Again showing my displeasure

      FTDNA and their unwillingness to share our data with GEDMATCH, but it is okay others to pay FTDAN $39 to import their data here seems a bit hypocritical if you ask me and only shows that money is now more important then us finding our history.

      Why am I upset, because I just ordered kits for my dad, uncle, and husband last month. If this was known at that time I would have took my business elsewhere. Now I feel I have to pay all over again and ask my 81 year old dad and 80 year old uncle to go through this again.

      I feel I wasted $333 last month along. Thank goodness I didn't pay for the additional Haplogroup data.

      I will do all further testing now through GEDMATCH, all Haplogroup information in addition to my eldest son who desires to know how much Jewish decent he carries and how much is Ashkenazi and how much is Sephardi.

      Here is a question to ponder FTDNA "How did you conduct your business?"

      Moving to GEDMATCH, which I consider the largest now rather than FTDNA and after this I am certain they will lose much more business.

      Here is another company to recommend to all our family and friends as well for dna testing

      link removed
      Last edited by Darren; 19 March 2016, 09:42 PM. Reason: please no links to outside company websites

      Comment

      • Armando
        FTDNA Customer
        • Jun 2009
        • 1701

        Originally posted by RMAC View Post
        FTDNA and their unwillingness to share our data with GEDMATCH, but it is okay others to pay FTDAN $39 to import their data here seems a bit hypocritical if you ask me and only shows that money is now more important then us finding our history.

        Why am I upset, because I just ordered kits for my dad, uncle, and husband last month. If this was known at that time I would have took my business elsewhere. Now I feel I have to pay all over again and ask my 81 year old dad and 80 year old uncle to go through this again.

        I feel I wasted $333 last month along. Thank goodness I didn't pay for the additional Haplogroup data.

        I will do all further testing now through GEDMATCH, all Haplogroup information in addition to my eldest son who desires to know how much Jewish decent he carries and how much is Ashkenazi and how much is Sephardi.

        Here is a question to ponder FTDNA "How did you conduct your business?"

        Moving to GEDMATCH, which I consider the largest now rather than FTDNA and after this I am certain they will lose much more business.

        Here is another company to recommend to all our family and friends as well for dna testing

        britainsdna
        You can't test with Gedmatch. You can only upload data. There are only three competing companies that you can do significant haplogroup testing with - Yseq, FGC, and BritainsDNA. The last one doesn't have the capability for extensive testing like the first two. There are only two competing autosomal DNA testing companies that you can download autosomal DNA files from which are Ancestry and 23andme. You can't download autosomal files from BritainsDNA, that I know of, and even if you can the uploads aren't accepted at Gedmatch.

        Comment

        • josh w.
          FTDNA Customer
          • Mar 2005
          • 2503

          Originally posted by georgian1950 View Post
          My understanding is that 23andMe uses a lot fewer SNP's than AncestryDNA or FF, but relies on imputation. While the big matching segments might show up, I find that if you are looking at small segments, 23andMe is a disaster in comparisons with kits from the other vendors.

          DNA.Land has imputation in its strategy. I think that is why I only get a handful of matches there. As far as I am concerned DNA.Land is GIGO.

          Jack Wyatt
          I am neither a lawyer nor bookkeeper, but my hunch is that there will be a resolution. On the surface it appears that this is a Lose-Lose situation.

          I mentioned the use of imputation by Ancestry or 23&me because it would seem to be a good marketing strategy. For my own purposes 'good enough' is fine. One of my main objectives in using Gedmatch is to find more matches even if the matching process has limitations. Another objective is to find the geographical location of my AIMs. Ftdna's presentation of my results is consistent with the Khazar theory of Jewish origins, almost all autosomal results to the contrary.
          Last edited by josh w.; 19 March 2016, 11:13 AM.

          Comment

          • Frederator
            FTDNA Customer
            • Jul 2010
            • 846

            Originally posted by josh w. View Post
            I am neither a lawyer nor bookkeeper, but my hunch is that there will be a resolution. On the surface it appears that this is a Lose-Lose situation....
            I hope you are correct. But as has been pointed out by many other commentators, there are only a literal handful of alternative testing options available.

            The last few years have been a history of anti-competitive consolidations and acquisitions in this industry. The survivors seem each to have a niche with which they are satisfied and are preoccupied with crushing emerging competition or alternatives.

            That's what oligopoly does to an industry: it destroys innovation and customer service. Companies stop being about delivering service and start being about protecting turf.

            Only people who care about innovation and service would lose, i.e., not the established firms.

            Comment

            • josh w.
              FTDNA Customer
              • Mar 2005
              • 2503

              Originally posted by Frederator View Post
              I hope you are correct. But as has been pointed out by many other commentators, there are only a literal handful of alternative testing options available.

              The last few years have been a history of anti-competitive consolidations and acquisitions in this industry. The survivors seem each to have a niche with which they are satisfied and are preoccupied with crushing emerging competition or alternatives.

              That's what oligopoly does to an industry: it destroys innovation and customer service. Companies stop being about delivering service and start being about protecting turf.

              Only people who care about innovation and service would lose, i.e., not the established firms.
              Agree but what does Ftdna gain. It is easy to see how the other companies would gain. It is unlikely that Ftdna would develop it's own version of Gedmatch. This would entail contracts with 23&me, Ancestry, Dodecad, Eurogenes etc.

              Comment

              • Frederator
                FTDNA Customer
                • Jul 2010
                • 846

                Originally posted by josh w. View Post
                Agree but what does Ftdna gain. It is easy to see how the other companies would gain. It is unlikely that Ftdna would develop it's own version of Gedmatch. This would entail contracts with 23&me, Ancestry, Dodecad, Eurogenes etc.
                That's not the way oligopoly works. It's relatively rare that outright collusion a la the Archer Daniels Midland affair occurs. Usually the firms know the market and each other well enough that they don't have to bother overtly communicating anti-competitive strategies.

                There are only two ways to threaten the power of oligopolies: 1.) Direct government intervention; 2.) Disruptive technological or delivery paradigms.

                Americans are culturally backward, so there is next to zero chance of meaningful government intervention, especially here, since this is mostly regarded as a vanity or luxury market.

                In a sense Gedmatch does represent a potentially disruptive delivery paradigm. They offer a range of superior innovative analytical tools and the chance to perform cross-platform comparisons--for free.

                It's true that with regard to any one of the oligopolistic firms, Gedmatch is a force-multiplier. But the particular means by which they achieve these also dilutes the significance of barriers between each of those firms. In this way Gedmatch threatens the "status quo".

                I suspect that even if FTDNA would admit that they would lose some customer volume by destroying Gedmatch, they feel they could more than make up for it by jacking up their prices. Oligopoly suppresses price elasticity.

                Comment

                • jeffcdal
                  FTDNA Customer
                  • Mar 2016
                  • 4

                  Originally posted by Frederator View Post
                  That's what oligopoly does to an industry: it destroys innovation and customer service. Companies stop being about delivering service and start being about protecting turf.

                  Only people who care about innovation and service would lose, i.e., not the established firms.
                  I have no experience with 23andMe, however it appears both FTDNA and Ancestry are following this model. Neither of them deliver great service.

                  Comment

                  • clintonslayton76
                    I-M253 (I-FT362069)
                    • Jun 2014
                    • 398

                    As Josh W points out indirectly, FTDNA's policies and software issues create more customers for Ancestry and 23andMe, who are aimed at marketing autosomal products for the gullible, while GEDMatch helps create customers for any and all. I used to think that FTDNA was more scientific in its approach, but only in terms of DNA, certainly not in terms of software, and gave them some leeway for being geeks about DNA as opposed to slick marketers. (As any Admin can tell you, learning to be a GAP here and trying to train someone else as a backup is like picking up dimes with your teeth.)

                    Frederator's oligopoly analogy is certainly applicable in the segment of Y DNA, but in terms of autosomal, FTDNA stands against two other US providers, not only is there competition, but most admins suggest testing atDNA on all three, and GEDMatch's superior tools does not threaten any of them. Considering the cost of $100@, atDNA is not a pure either-or decision issue, some people can afford to consider doing all three, as opposed to being stuck with only one atDNA pool. I choose not to do so because like so many others here, I do not trust either Ancestry or 23andMe. Since GEDMatch has always shown me a broad pool of results and FTDNA has my testing money, this cannot be a money issue, I suspect that there is a privacy concern.

                    An issue that needs to be spelled out is that my RAW file may be a proprietary format, but the information is still from my DNA, and we know from the virtual destruction of Sorenson Genomics by Ancestry, that what belongs to us may theoretically continue to do so, after these companies fold up, but the practical issue is: what are we left with to hold onto as a possible backup and transfer to other services in the worst case. With Sorenson, everything was destroyed and if customers (like me) did not keep our printouts or retest at considerable expense, we lost everything. I would not be comfortable with any form of government intervention outside of deeming this information "medical" and therefore belonging to the person who provides the sample, not a lab that has been paid for generating a report from it. As a capitalist, I recognize their intellectual property for testing techniques, but once I pay for that, what is left belongs to me.

                    I only recommended FTDNA Family Finder because the raw file could be uploaded to GEDMatch.
                    Last edited by clintonslayton76; 19 March 2016, 01:06 PM. Reason: correction

                    Comment

                    • Biblioteque
                      FTDNA Customer - mtDNA - U3a1b
                      • Feb 2013
                      • 831

                      How could FTDNA possibly hurt Gedmatch? If Gedmatch does not want to play ball, they can delete all uploads from FTDNA. That is not much of a loss! I have tested at all 3 companies, and of my 1500 matches at Gedmatch, very few are from FTDNA, compared to the other 2 companies. I have 1900 matches at FTDNA, and more than 10,000 matches at Ancestry. Obviously, there is a greater potential for my having significantly more Ancestry matches at Gedmatch now and in the future.

                      If Gedmatch is backed into a corner and wants no more of this nonsense, they can sell out to the deep pockets of AncestryDNA. Now what would THAT do to the business of FTDNA?
                      Last edited by Biblioteque; 19 March 2016, 02:03 PM.

                      Comment

                      • Frederator
                        FTDNA Customer
                        • Jul 2010
                        • 846

                        Originally posted by clintonslayton76 View Post
                        . . . Frederator's oligopoly analogy is certainly applicable in the segment of Y DNA, but in terms of autosomal, FTDNA stands against two other US providers, [B]not only is there competition, but most admins suggest testing atDNA on all three, and GEDMatch's superior tools does not threaten any of them. . .
                        I agree on some of the other points you make, but when I consider the specific niches carved out by each of the major firms, I am impressed by the degree to which FTDNA is most directly impacted by Gedmatch's model. 23&Me has (or HAD) the health thing and subscription model. Ancestry has the links to a huge library of potentially corroborating documents. But what does FTDNA have? A set of analytical tools that Gedmatch frankly does a lot better. For free.

                        If any of the oligopolistic firms would feel threatened by Gedmatch, clearly it would be FTDNA.

                        Comment

                        • josh w.
                          FTDNA Customer
                          • Mar 2005
                          • 2503

                          Originally posted by Frederator View Post
                          I agree on some of the other points you make, but when I consider the specific niches carved out by each of the major firms, I am impressed by the degree to which FTDNA is most directly impacted by Gedmatch's model. 23&Me has (or HAD) the health thing and subscription model. Ancestry has the links to a huge library of potentially corroborating documents. But what does FTDNA have? A set of analytical tools that Gedmatch frankly does a lot better. For free.

                          If any of the oligopolistic firms would feel threatened by Gedmatch, clearly it would be FTDNA.
                          Ftdna seemed comfortable if it's customers went to Gedmatch, this saved Ftdna from analysis of their own customer's patterns. If Ftdna is dependent on Gedmatch, how would they be ahead by closing contact with Gedmatch. Raising prices would only put them in a less competitive situation since the market seems to be price dependent. Since Gedmatch needs someone to do the testing, this only strengthens the position of the other two companies and would be a disaster for Ftdna. The other companies would be happy to see Ftdna disappear, not much of an oligarchy.

                          If 23&me can have a far more more serious problem with the Feds, why can't Ftdna adjust
                          Last edited by josh w.; 19 March 2016, 03:05 PM.

                          Comment

                          • Frederator
                            FTDNA Customer
                            • Jul 2010
                            • 846

                            Originally posted by josh w. View Post
                            If Ftdna is dependent on Gedmatch, how would they be ahead by closing contact with Gedmatch. Raising prices would only put them in a less competitive situation since the market seems to be price dependent. Since Gedmatch needs someone to do the testing, this only strengthens the position of the other two companies and would be a disaster for Ftdna

                            If 23&me can have a far more more serious problem with the Feds, why can't Ftdna adjust
                            I don't believe the market is as price dependent as you believe it is.

                            I never implied that FTDNA was dependent on Gedmatch. I don't think that is true.

                            FTDNA's customers may, in a sense, be partially dependent on Gedmatch, because Gedmatch's tools are so much better. But again, in oligopolies, customer opinion doesn't matter much.

                            Users can theoretically purchase from 23&Me or Ancestry.com and upload to Gedmatch for the tools for free. That FTDNA might see this as a problem should be clear.

                            In one obvious scenario, FTDNA could stop the defection of its potential customers to other companies by eliminating Gedmatch.

                            All this vague and to me suspicious talk about "privacy issues" could just be an opening salvo by FTDNA to scare Gedmatch out of business altogether, or at least lower the bidding price for a hostile take over.

                            If FTDNA were to take this view, they would be more inclined to act now than waiting until later. In the short term there are relationship barriers, sunk costs, etc. that prevent many current customers from abandoning FTDNA immediately.

                            23&Me's issues with the Feds touched upon medical concerns with potential insurance and financial sector impact. They intervened not because anyone was worried about 23&Me's competitive situation among testing companies, but rather the conflicting interests of powerful Health Care and financial institutions. American government is more than willing to act on the behalf of large corporate interests, not so much on the behalf of consumers.

                            I agree, FTDNA does have options other than destroying Gedmatch. But that would take a highly developed ethical sense, foresight, good will and flexibility. Our business culture doesn't value those things, so chances are that nobody at FTDNA has those qualities. Destroying Gedmatch must seem like such an obvious "solution" that they don't even see a need to seek an alternative.

                            Comment

                            • John F Smeltzer
                              FTDNA Customer
                              • Nov 2014
                              • 14

                              Sounds like good new is in the works ......... posted at GEDmatch ... sounds like here at FTDNA (FACEBOOK maybe) as well.

                              "Family Tree DNA and GEDmatch jointly announce that we are in serious conversations regarding issues that have resulted in GEDmatch discontinuing uploads of FTDNA data. Both companies recognize the importance of these talks to their customers and are committed to quickly resolve differences. We regret any inconvenience that may have been caused and assure our users that our primary focus and efforts are geared toward your benefit.

                              We appreciate the overwhelming support GEDmatch users have expressed on public forums."

                              Comment

                              • Frederator
                                FTDNA Customer
                                • Jul 2010
                                • 846

                                Originally posted by John F Smeltzer View Post
                                Sounds like good new is in the works ......... posted at GEDmatch ... sounds like here at FTDNA (FACEBOOK maybe) as well.

                                "Family Tree DNA and GEDmatch jointly announce that we are in serious conversations regarding issues that have resulted in GEDmatch discontinuing uploads of FTDNA data. Both companies recognize the importance of these talks to their customers and are committed to quickly resolve differences. We regret any inconvenience that may have been caused and assure our users that our primary focus and efforts are geared toward your benefit.

                                We appreciate the overwhelming support GEDmatch users have expressed on public forums."

                                That does sound like good news. I hope it really is.

                                I wonder whether there will be some type of joint project announced. Short of shutting Gedmatch altogether, all of FTDNA's preferred options involve either acquiring Gedmatch or licensing tools to or from it in a way that could result in cost increases passed on to the customer.

                                Comment

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