matches disappeared

[tomcat]

I am beginning to think all the various site problems mentioned in this and other threads have a cause other than the transition to Build 37.

In the past week Ysearch was taken down because it was under assault by data miners. Maybe something similar, or the suspicion of something similar, is going on with FTDNA home site.

In the past week I attributed a number of profiles as Distant Cousin for the sake of running comparisons. For a day or so I had Confirmation Pendings that then disappeared, without any notice of Confirmation Accepted. I tried reentering and after completing a half dozen or so, the page display went strange so I stopped.

Other users report other odd occurrences. Might be best to just let it be until we get an all clear.

[efgen]

Mine are still gone as well... and not the courtesy of even a reply. I've sent them 4 messages so far over the last week.

Customer Service is working through an extremely high volume of email, so responses are delayed, but you will get a response once they get to your email in the queue. Please don't send duplicate emails on the same issue -- that only increases the volume needlessly

Elise

[chartera]

Something else I have a problem with is that family finder cost a reasonable amount of money. Now, you pay the cash, and take a chance, but, we paid the money, got results, and now what have we got, nothing, perhaps the error is fixed, maybe there is nothing that can be done, but I paid for a service, and now have nothing to show for it.

[emyr]

Customer Service is working through an extremely high volume of email, so responses are delayed, but you will get a response once they get to your email in the queue. Please don't send duplicate emails on the same issue -- that only increases the volume needlessly

Elise

While I definitely understand your post, quite obviously they are dealing with a lot of emails and one customer sending multiple emails does increase the volume. However, if I had paid for results and then those results disappeared, I would be expecting some answers. I myself would call them regarding this situation, but I would also probably send emails quite often as well until the issue was resolved or until I was given an expected date of correction. There really is no excuse for FTDNA not providing an explanation to those customers whose matches have disappeared.

On a lighter note, my delayed FF results for my dad came in yesterday, His results make sense, and I've already confirmed one match with a paper trail connection. I'm hoping that we are near the end of the IT problems with FTDNA, and as you pointed out in another post, FTDNA has job postings out now for IT positions. I sincerely hope that all of the missing matches are returned as soon as possible!

[andbro]

Well said Emyr. i cannot do anything with my other ff tests as the one I have missing is the main one. The others are to cross match. I am really annoyed that no decent explanation or time frame has been given.

[maplegirl]

My matches are still gone too. I wonder what has happened. Must be a big issue for this to be taking so long - it's been a week. And no real answer as to why other than they are aware of the few of us who have lost matches and are working on it. Couldn't they just re-run our samples?

And on the issue of data mining....well, you just never know. Scary. I have just submitted a dna sample to another company for testing. I had just finished registering my account, etc., when I clicked on results, for no particular reason other than I wanted to see what the page looked liked. I had just sent my test sample in and I knew it wasn't received yet. Indeed, it has not even been processed by today's date. Still must wait a few weeks. Anyway, on that result page, up came up my haplogroup designation...the exact one...which is H3g1a. Exactly that. On that page was info re H3. Now tell me, how did that company even know what my haplogroup was bearing in mind they hadn't received my sample yet? I thought that was quite odd and went back to the site a few days later but the info was gone. So who have I devulged my haplogroup to? Other than to a few friends via email, and of course, it's on this site for all to see. Of course I've googled the haplogroup many times just to see what information is out there on it. Oops, better define the above. I don't use google. I use another search engine that is supposed to protect privacy. So all this is a mystery to me. I will mention the above to that other company. I'd like to hear the answer.

I agree, restoring our matches should be top priority instead of any cosmetic changes I've seen done today.

[Lincoln]

maplegirl - Perhaps you are in a project and that is how the info got out there?

[Pincera]

Pincera, PDHOTLEN - Were your matches all gone, now they're back? Mine are still all gone.

I don't think mine went away at all

[Lincoln]

Thanks Pincera.

[brookes]

Mine are gone, but my father's, brother's and brother-in-law's are still there (I am missing from the match lists of the 1st two, as expected since all my matches went poof). I messaged, just in case. Oh and my BF's ill-fated kit is still in la-la land - it was originally in Batch 496 but never got any results, not even PF. I received an email last week (in response to my multiple inquiries) that it needed to be rerun from scratch (an issue with the lab? I forget), but the expected results date still says 2/18. This is the last communique I received on the subject, on March 11th:

This sample passed the testing, and is waiting to be uploaded. Realistically, we are expecting Family Finders that were not uploaded in the previous upload to be posted by the end of the day on Wednesday. Thank you again for your patience during this long delay.

Today is Friday the 15th, still no results. Should I email again or wait 'til Monday?

[jbarry6899]

matches disappeared

As noted on another thread, at least some of us whose matches disappeared can download their raw data. I hope this is good news, suggesting that the problem is in processing the matches, not that the data have been completely lost.

Jim

[cokie]

Your raw data is still at FTDNA, hopefully, they just have a problem posting the matches online for some reason. They have now posted a message regarding this problem when you log in but it does us who still don't have our matches for almost a week now, in my case, any good. It took them long enough to post this message considering there were so many posts about it in this forum.
Their notice is just to placate us for a while until they can figure out what's going on... Personally i'm not very happy with this situation...

[JamesBianco]

Personally I'm not very happy with this situation...

Neither am I, I've heard enough excuses already, even (surprisingly) from non-affiliated board members. If you can't sort out whatever the issue issue is, have the courtesy to reply to our messages. The backlogged thing is ridiculous. I don't accept it, not after nearly a week.

[efgen]

Neither am I, I've heard enough excuses already, even (surprisingly) from non-affiliated board members. If you can't sort out whatever the issue issue is, have the courtesy to reply to our messages. The backlogged thing is ridiculous. I don't accept it, not after nearly a week.

I completely understand that it's frustrating to have to wait so long for a response to your email, and I would never tell you that it's wrong to be frustrated. However, to say that you don't accept that Customer Service is backlogged -- sorry, but the honest truth is that they really are backlogged, and it's not just an excuse.

FTDNA has received an avalanche of email recently, and they receive plenty of phone calls as well. The customer service team is literally working overtime trying to catch up on email, but the high volume of email keeps coming. So which customers' emails that were received before yours should be skipped over to answer yours immediately? Sorry if that sounds flippant, but it's the reality of the situation.

Customer Service is really doing all it can. They are in the very thankless position of having to field the phone calls and emails without having the ability to actually fix the issues. So please don't get yourself too hyped up about getting a response to your email. When you finally do get the response, it's probably just going to say essentially the same thing that Friday's update on myFTDNA says -- they are very much aware that some customers are still missing all FF matches, and IT's top priority is to squash that bug and restore the missing matches.

(As someone suggested yesterday, the staff who worked on the cosmetic changes this week are indeed different from those working on Family Finder -- different IT skills.)

Believe me, the staff wants these issues resolved just as much as the customers do. No one enjoys having upset customers. And IT would love to finish the FF upgrade project once and for all so they can move on to other projects. If it were as easy as flipping a switch to fix everything, you can be certain that would have been done already.

Elise

PS. Hiring more staff is already in the works -- you can look at FTDNA's careers page to view the job postings. However, there's a learning curve and new staff need to be trained, so they can't just walk in the door and start productively answering the phones and email or coding up a storm.

[JamesBianco]

However, to say that you don't accept that Customer Service is backlogged -- sorry, but the honest truth is that they really are backlogged, and it's not just an excuse.
Elise

I do NOT accept that excuse, nor should I have too. We read that only a small percentage of people have this issue with Family Finder yet FTDNA is so back logged they can't seem to find the time to answer inquiries from the "few" who are affected? Efgen, let FTDNA speak for itself.