Corrections - FMP

[Jenny M Benson]

I just received an e-mail from FMP, telling me that they accepted an
error report I had submitted and would be correcting the error within 72
hours.

Goodness knows how often I have reported transcription errors to FMP
(many times... many, many times...) and I have always received an
acknowledgement but I don't remember ever having a "yes, we accept and
will correct" response before.

Is this a new thing FMP are doing or have I been wasting my time all
these past years?

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

Post by Jenny M Benson
I just received an e-mail from FMP, telling me that they accepted an
error report I had submitted and would be correcting the error within
72 hours.
Goodness knows how often I have reported transcription errors to FMP
(many times... many, many times...) and I have always received an
acknowledgement but I don't remember ever having a "yes, we accept and
will correct" response before.
Is this a new thing FMP are doing or have I been wasting my time all
these past years?

I've been doing them for years too (more as a service to genealogy as a
whole than to FMP). I've usually received an automatic reply, but don't
_think_ I've received the more detailed sort of reply you describe -
until in the last 24 hours, when I got two such. So yes, I think they're
new.

Of course, FMP don't know how their own mail system works; it sends
emails containing a plain text part and an HTML part. I think most of
their staff are unaware of this, and whatever is supposed to make sure
the same thing is in both is very broken. The ones I got - in the HTML
part - start "Dear J. P.,", and go on "we agree that 1 out of 1 of
them need attention"; the plain text part starts "Dear [name],", and
goes on "we agree that [x out of y] of them need attention".

(Since I received two such emails, I wonder if they'll ever refer to
more than 1 in the "of y" position, as well. I cant see how they could.)

Their ignorance that their emails contained two parts came to a
ridiculous head a year or few ago, with me asking why they were telling
me about special offers after - sometimes months after - the closing
date; eventually the penny dropped to me, that (I have my email client
set to show me the plain text version by default when an email contains
both parts) their newsletters hadn't been updating the plain text part
at all, so it contained the newsletter text from many issues previously.
(Needless to say, when I at first lodged such queries, they tried to
blame _my_ setup.)

In the recent emails, they say "Thank you for reporting the error(s) you
found on a Findmypast record transcript. It’s viewable here for your
reference.", where "here" is a link (in the HTML portion - not in the
plain text portion!). Clicking on the link did indeed take me back to
the record in question, but AFAICS with no indication of the error I'd
reported or what my correction was. (I admit I didn't look too hard.)

(Despite this, I think FMP are better - in many, not all, ways - than
Ancestry. Of course you really need both, as each has records -
especially county/parish records - the other doesn't. Though I let my
Ancestry sub. lapse last renewal because they'd always had some sort of
offer at my renewal time and this time they didn't, so it would have
been something like a 40% increase - and, mostly, I haven't missed it [I
do have a DNA "account"]. I rather suspect they've stopped _doing_
offers on their subscriptions, concentrating on doing them on DNA [over
things like mother's day, Easter, Remembrance weekend, etc.] instead.)