Ancestry Test

I should only give this one Star..: but it was really easy to use and gather the sample. I gave this to my father for Christmas and we sent off the next day. Since then approximately once a week he has badgered me to check for results. It is five weeks later and we still do not have any results. What we do have is one frustrated daughter. I’m assuming the results will be available soon. I’ll update then.

I found the results of HomeDNA to be worthless. I used familysearch.org to trace my ancestors back to the Middle Ages. Most of my ancestors were from Germany and German speaking Switzerland, with smaller numbers from Scotland and England. HomeDNA did not report anything from any of these areas. I expected there to be significant differences, but the results are just implausible. The third largest component was Orkney Islands, a group of small islands off Scotland with very few people. I know there were mass migrations to Germany form the East, but from Orkney Islands ? My wife also sent in a sample and had a similarly ridiculous result . For her Orkney Islands were the second biggest contributor. As a test, she also sent a sample to 23andMeDNA and got completely different results, which were much more plausible - not identical, but similar to the results of her genealogy research.

My dad and mom loved getting the results. My wife has.not received hers yet and it's been since January.

arrived within the time frame given. no additional shipping costs. can't think of a negative it all worked well still awaiting results

Don't waste your money! We were so excited to do this and find out more about where we came from. We are still unable to download the "Raw data" that they reference. We continue to get "Gateway Timeouts." If you are thinking this will break down the different makeup of your ancestry, it doesn't. For $100 this tells you the origin of your top three gene pools which in both our cases included less than 50%. When it get's to the "migration" path of your ancestors it talks about a generic 2000 years ago history of what happened during that time. We are so disappointed it this product and in Amazon for doing a special deal to help the peddle this junk. We plan on looking to another product like the one from Ancestry.com and hope they are not all frauds like this one.

I ordered this knowing it wasn't going to unlock all the mysteries of my existence. It didn't. What it did was provide a basic overview of the geographic regions where I acquired certain DNA. It did confirm (for the most part) what I'd always been told by relatives in terms of where our ancestors came from...and that's pretty much what I wanted. So, overall, I'm satisfied with that even though it's not very detailed. It's very easy to use. Open the kit, swab the inside of your mouth with the included cotton swabs, drop the swabs in the envelope, drop the envelope in the mailer, put in mailbox. Pretty simple. Takes about 5 mins. Postage is prepaid. A few minor complaints: 1) it took much longer to get results than what they claimed. I was told to expect the results on or about Feb 1. It was two weeks after that my results were ready. 2) I never got an email or other notification my results were ready. I found out by chance just by looking on the website. I got all the other notification emails and promotional emails trying to sell me more services so not sure why I didn't receive any notification regarding the results. I got these kits on sale just before Christmas so the cost wasn't too bad. Probably not worth paying the full price for this basic kit.

Really fun! I learned a lot and it has inspired me to do more research.

I don't know if I like or dislike this product, I have yet to use it. It looks like payment in full on Amazon. You assume payment in full until you visit the site to register your DNA test and find an additional payment of like amount is needed before you can register and mail off. The idea of Going Out Of My Way to return something that I want but can't use or afford (additional charge)doesn't bring me joy. I spoke with someone representing HomeDNA and I unfortunately found out that the reason why my package cannot be registered is an error on Amazon and more payment is required. On another note, hang on to packing material before recycling, you'll miss it if you tossed too soon.