Hi
This is my first post and would like to say how much I value this site. I have never had to ring an 0870 or 0845 number since discovering this site so a big thank you to the person whose idea it was.

I just wanted to let you all know about an advert that appeared on this site (although I haven't seen it for a few days so it may have been taken off). It was called Reverse Records and for a lifetime membership of $39.95 you could look up 10 billion records in the US, Canada and UK.  As I am researching my ancestry I thought this was a great idea so signed up.  Although I ticked the box for $39.95 they actually took $46.95 from my PayPal account saying the rest of the money was for a sales tax (not mentioned before but I accepted that).  I then logged on only to find that almost all record searches had to be paid for (between $4 and $10).  I then decided to look up a divorce record only to find that these records were not available for the UK! Feeling rather conned I contacted PayPal and thankfully they got me a full refund. Just thought I ought to let people know about it :)

It is illegal in the UK to provide a reverse directory enquiry service. So, for the UK at least, you won't find a service where you can provide a phone number and be told the name and address of the subscriber.

Thanks for the info Dave.  I must say I was quite surprised when I saw the advert on your site as I wondered if it might be illegal but it also offered lots of other info like birth, marriages and death records which are also available for public viewing on the Ancestry.com site.  I was hoping to gain more info on Wills, Divorce Records etc as I am researching my family history.   Will you be removing the advert from your site now?

unabryn wrote on May 18^th, 2007 at 7:59pm:

… Will you be removing the advert from your site now?

No because it is provided by Google AdWords. The adverts that Google Ads shows are selected by the text on the page in question. Take more note of what adverts there are and you will see what I mean.

There are some threads on here about it advertising 0870 providers, and people asking why this is. See Site Related section > Saynoto0870 FAQs thread for more information.

Oh right - I didn't realise it was through Google Adwords.   I thought I'd post the problem I had so that others might not fall into the same trap.  Many thanks for your advice on this:)