Sunday, February 10, 2013

Have You Used the Forces War Records web site?

Military
The Forces War Records Web site looks interesting and quite a few of the messages I get have a military interest. Would people find a review of this site useful? As an example,  I could see how easy it was to get information on a Hertfordshire relative who fought in the Boer War, and also some background information about some of the soldiers (and their units) who were based in Hemel Hempstead during the First World War and are mentioned in my book The London Gunners come to Town. The problem is that it is a pay site and to keep costs down I need to plan my approach carefully. If you have any experience of the site (good or bad) let me know by commenting below so that I can plan my review to include areas of interest - and if no one has any comments or suggestion I can move the review to the low priority list.

4 comments:

  1. Hi Chris, I'm Tim from FWR- if you contact our support desk they can let you know what you're likely to get for searches, the nice thing is as you've probably seen it's a single payment per subscription period -no credits or limits: you see the lot for £8.95 a month which we think is pretty fair -there's over 5 million individuals recorded after all!

    The free search is what I'd recommend though -you can see if someone is listed and also see what 'fields' of information are completed on the record before paying at all.
    Of course the support desk (online email or our new 'live' support) will assist if you have specifics you definitely need.

    I hope this helps!

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    1. Hi, I found this site rubbish, also look for tick box at the bottom of form or they will take money every month for ever ,more. even if you only subscribed for one month

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  2. Chris,
    BEWARE! There is a tick box, failure to respond correctly means they take the monthly subscription EVERY month.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They are not the only one. There are a lot of organisations (not just those connected with local and family history) which take monthly or annual payments for ever and a day ... Some time ago I purchased a laptop for my wife and there was a "free for the first X months" help line which she never used - and I have just discovered I have been paying a subscription for the "service" for over a year. Needless to say there has been no reminder that we are being charged ...

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