Just a clarification on the fair usage policy for subscribers which many have noticed in the revised Terms & Conditions.

These are not a new addition to the site and nor has the 1000 credit/month limit changed - in fact this has been in place since we started offering subscriptions in December 2005.  

Previously, the fair usage policy was in the separate “Subscription Terms and Conditions” which was only linked to from a few pages - all we have done is move it to the main set (with a link on every page) so it is easier to find, and removed some unclear wording so it is easier to understand.

Why do we have a fair usage policy? Well, it is certainly not a way to penalise or hold back our customers from conducting their personal family research.

We have this in place purely for the (very rare) cases where people might abuse the service, and it is designed to keep the price of subscriptions as low as possible for all family historians (and protect the copyright of owners of the records).

There are 3 general types of users who might exceed the fair usage limit.

1. Bona-fide family historians using the site for their own research. We understand that you might get carried away or have a really busy month which is why we set the fair usage at an average of 1000 credits per month over 3 months. In practice, hardly anbody (fewer than 0.5% of users) ever goes over the limit.
2. People using the site for commercial purposes. This includes both companies (probate genealogists, local authorities etc) and professional researchers conducting paid research. We have a separate charging structure for corporate users - by charging those who use a huge volume of records according to their use, we ensure that the general subscription price is kept as low as possible.
3. Thankfully rarely, we do get people who use the records intensively (or simply copy them wholesale) to create their own versions, often to sell on. Obviously this breaches the copyright of the record owners and needs to be protected against.

The fair use policy is designed to identify groups 2 and 3, and to allow unhindered access to the first group.

We always contact users  to establish the reason for abnormally heavy use of the site and if they’re just doing their own personal research, we obviously don’t penalise them. In practice, hardly anyone manages to exceed an average of 1000 credits per month over a three month period so we don’t end up making many phone calls.

We constantly review the limit, based on average usage of the site by all users.

So if we introduce new records with a higher credit charge, such as the BT27 passenger lists, we check to see if the 1000 credit limit should be raised. We will continue to keep an eye on this and make adjustments as necessary, in particular before the 1911 census is introduced as a subscription option.

Many services today (think of broadband packages) have similar fair usage policies and they work in the same way as ours i.e they are designed to catch those who use the service excessively (which would drive up the price or reduce the quality of service for the majority of users).

We hope this explains things - do contact Customer Support if you have any further questions.

We have created a single set of Terms & Conditions which apply to all users using the site. On the whole there are few changes from the previous two sets, which have now been combined into one. However there are a few changes which you should note:

1. We have clarified the fair usage limit for subscribers, which has been in place since December 2005 but was less clear before. This remains set at an average of 1000 credits use per month over a 3 month period but we will continue to review this based on the average usage of users of the site. If it changes, we will notify you.
2. We have clarified your rights to cancel a purchase of credits or a subscription, as is your right under the EU Distance Selling Directive. We have also clarified when a contract is formed between you and findmypast.com.
3. We have included the possibility of ‘recurring billing’ in the future where we take regular fixed payments rather than one large payment in advance.

If you have any questions, please contact Customer Support.