This is the email I received when I complained about the fee structure, as I'm searching for a common name. There answer doesn't take into account that I may not know exactly where they lived... Dear Mrs. White, Thanks for your feedback on the new credit system. The new system allows you to narrow your searches by completing more search criteria as outlined below. All users can view ten pages of search results free under the new system. After that users will need to pay to view search results. You can refine your search so that you get less matches before paying to view search results (1 page of results up to a max of 10 index records will cost 10 cent (EURO) to view.) You can refine your search as much as you like and as many times as you like before you need to pay to view any results. For example a search on our site for Patrick Murphy baptisms between 1845-1855 locates 636 matches. Without further information there is no way to narrow this search. There is no charge for this search. If you enter a father's name as John, you will be told there are 102 matches - still too many. If you enter a mother's first name of Mary you will get 22 matches. If you select a particular county of origin, say Co. Galway, you get one match. You can do all this without any charge. Based on the example Patrick Murphy we have refined the search using the most common first names and looked in a mid nineteenth century timeframe when most parishes were keeping records. Yours sincerely Customer Support Team www.rootsireland.ie Thanks, Annette in Canada

Annette, Thanks for posting this. I know their answer wasn't really very helpful to you specifically; but I am glad to see it nonetheless as I've been just a tad worried that the tutorial I shared at http://tinyurl.com/IFHF-Tutorial might be considered by some to be inappropriate as it explains how to work around being charged to do searches. (Particularly after Mr. Grenham mentioned "a way to outwit the restrictions" in his article published at: http://tinyurl.com/Grenham-article ) I want to make it perfectly clear that it was not my intention to "outwit" the site, but rather to show folks how to use the available features of the site to limit your hits and thus to make an informed intelligent decision as to which records to purchase. Based on the IFHF's statement: "You can refine your search as much as you like and as many times as you like before you need to pay to view any results.", I feel that my tutorial is NOT at all out of line and I hope it helps some of you narrow down those huge chunks of data when researching common surnames. Happy Hunting! Kathy Rhodes ----- Original Message ----- "Annette White" <amtwhite@rogers.com> This is the email I received when I complained about the fee structure, as I'm searching for a common name. There answer doesn't take into account that I may not know exactly where they lived... Dear Mrs. White, Thanks for your feedback on the new credit system. The new system allows you to narrow your searches by completing more search criteria as outlined below. <snip!> You can refine your search as much as you like and as many times as you like before you need to pay to view any results. <snip!> Yours sincerely Customer Support Team www.rootsireland.ie ----- End Original Message -----