-The Sponsor's Tale-

Once upon a time, Thomas had a list on MAISER. He founded this list and managed it for many months and the subscriber list grew to hundreds of members. Then the MAISER server crashed in the spam attack of May 1997, and suddenly over a thousand surname mailing lists were looking for a new home.

Rootsweb generously offered to give a new home to the MAISER surname lists, Thomas' among them. As Thomas says now, "I was never happy with Rootsweb, but never carped". He continued to manage his list and built the list membership even further, adding a couple hundred more subscribers. In over two years, he had problems with only a handful of list members who he eventually had to unsubscribe for their disruptive behavior. Two of the people he removed from his list petitioned Rootsweb for two new "copycat" lists, which were provided even though duplicate lists are contrary to Rootsweb policy.

A short time later, Rootsweb staffer Tim Pierce posted the following, "The listowner of the [name deleted] list appears to have disappeared. He doesn't respond to e-mail and hasn't been engaging in ordinary list maintenance" and asked for volunteers to take over the management of the list. According to Thomas, he responded to the post immediately indicating he was NOT missing. Tim apparently never read this response and claims to have been unable to reach Thomas by email. Thomas then contacted Karen Isaacson, co-owner of Rootsweb, who told him that Tim had declared the list abandoned and had already assigned list "ownership" to one of the people Thomas had formerly removed from his list for being disruptive. Karen told Thomas to take it up with Tim, but Tim did not respond his emails.

Thomas is not like many of the other listowners who transferred their lists over to Rootsweb free of charge. Thomas became a sponsor, paying the $24 yearly fee which entitles him to two free lists and two surname boards. He has the email confirmation he received from Rootsweb to prove it. He questioned the re-assigning of his list to someone else as an abridgement of the contract under which he paid money to Rootsweb and forwarded a copy of his email confirmation to Rootsweb co-owner Brian Leverich. He also had an attorney contact Mr. Leverich. According to Thomas, Mr. Leverich was not only excessively rude to the attorney, he denied that Thomas ever gave them any money and refused to refund him any of it. Further, the attorney spoke to a Rootsweb staffer who informed her that there are no "listowners" at Rootsweb, only "password holders". Thomas was not informed of this policy before he moved his list to Rootsweb and gave Rootsweb money. In fact, he was not informed of this policy until Rootsweb had taken his list and given it to someone else.

Thomas is careful to point out that he did not adopt an ongoing list, but rather brought a very active and well-populated list to Rootsweb, which took money from Thomas and then instituted competing duplicate lists and finally took his own list from him, without refunding his money. According to him, "Rootsweb is a bogus, lying, greed-motivated organization trying to get fat off of the efforts of the unsuspecting." He belongs to no Rootsweb groups at present, and never will. He has, he says, learned his lesson.

Postscript: Thomas has filed a formal complaint against Rootsweb and Mr. Leverich with the The Federal Trade Commission, concerning the taking of his list and the refusal to refund his money. The FTC complaint file number is #444020.

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"The R-files" and "Tales of Rootsweb", © 1999 by Teresa Lindquist, all rights reserved. Graphics provided by Anonymous Graphics, © 1999. All contents of this website are the property of Teresa Lindquist and may not be reproduced in any form without express written permission of the owner.