The North of Ireland Family History Society

As you read the title of this post, you may read it as Northern Ireland Family History Society. If so, you have read it wrong. It is actually the North of Ireland Family History Society. There is a reason why it is so called that. It is because, as I said in my post about the Ulster Historical Foundation, the Province of Ulster is not just in Northern Ireland. Only six counties from Ulster make up Northern Ireland. The other three counties are in the Republic of Ireland. That being said, this family history society do have books, documents, databases, etc., from south of the border in their holdings.

The North of Ireland Family History Society are more than happy to open their research center at a time that they are normally closed in order to accommodate visitors from outside of their country, especially when they arrive in a bus and everyone wants to see the records. Their research centre in Newtownabbey, Antrim, is not very big. When I say not very big, it probably can handle about eight to ten researchers at a time, but not much more. To have more than fifteen researchers there will tax the room available if everyone is looking for the same type of information. I walked into the Randal Gill Library and found that there was really not enough room for me to go looking if I am not focused enough with others there. So, I left the room to those who knew what they were looking for and ended up in the computer room where I did some online research. Unfortunately, I couldn’t print out what I found.

The Society has a web page that seems to be well organized. Their home page is well laid out, showing where all eleven branches are located and give some general information about the Society itself. Surfing the website is easy and seems to be quite clear. Clicking on the buttons will take you where you want to go and are pretty much self-explanatory. Each button on the home page will take you to a different aspect of the Society. You can also go to the sub-pages for each of the buttons from the home page.

The Society’s holdings pertain primarily with the north of Ireland. They cover all of Ulster as well as some of the counties that border on Ulster. They have some holdings pertaining to England and the United States. A number of their databases are online, however, some of them are only accessible to members only.

There are eleven branches of the Society. They are: Ballymena, Belfast, Coleraine, Foyle, Killyleagh, Larne, Lisburn, Newtownabbey, North Armagh, North Down & Ards, and Omagh. The branches tend not to have research centres, but instead arrange day trips, monthly meetings, and other activities that enhance family history.

There are two types of membership in the Society. You can either belong to a branch where you pay your yearly dues which are in the neighbourhood of £22 a year. This would be a good idea if you lived in Northern Ireland. You would just need to find out which branch is closest to you. The other type of membership is an associated membership which will cost approximately £18 a year. This is primarily used by members who live a great distance from the locations of the Society. There are benefits to being a member, such as being able to access all of the online databases, and, of course, their newsletters. When I am at the point that I feel that they have information that I need for my research, I will be getting a membership. It really is a very small cost for the benefits that I will receive from it.

All in all, the North of Ireland Family History Society is much more than what I originally thought while visiting there. I can say, that it is actually a lot more than I saw and that it can prove to be a benefit to the family history world.

Timeshare Rip Off

My husband and I own a timeshare with RHG Vacation Club. We received a letter yesterday from the vacation club regarding a retirement program. They referred to a letter that had been previously sent but was never received by us. They stated in their letter that even though they are not selling any more memberships, they still have enough inventory for existing membership and would only make it available to the membership.

I have a problem with their statement. There has been a number of times when we wanted to book there to spend and this would have been after the long weekend in September for a vacation or a weekend in the spring so that I could attend a family history conference in the area, but we could not get the booking. My husband has a job where he just cannot go at any time. We have to choose the time carefully so that we don’t end up with a booking that we cannot use. Consequently, we have not been able to use their facilities. We have not been asking to use it in the middle of summer or during the Christmas holidays. We have been asking to use it when the kids are back to school and they should have lots of bookings. No, even to get that booking we have to book a year in advance.

Enough about that. Back to the letter.

The second thing that I don’t like about this letter is that they are willing to let people “retire” their membership for a fee of over $3000.00. They are not purchasing the memberships back, but they want people to pay this money to be able to leave the membership. The following is a quote from the letter:

“Our retirement program is available to all our Membership as outlined in our previous letter” (which we never received) “the cost to retire your Membership and have no further obligations is $3,100.00 and has been extended to April 15^th, 2016 at which time it will increase to $3,500.00.”

I called them today to find out more about the letter that we never received and to clarify what they were saying. I was told that because we purchased our timeshare and are paying for it over a lengthy period of time, that we were not eligible for this offer. If we wanted to take advantage of this offer, we would have to pay the remaining balance AND the fee to retire the membership. Furthermore, the person that I was speaking to said that this mostly applied to members that had purchased their membership many years ago and were not using their membership because they were to old to do so. I have friends that are in their 60s, 70s and 80s that are still very active. So, by targeting this group, they are choosing to target people whose income is not what it used to be and expect them to come up with a sum that some of them may not be able to raise so quickly.

Imagine, a company that is supposed to be set up to give quality vacations, does not have enough space to give everyone that quality vacation on even a three-months notice, expecting to receive money from people who are treated in this way. Are they ever out to lunch. They have a bad reputation already. They do not like to look into any complaints because it will cost them money that they do not want to spend.

If RHG Vacation Club was so concerned about the seniors that don’t use their memberships, they should look into why they don’t and perhaps, either buy them out or provide special weeks when the resort is only open to the membership who are in this category.

We have paid the monthly payment and the maintenance fees for every year, but have only been able to use one of the resorts after the “free” weekend. This was not always because of not having enough money for the time that we were there, but it was mostly because of the fact that we could not get the booking that we wanted. The last time that I tried to book to get into the facility, we had to go through RCI even though we had our membership. If we had been able to get our booking, we also would have had to pay for housekeeping which the maintenance fee was supposed to cover.

When you go on a free weekend somewhere, check out the place before you go. If you buy into a timeshare like this one, you will have to pay maintenance fees. The company will not take loss of income for a reason to give up your obligation.