"Your family's tree has exceeded the Basic limit..."

These are the words that slap many of us in the face whenever we stray onto Geni, where I once spent so many hours entering data into what I foolishly thought was a nice medium for my cousins and me to share family information. Now, with the words above, I'm branded as a transgressor, because Geni shrank its permitted family tree size AFTER THE FACT. It makes one feel that one has been robbed, or defrauded, or both.

If these limits were applied to NEW applicants, who knew exactly what they were getting into, it would seem more fair. We earlier participants should have been warned that what appeared to be a decision about investing time would later be changed into a decision about investing significant amounts of money, endlessly. Now, the message we seem to get, no matter how much work we did, seems to be "Too bad! Pay now, or stay out."