>>27677704Found this website once that claimed to do research in to family lineage and heraldry, all that kind of stuff. Ended up paying them about £200 for a framed litho of (what they said was) my families coat of arms - two crossed silver cutlases on a blue shield - with the family name written across the top.
I was really intrigued by it, so I started digging around and doing some research as to why we got that particular design, but after several weeks I could find one single scrap of information, other than the fact that not every family has a family crest (sounds obvious when you hear it, but didn't really think of it at the time). Emailed back and forth with the company for a bit, it turns out that what they do is look for some heraldic design that someone with your surname has used at some point, then tell you it's yours. I guess they're working on the basis that, for example, every person on the planet with the surname "Smith" is a descendant of the very first mr. Smith. To make matters worse, they couldn't find anything for my surname (it's a pretty uncommon one), so they just picked a name that sounded "similar" and went with that instead.
Asked them for a refund as I felt I'd been ripped off, the best they would offer was I could buy another one with a different design for half price (like, how the hell does that make it any better?). Reported them to trading standards, don't know what happened with it in the end. The picture is now on the wall in my garage - it's quite nice as a standalone art piece, but I don't want people asking about it and me having to tell them about how I got ripped off, so I keep it out of the way.
