My sample was received by Dante Labs on March 31. I contacted them by e-mail, first on April 30 and then on June 15, because my sample had not begun processing and had the status: “awaiting quality control inspection”. Both times I received a response with apologies for the delay. The second time they offered me 5 free additional genomic panels.
This was my answer to their offer:
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27.06.2023
Thanks for the offer of free panels, but this does not solve the problem of the test being so much delayed. I bought the test almost exclusively for the Y-DNA BAM file. I already know the haplogroup, because my father has taken the Big Y test at FTDNA. But because of another Big Y test for a relative, I am not happy with FTDNA, which in my opinion has rushed my relative’s test, as there are no BIG Y and Y-67 matches, although there is an American who has exactly the same haplogroup as him, and there are some Hungarians who have closely related haplogroups and are distant autosomal matches with my relative. There was also the situation in which FTDNA found an incorrect mtDNA haplogroup (J1) after a Full Sequence test for my sister’s son, who has the same haplogroup as me (J1c as found by 23andMe). Also he had no matches. I contacted FTDNA and demonstrated that the result was wrong, and they corrected it, blaming a software error (and the matches instantly appeared). There were also other situations, some ridiculous, like for example, there was an autosomal match who had more shared DNA with my sister on the X chromosome than myself, but that match had no shared DNA at all on the autosomal chromosomes. So, from my experience, FTDNA has very poor or no quality control. This is why I refused to pay 100 USD for my father’s BAM file and chose instead to buy the WGS test at Dante Labs.
I had no idea that I would wait so much, not for the results to be delivered, but for the DNA sample to begin processing. FTDNA, with all its sins, at least delivers the results on time, or much quicker (the Big Y test of my relative took only a month, this is why I say it was rushed to make place for the other samples to be processed). Of course I prefer the test to take more time than to be rushed, but there must be a warning in advance when you make the purchase. Dante Labs must clearly say that the result of the test will be delivered in 6 months, so the buyer would know in advance if he wants to wait, or go to a competitor. I know my haplogroups both for Y-DNA and for mtDNA, so for me the wait does not matter so much. I only need the files to upload to YFull.
But I can tell you that people have already began to joke about Dante Labs, and it’s not good for the reputation of the company. Your biggest sales agents are the people interested in genealogy, who would recommend your company to others. These people are not pleased with the delay, so they will not recommend Dante Labs anymore. For example, there is a Serbian genealogy forum, where Dante Labs has a thread. I don’t know Serbian, so I use Google Translate to read it. See the attached screenshot.
This is the latest page of the thread in original:
https://forum.poreklo.rs/index.php?topic=3909.800The same page translated with Google:
https://forum-poreklo-rs.translate.goog/index.php?topic=3909.800&_x_tr_sl=sr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp~~~~~
One forum user asks: “From past experience with the laboratory, how long does it take them to determine the results?”
Another forum user responds: “According to previous experience, from a month and a half to a year and a half.”
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I don’t know many who would want to risk waiting for a year and a half in order to receive the results. So, because more and more people learn about the results delay, Dante Labs loses customers.
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And this was their answer to my message:
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4.07.2023
Dear Bogdan,
We truly appreciate your feedback.
We are so sorry for the overall experience. We realize that the results are long overdue and this is very concerning for all the customers. We are trying to reassure everyone that they will receive their results, and if we could do more, we would, please believe us.
All of the samples from the Poreklo projects have been flagged to the lab for expedited processing, but even then, it still takes some time and we are very sorry for the situation.
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The update is that my sample has begun processing a few days ago, after 3.5 months since it was received. Maybe some of the Poreklo samples have also begun processing since now they have priority over other samples.