Saturday, November 09, 2013

Big Y DNA test announced by FTDNA

FTDNA's David Mittelman has announced the Big Y DNA test at the FTDNA Surname Administrators Conference. The test will return results on 10,000,000 base-pairs and approximately 25,000 SNPs on the Y chromosome. It is being offered to current customers for $495, a $200 discount price for a limited time. Log into you FTDNA home page to see the offer.

1 comment:

Peter MacDonald said...

In case anyone is wondering about the Big Y Test release of results today…..it has been very disappointing for pretty much all involved as test results were not delivered as promised today (and a fourth date of "hopeful" release was passed along to customers of the Big Y Test from Nov/Dec 2013..

FTDNA seems very noncommittal in their wording to its customers. Originally Big Y results for many were to be received on 31 Dec 2013. The it was pushed to mid Feb 2014, then to 28 Feb 2014. Now this is the notice that the majority of the Big Y customers received today from FTDNA not through an email but to there account on the FTDNA Website:

“We expect that all samples ordered during the initial sale (last November & December) will be delivered by March 28th. We are processing samples in first come first serve order. If a sample doesn’t pass quality control, we will place it in the next set of results to be processed as long as we have enough DNA sample. If we require an additional sample, we will send a new test kit and place the new sample in the first set to be processed when it is returned.”

The very loose wording at the shows that FTDNA is not guaranteeing delivery of order Big Y test results by 28 March 2014, the they clearly indicate “We expect…”

To find out that the on 28 Feb 2014 that the expected date (which was changed three times to 28 Feb 2014) of 28 Feb 2014 will not be met, however it may are may not be met by 28 March 2014 (even if there are no issues above FTDNA having to process the test) is pretty horrible customer service.