In an effort to remedy the experience of one of our test participants who did not receive the proper testing kit, I have forwarded the post to the lab to see what can be done at this point, should they still wish to participate. I have also contacted them off-list. However, I wanted to post something to the list in general as well, since there are nearly 600 subscribers, most of whom are following this project with interest. I cannot explain why this happened and can only attribute it to "sloppy work" in this case. As the coordinator of the project, I take responsibility for the mix up because I should have been able to correct the situation when I was first notified of it and then had the foresight to follow up to ensure the situation was rectified. I failed to do that. I did not contact the participant to ensure another packet was received. I hope that the participant and everyone else with an interest in this project will understand that at the time I was juggling several things, such as adding/removing participants, contacting other potential participants, as well as unrelated tasks in both my professional and personal life. All of these things, combined with the fact that this was my first experience with coordinating such a project, contributed to the cause of this participants experience. I apologize to everyone for that because this participant represents a integral part of our project as a descendant of Flayle. As for the lab, I cannot make excuses for them, but I do know that this situation occurred during a hand off from my initial contact with the labs general supervisor to someone that I assume works in the front office. Between the two, the ball was dropped. This in no way relieved me of my own responsibility in following up however. With that said, I earnestly believe that everyone involved with this project (participants, coordinator and lab) desire the best. The lab has been very helpful throughout each step of the process and I never once felt that they were "out of the loop." Overall, I would still have to say that the project has gone well. Of the few glitches we had, with the exception of this one perhaps, I attribute them to the fact that we added and removed several participants in mid-stream. Right up to March, we were adding and removing participants. I think it is to the labs credit that they handled the situation as well as they did. In addition, the lab had given us a $100.00 discount over their normal fee based on the number of participants we initially anticipated. After that number was reached, they would have been justified in charging regular prices for our new participants, but did not even mention it. Having read some of the experiences of other family DNA projects, I feel that we have not only been fortunate, but that we also chose the best lab available. I would not hesitate to use them again and should we find a need to have a second round of testing with an entirely new set of participants, I hope this item will not discourage anyone from joining it. Regards, Patrick