1010 Labs – the company that managed to send a quarantine testing kit to my address in the UK while I was yet to return home from Greece [see this blog An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Great Britain?] – seems to go from strength to strength.
I got the result of my Day 2 test from them a couple of days later and that was negative.
I posted my Day 8 test off on 1 July – and on 8 July (that's Day 15 of my 10-day quarantine) I was still waiting for the result.
So I emailed them - no response.
So then I phoned and spoke to someone called Asal who promised the result would be emailed to me that very day – and also that they would ring me back to tell me why I had had to wait a week.
They didn't phone – and I didn't get my result.
I phoned again and after queueing behind seven other callers (complainants?) I was told they had "been very busy". That didn't seem to cut it as an explanation for why I was still waiting for a 48-hour test result after seven days.
This time I was promised that I would have the result "by the end of today".
I asked the name of the call-handler. She said she wasn't allowed to identify herself. But why not? The previous call-handler had done so. We're not allowed to, she repeated. I asked for the name of the head of the company. She didn't know it. I asked for the address of the company. She didn't know it. I asked her where exactly in the world she was. She said she wasn't allowed to tell me.
So this is 1010 Labs – a company that has been charging travellers (who have had little choice) nearly £130 for two tests during a 10-day quarantine – or in my case, it seems, £130 for one test during a 10-day quarantine.
I'll write to the company, to the Department of Health and to my MP about this sorry mess. But I think we all know where this is heading... the same place as where the UK is going to...
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