Returns and replacements

The short version

• Arrived damaged - replacement after review. Send a photograph.
• Wrong item - corrected after review; Effect supplies any required return label.
• Certificate does not match the lot on your vial - replacement and the lot held from sale while we investigate.
• Carrier loss - reviewed against carrier evidence; no fixed outcome or timing is promised.
• Changed your mind after dispatch - not accepted. See below.

Why change-of-mind returns are not offered

Once a sealed vial has left our control we cannot know how it was stored. Material that spent a week somewhere warm looks identical to material that did not, and there is no inspection at intake that would tell us apart.

Opened items and change-of-mind returns are therefore not accepted. Returned research material is never placed back into sellable stock.

A vendor who accepts open-ended returns on lyophilized material is either destroying the returns, or putting them back into stock. The first is honest and expensive; the second means the vial you buy may have been somewhere you know nothing about. We would rather tell you we do not accept returns than run the second version quietly.

Cancelling before dispatch

Any order can be cancelled for a full refund at any point before it is dispatched. Email us with the order number. If we have already handed it to the carrier we will say so rather than cancel silently.

Damage in transit

Check the vials when they arrive. If a vial is cracked, the seal is broken, or the cake is visibly compromised, photograph it before doing anything else, including before opening the rest of the package.

Send the photographs and order number promptly after delivery. Following the adopted operating policy, an approved damage claim receives a replacement. We do not ask you to ship compromised material back.

Wrong item received

If what arrived is not what the packing slip says, or the packing slip is not what you ordered, tell us promptly. After review, we send the correct item and supply a return label if the incorrect item must be returned.

Certificate does not match the lot

The lot identifier on your vial must match the certificate we provide on request. If it does not, that is a serious failure on our side, not a paperwork detail.

Tell us and, after review, we will replace the item, pull the affected lot from sale while we establish what happened, and tell you what we found. A refund instead of replacement requires the approved method-specific process.

Lost or delayed shipments

Delivery dates are estimates, not guarantees. Contact us if tracking stops moving and we will open or support the appropriate carrier review.

Where a package is recorded as lost before delivery, or marked delivered but cannot be located, the operator reviews the carrier evidence. Replacement, refund, or denial depends on that evidence; no fixed waiting period or automatic outcome is promised.

How refunds are made

An approved refund follows the original payment method's documented process and includes any shipping covered by the accepted claim. Method-specific timing, fees, and exception rules depend on the payment method and are explained when a refund is approved.

Membership fee refunds

A purchaser may request a full refund of the membership fee within fourteen calendar days after purchase if no order using a member price has been placed. A member-priced order counts as use when Effect accepts it, unless Effect later declines or cancels that order for its own reasons.

Once membership has been used, the fee is non-refundable except where law requires otherwise, where the charge was unauthorized, or where Effect permanently ends the program. Closing an account does not create a refund right and is not needed to stop renewal because there is no automatic renewal.

If Effect permanently ends the program, the refund is the membership fee actually paid minus member-price savings already received on completed orders, never less than zero.

Membership refunds go to the original payment method. Nothing in this section limits a statutory cancellation, refund or charge-dispute right.

What is not covered

• Material that did not perform as you hoped in your work. We report identity and purity for a lot; we cannot warrant a result in an experiment we know nothing about.
• Material stored outside the handling conditions described on its product page after delivery.
• Any consequence of the material being used other than for laboratory research, which is a breach of the sale condition rather than a returns question.
• Refusal or non-collection of a lawfully delivered shipment.

Opening a claim

Email the address on our contact page with the order number, the lot number from the vial, and photographs where the problem is physical. One message is enough. We do not run a ticket maze and there is no form to find.

Questions about anything on this page go to contact. If something here is wrong or unclear, telling us is useful and we will date the correction.