I’m not a hater. I’m not a lab.
I’m a developer trying to understand how labs can improve things.
Run my sample while I’m driving home from dropping it off so I have my results when I get back to my lab, duh🤣
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Just down the road combined with 24 hour turnaround sure would make me put up with a lot of other bullshit.
We’ve run into more than one instance of some variation on “Yes, you paid for the rush fee, but technically the clock only starts after we receive and process and put your sample into the queue. And our service standard for that is 3 to 5 business days.”
- Cost
- Time
- Quality
Get these right and you’re golden. Too many labs manage to fuck up two or even all three at once.
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XD accuracy seems to be the biggest concern to me for testing in general.
Can test the same product and see 10+% swings
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That’s a tricky one to solve without any standards, right?
Do you test with multiple labs at once?
Do you specifically look out for GMP/ISO-certified labs?
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Even with standards. It’s been a fucking shit show lol. Excuse my language. All those labels don’t make much a difference in the experience. Trial and error on finding a good lab to work with seems to be the only way. Even after you’ve made a choice of who to test with, your experience on accuracy will not coincide with customer service.
You could be the nicest lab. Best technology. Awards. Labels. Certifications and someone can point out your customers abuse your results. Ultimately effecting the value of your services.
My biggest annoyance is shitty labs can hide behind solid ones.
I don’t trust the system and the system is setting up legitimate labs for failure financially competing with corner cutting thieves and liars.
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We don’t use any labs that aren’t ISO-17025 certified. It’s no guarantee of quality, and it’s a pretty low bar to meet, which means that anyone who won’t bother with that probably won’t bother giving a damn about our samples.
If they’re not doing proficiency testing, or not willing to show and discuss their results, then they likely also won’t get business from us.
We use CRM standards from Restek on our in-house equipment, so we have a pretty good idea of what answers we should be getting - don’t ever take a test you’re not sure you’re going to pass.
We plan on doing a full lab qualification run at some point and see who the actually decent players are up here in the frozen north.
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yeah accuracy is my biggest pain. turnaround time is a close second. cost is a B of course too. we do use ISO-certified labs yes.
accuracy is a shitshow, we’ve tested labs with the same exact sample under a different label, same sample to different labs, etc etc–dependable 5-10% variance. i know i’m not the only one that finds that fucking maddening–disruptive to R&D/dialing in processes, to sales (whether buying trim or selling distillate), I could go on but don’t feel I need to as these complaints are widespread
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If you are looking for acuracy, you should send the samples to me. 
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Are you located in Switzerland? if so there are a more than a few laws that will prevent me from doing this 
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XD you know I want to! I wanna visit too!
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This… 100 times over.
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At at ~$100 per test if you’re just doing potency it doesn’t take long to pay for in-house analytics - and you can get results you can trust* in 6-7 minutes, or under 30 including sample prep.
Your mileage may vary, this is very operator dependant, etc.
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@superluvdub Maybe you should pay for an actual consultant instead of fishing for free shit all over the internet 
we all know you intend to take all that free info and make a LIMS that you can turn around and charge a premium for. That’s what grinds my gears about your types, you have zero experience in the way of actually working in or operating a lab yet you are a software developer that wants to help solve lab problems…but we have to tell you what the problems are.
Edit: I was totally off base here and was a total asshole. I brought negative energy into this conversation which did nothing good. My apologies to the people here, and to the original poster and their colleagues.
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@IonStorm Let the man/woman fish.
He/she is a developer.
Let’s break that down into today’s terms.
- Develops buildings/communities
- Develops software / programmed solutions
Clearly option 1 isn’t logical to the discussion.
Software developers are begging to put their skills to use but without practice are in this position. Asking for openings on how they can do a better job earning our business without actual real world experience.
We both know they’re facing an uphill battle fishing in these waters anyways. A lot of sharks.
How many people do you know that have both extraction and programming experience? 
I can think of only myself and maybe @pdxcanna?
Maybe @thesk8nmidget ? Maybe @sisu
These are only maybe.
How many labs are hiring programmers or IT wizards?
You need them as much as they need you in this scenario chief. Unless you wanna go work on a computer all day yourself
First thing they said is they weren’t a hater. Hoping for peace. Let’s give them some peace man
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Me. I’ve worked in multiple labs spanning several industries, including cannabis (analytics and extraction. I now work as a professional software developer.
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Do you wanna work on more projects? Do you think your experience deserves someone else’s opportunities when they pursued them?
Let everyone eat. Let’s talk about your strengths and how I can try and find you leads too. We’re all in this together.
I’m used to leading 5-30 developers on projects. It’s great to see more reach out. You can still too.
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That’s fair. But personally, I’m over giving out
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I’m like a watermelon surrounded by rubber bands being added when it comes to that subject. So I relate. @IonStorm