All ATCC Orders Come with a 30-day Warranty.

Whenever you place an ATCC order with us, it comes with a 30-day warranty starting from the date of delivery stated in your Delivery Order.

What does the warranty cover?

ATCC ONLY warrants  for initial cell viability and cultures that have been cultivated accordingly to the the methods and grown in the recommended media stipulated in the Product & Batch Specific Information Sheets  provided. A one-time ONLY courtesy replacement vial of the same culture will be granted should there be any problems in culturing the cells, however this is subjected to ATCC’s technical review and assessment upon submission of inquiry together with the appropriate troubleshooting questionnaire.

Culturing conditions

While you may opt to use comparable media that may be equally satisfactory, a change in media or absence of a component from the recommended formula could affect growth, recovery and/or function of the cultures; as they have been cultivated and adapted to the media. The methods stated in the Product Information Sheets are tested and proven to provide the best treatment and/or condition for optimum cellular growth. Any alterations or changes might interfere/disturb and affect the growth.

ATCC conforms to the standards set by the donor in order to produce a uniform and high quality product that they are confident will be the most usable for the customers. As such, they can only assure customers the optimum growth of cells with the conditions that are made known.

Contamination

For all cultures, ATCC performs rigorous and stringent tests for the presence of microbial and mycoplasma contamination for all distribution lots. Selective and non-selective media are inoculated with aliquots of the culture and incubated both aerobically and anaerobically for a period of 14 to 21 days. This length of time is sufficient to expose even low levels of microbial contamination. A fast growing contaminant would certainly have been detected. For such instances, the lot will be destroyed and will not be distributed. Therefore ATCC does not warrant over contamination for all biology cell cultures and replacement will not be granted.

Contamination complaints for Protistology, Mycology, and Microbial cultures require further analysis. Sometimes what was being observed is actually a normal morphology variation for bacteria and molds or a food source provided for Protists.  ATCC can make changes to Product Sheets and website descriptions based upon customers’ comments on the complaint forms, therefore the information is valuable for more than just statistical analysis. You are required to fill up the Contamination Troubleshooting Form and submit to techserv(at)bio-rev(dot)com. The certificate of analysis (CoA) is available upon request that shows the results of all of the quality control assays.

Patents and Safe Deposits

Cultures provided to ATCC for patent purposes or for safe deposit are neither produced nor characterized by ATCC. We have no technical information on these cultures. Patent deposits are warranted for viability ONLY and safe deposits are not warranted.

For patent strains you can search the Web site of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the text of the appropriate patent. For safe deposit information, please contact the depositor for more information.

Reporting

Should you encounter any problems in culturing your culture, you are required to fill up the appropriate questionnaire listed below together with your inquiry and submit to techserv(at)bio-rev(dot)com within the 30-day warranty period.

Any inquiry submitted after this 30-day warranty period is subject to ATCC’s sole discretion to render any further technical review and assessment.