Shipping & sample handling

01What we accept

Sycamore Analytical tests research peptides and related research chemicals, submitted as lyophilized powder or in solution, together with bacteriostatic water. That is the whole of what we accept.

Do not send us any of the following. If it arrives anyway, see refused shipments.

• Controlled substances or scheduled drugs of any kind.
• Human or animal biological specimens — blood, tissue, saliva, urine. We are not a clinical laboratory, we hold no CLIA certification, and we do not test samples taken from people or animals.
• Infectious or potentially infectious material.
• Anything classed as hazardous material for transport, including flammable solvents and compressed gases.
• Finished consumer products, food, or supplements presented for label verification.

If you are unsure whether something falls inside what we test, write to support@sycamoreanalytical.com before shipping. A short email costs you a day; a refused shipment costs you the sample.

02How much to send

Send at least the minimum. Below it we may not be able to run every assay you have ordered, and we will have to come back to you for more material, which costs you the turnaround. Sending more than the minimum is fine and gives us margin for a repeat injection if a result needs confirming.

One vial per sample, and write the lot number on the vial itself, not only on the paperwork. Forms and vials separate in transit more often than you would expect, and a vial we cannot identify is a vial we cannot test.

03Packaging

Ship lyophilized material at ambient temperature. Use cold packs for anything already in solution. Include the printed submission form and chain-of-custody slip from your portal account in the package.

• A leak-proof primary container, sealed with parafilm or tape.
• A secondary sealed bag per sample, with absorbent material inside it.
• A rigid outer box with enough cushioning that nothing shifts in transit.
• The paperwork in its own bag, so a leak does not destroy the only record of what you sent.

04Where to send it

Submit your order through the portal before the package arrives. It generates the sample codes and the chain-of-custody slip, and it is what lets us match a box on the bench to an order in the system. A package with no matching order waits at intake until we can identify it.

05Risk in transit

You arrange and pay for shipping to us, and the sample is at your risk until we sign for it. We are not responsible for material lost, delayed, damaged, frozen or overheated in transit, and we cannot make a claim against your carrier on your behalf — the contract of carriage is between you and them.

Use a tracked service, insure anything valuable, and keep the tracking number. When a package goes missing, that number is the only thing anyone can act on.

Our responsibility begins when the package is signed for at our address and is set out in our terms of service.

06What happens at intake

On arrival we record the sample before the vial is opened: the sample code, the compound and lot you declared, the condition the package arrived in, and the date and time. That record is the start of the chain of custody, and it is what your portal account shows.

If something is wrong — the vial is broken, the quantity is short, the lot on the vial does not match the paperwork, or we cannot tell which order it belongs to — we stop and email you rather than guess. The sample stays at intake until you tell us how to proceed.

You can follow all of this from your portal account. The stage shown there is set by the lab; you cannot change it, and neither can anyone else with an account.

07Turnaround

Turnaround is our normal working target, not a guarantee, and it is not a term of the contract. Instruments need servicing and calibration, and a result that looks wrong gets re-run rather than published. We would rather be a day late than publish a figure we do not stand behind. If something is going to slip materially, we will tell you rather than let the date pass quietly.

08Retention and disposal

We hold what is left of your sample for thirty days after releasing the certificate. That window exists so that a queried result can be re-tested against the same material rather than against a fresh shipment, which is the only way a retest means anything.

After thirty days the remaining material is disposed of. We do not ship samples back, and we cannot recover material once it has been disposed of. If you need a sample retested, raise it inside the thirty days.

Analytical data and the certificate itself are kept far longer than the physical sample. A certificate has to stay verifiable for as long as it is in circulation.

09Refused shipments

We may refuse any shipment that falls outside what we accept, arrives damaged or leaking, or cannot be identified. Where we can, we will contact you first.

Material we cannot lawfully hold or return will be disposed of, or handed to the appropriate authority where the law requires it. We will tell you when this happens, but we cannot always tell you in advance, and no refund is due for a shipment we were never able to accept.

10International shipments

We accept samples from outside the United States, with three conditions that are yours to meet, not ours:

• You are the exporter of record and are responsible for export clearance from your country.
• You pay all duties, taxes and customs charges. Ship delivered duty paid; we do not accept packages with charges due on arrival, and a package we refuse for that reason usually goes back at your cost.
• Customs paperwork must describe the contents accurately as research chemicals for laboratory analysis, with a nominal declared value. Do not describe samples as a gift, as a finished product, or as anything they are not.

Customs holds are outside our control and pause the turnaround clock in section 07 entirely.

11Questions

Quoting the sample ID lets us pull the raw data before replying, which usually turns two emails into one.