[dannyhi321]

Illumina extortionate system transfer charges

Just heard Illumina are about to "recognise" the units in the UK - nearly there!

[austinso]

FWIW

Illumina instituted a policy this year where they will now officially recognize third-party purchased equipment and allow it to be put on a service contract with the following caveats:

1. a re-licensing fee of 10% of MSRP
2. user can use any shipper, but is responsible for any damage incurred.
3. user is responsible for all repairs, if necessary.

[dannyhi321]

If you had been paying attention you would know that the whole point is that I purchased the systems myself - which Illumina legally acknowledge.

That's not to say I would like to see third party purchaser taken advantaged of :- where did you get the details of this "policy"?

[austinso]

Post wasn't in reply to you. And I wasn't questioning the legality of your purchase. But it did remind me to post what I learned recently from our reps in the Bay area.

And for clarifications sake, what I'm referring to as "third party" (probably should have said "re-seller") are purchases that are not made directly from Illumina, which I believe was the case for you.

Now they have a formal policy. So that removes any confusion and uncertainty from any of these kinds of purchases, which is great.

And just to complete the picture, the real benefit buying used versus new can be determined by considering:

1. 10% MSRP relicensing fee
2. decommissioning, crating&shipping (completely up to us)
3. reinstall costs
4. loss of 1 year of service warranty
5. costs of reagents typically thrown in with new purchase

[dannyhi321]

This still does not involve me - may case was NOT a "re-sale". As you may notice from the thread they where some issues with the way in which the quotation and purchases where handled- there seems to be a third system involved.

Refusing to sell me reagents unless I had a registered machine is one example of where I think they have behaved in a less than fair way.

You must also remember that Illumina where asking $15000 PER SYSTEM silver service contact, plus Reinstall, Retification/Validation of $43500 PER SYSTEM.

They have now moved away from this pricing which is heartening.

Now it is over a year since I asked for a connected account in the UK, although Illumina has just told me I can now have access to my own machines database.

[dannyhi321]

What a surprise - Illumina,or at least SOME people in Illumina, have changed their minds again. I feel bad for a lot of people at Illumina because many people there really want to help and then they get shut down and told they don’t have the “authority”. Either that or they leave.

Illumina now tell me I cannot have the service history of my own machines (Mr.Richard Straw, Illumina UK) because they have not been used for a year and it is not relevant. Neither can I have access to the data produced on my own machines.

URGENT NOTICE:- If you have had samples sequenced at the Waite Campus and/or AGRF Waite campus, University of Adelaide on a Miseq(s) between 2012 to the end of 2014, then please private message me as your rights to your data may be affected!! I am upset at his situation but this was done without my knowledge or consent so contact me and we can see what we can sort out.

[Jessica_L]

I voted fair. That's not to say you have no reason to be frustrated, because I think you do, but I don't know that is the same as saying that Illumina's position is wholly unreasonable.

A) They're not refusing to transfer ownership to you, they're requiring that the registered owner in their system write a letter (presumably that would be harder to fake than an email) allowing Illumina to transfer the owner in the system. That's pretty typical, in my experience.

B) The crates for sequencer shipping are expensive. I worked in a lab that moved thirty miles down the road and the cost just to crate a couple HiSeqs was something like $10k. It's a little ridiculous, absolutely, but it's also not like slapping it in a cardboard box. Sometimes, if you save your shipping crates from your initial install (assuming you have room to do so), you can save yourself a sizable amount of money should you ever decide to move. I'm assuming you don't still have the crates from when you originally got your instruments.

C) Service contracts aren't exactly a "cost" of moving your instruments, more like a cost of doing business, unless your institution normally doesn't bother with them. I mean to say, you'd probably want the service contracts whether you were to leave the machines in Australia or have them in the UK. Between replacement reagents and parts and service visits, service contracts usually pay for themselves, assuming you're using the instrument on a regular basis.

D) Shipping charges are going to be entirely up to the freight company. As others have already noted, the cost is going to be quite high. Between the actual shipping costs and the fees you'll owe Illumina, it probably would have been cheaper to just buy some instruments closer to you in the UK.

E) The one thing that gave me pause, the one thing that made me almost click the "not sure" button was this:

- Reinstall / Recertification/Validation ( Including FSE & FAS and Consumables ) - $43500/- per system ( Consumables roughly around 10 K can be avoided if no validation is required by FAS)

The reason I didn't click "not sure" is because I'm not sure what you've requested them to do, specifically, or what your specific needs are. I don't know what your validation would look like to require $10K in consumables. Is that $10K for each instrument (presumably)? Are you running a clinical lab and having Illumina do all the validation/certification for you? The couple times I've dealt with new MiSeqs it was a single PhiX flow cell for a performance qualification and that was it, probably not more than $1000. As others have pointed out, you might want to negotiate this amount, if you can. I would expect the FSE and FAS visits to be included in your service contract, for example. If they're not, I'd ask why they're not. Since this line item represents the bulk of your relocation costs, I'd really drill down into what you're paying for and whether all of that is actually necessary for your relocation/reinstall.

Good luck!!!

[austinso]

Illumina now tell me I cannot have the service history of my own machines (Mr.Richard Straw, Illumina UK) because they have not been used for a year and it is not relevant.

So...did you do the shipping yourself and not pay the fees...?

Neither can I have access to the data produced on my own machines.

You didn't have an external back up of your sequencing data...? Or are you referring to Basespace? You certainly have access to the files on the machine.

[dannyhi321]

So...did you do the shipping yourself and not pay the fees...?



You didn't have an external back up of your sequencing data...? Or are you referring to Basespace? You certainly have access to the files on the machine.

Apparently they are not saying I can't have access to my data (basespace of course) - they just had to make sure everything was ok first - that's good news! Why would some use a database that they cannot access!

Anyway, a big thank you to all those lovely people in Illumina who stand up for right - you know who you are !

Dan

[dannyhi321]

p.s. To be fair to Mr.Straw he said he had to check about my data, not that the answer was no - sorry about that!


PPS to the person who never seems to read the thread - the shipping charges answer is in the thread ! lol

[dannyhi321]

UPDATE:- I’ve been informed that “The current status this afternoon is that the formal response is still in preparation however I have been advised that you can expect to receive the formal response in the next two days. I understand the urgency from your perspective however Technical Support will not be able to assist you at this moment in time in providing answers to your questions.”

So the answer is is not yes or no at this time!

Anyone else having/had problems accessing their data via Basespace? and/or moving instruments? Or is this a “one-off” issue?

Thank you to all the people who have offered their support and help in trying to resolve this. Lets hope the outcome is a positive one.

Dan Densham
Devon, UK

[NextGenSeq]

Illumina has extortionate prices?

Shocking!

[dannyhi321]

If anyone needs to contact me about any issues raised within this thread you can email me directly on:

[email protected]



Thanks,

Dan Densham
Devon, UK

[dannyhi321]

UPDATE:-

So Illumina have resorted to legal threats (more on this later) and have completely ignored my requested to relinquish access to 2 years worth of my Miseq data stored on Basespace - not to mention the fact that they appear to have deleted data from the hard discs on of both machines!!

Urgent Notice :- If you have had samples sequenced on Miseq(s) at the Waite campus, University of Adelaide/AGRF between 2012 and dec 2014, please contact me as a matter of urgency as you have used such services without the permission/consent of the owner. I am not an unreasonable person but you do need to contact me if you are a just person so that I know what has been going on with my systems and you can clear issues over the data.

Thanks,

Dan

[email protected]

[GenoMax]

So Illumina have resorted to legal threats (more on this later) and have completely ignored my requested to relinquish access to 2 years worth of my Miseq data stored on Basespace - not to mention the fact that they appear to have deleted data from the hard discs on of both machines!!

I don't think Illumina deleted the data (in a strict sense) from the hard discs. There is only so much space on the local MiSeq disk and at some point the data has to be deleted manually (or in some automatic fashion, we don't use BaseSpace so I can't say if this is done based on some pre-set level of % free disk on the MiSeq) to make room for new runs. This decision was done by whoever ran the instrument for you in its former location.

I am surprised that there was no local/alternate backup for the data (again the person who ran this instrument before needs to bear some responsibility with the assumption that you had left the management of the instrument up to them).