Hi, in case it's useful for others I thought I'd share my experience trying to get my money back for two sequences I paid for but were never delivered. Tl;dr is that I'm pretty confident I could have gotten my money back (they did eventually offer me a refund), but the New York City small claims court system is so overwhelmed and poorly designed to scale that the travel expense and hassle was ultimately well more than I could justify incurring. Here's the full story.
After successfully using Dante labs in 2019 and 2020, on 4/7/23 I paid $398 USD for two more genomes on sale. I couldn't believe the low price, clearly it was too good to be true:
I was slow to submit my samples, but did so in August and got confirmation Aug 24:
I emailed them over a period of two years asking for a status on my kits or a refund without response:
At least as late as October 2025 their website still showed my kits as received but unprocessed (the 2 complete kits from 2019 and 2020 were fine). The website shows me nothing today.
I tried requesting a credit card chargeback but I was past the maximum time. So after researching my options on 10/25/25 I filed a "Statement of Claim" with New York City small claims court using the address for Dante Labs on their privacy policy page which at the time was an address on 5th Ave. The paperwork was all very simple and straightforward. On 12/11/25 I got a letter from the court saying the summons had been returned as undeliverable to that address.
There was no other address on the website and dantelabs.com had WHOIS privacy enabled, so I used their registrars contact form to request they give me their mailing address pursuant to ICANN rules. I got no response. So then I escalated to their registrar's private information request form stating I intended to send their client a court summons (pointing to multiple online comments about this issue) and required their mailing address. My understanding of ICANN rules was that if I was unable to get a working mailing address for a legitimate court purpose, I could have their domain name canceled or seized which would have been fun! But the domain registrar quickly responded sharing the correct mailing address, which the court was able to deliver a summons to.
My court date was set for 4 months later in April 2026, and so I booked time off work and planned a trip with my son to explore New York City for a weekend. While on the flight to New York I got an e-mail from Dante's legal department offering a refund. I did some research and found that a successful judgement against them could potentially help others get justice (such as in a class action) and so I decided to decline the refund.
When I arrived at the court they went through calling the 30 or so cases scheduled for the night, but when my turn came the defendant was nowhere to be found. I was told I'd need to wait an hour to see if they showed up late. When they didn't I was then told that they'd forfeited their chance to defend themselves but I'd still have to show my evidence to a judge or volunteer lawyer at an inquest in order to get the judgement against them. Unfortunately I was now at the end of the line and their one volunteer lawyer that evening needed to go home soon and so my inquest would be scheduled for 3 months later. I explained that I could not justify the expense of travelling to NYC again and they said I could request to attend virtually. Despite the disappointing start, my son and I had a nice weekend in NYC.
When my inquest date approached, I made my request for a virtual appearance (I was required to wait until 2 weeks prior). The court denied the request:
I considered travelling again, but instead emailed Dante's legal department to say I would accept their refund if they included 3% interest (matching my savings account) plus my $15 in court fees. They did not respond. Ultimately I decided I had lost confidence in the NYC Small Claims court system and had no real reason to believe a judge would be available if I flew again, so I withdrew the case and decided I got the experience I was hoping for from it. My main takeaway is that I should avoid doing business with NY businesses since they cannot reasonably be held accountable for defrauding customers. Also I should make sure to submit credit card chargeback claims within a year of any purchase (although I've had some struggle with that too).
This was never actually about the money for me, but about the principal of accountability, the reputation of the personal genomics industry (which I still strongly support), and the trustworthiness of Internet commerce overall. The latter is very relevant to me in my work on Google Chrome as a technical lead in web ecosystem payments and identity. I have published a sample of a browser extension I'm experimenting with for helping people easily collect website trust signals while they browse, and have even used Dante Labs as an example in a talk I've given on the topic.
In the end it was a good educational experience for me, and not actually that much work to pursue, so I don't regret the attempt. I expect someone who actually lived in NYC would have little trouble getting a judgement against them. Since I never completed a case against them I believe I'm still able to join a class action, so definitely let me know if anyone decides to start one!
Source: r/DanteLabs · by /u/rickbyers