Nearly a month after returning from Portugal a Brinkworth couple are still waiting on their Covid test results after paying a hefty £470.
Ken and Barbara Cooper, both 75, of Brinkworth went out to Portugal in September and only returned on June 3.
Under the pandemic guidance, they both completed a Covid-19 test by the government approved company bookatraveltest.com – paying £235 each.
More than 25 days later, far longer than they would have needed to self-isolate, the couple are yet to receive the results of the test.
“We’ve taken Lateral Flow Tests on a number of occasions and we’re well over our 10 days of isolation we needed to complete,” Mr Cooper said.
“Either they’re totally inefficient or it’s a scam and I’m concerned because it’s on the government website – the test house – and therefore one would believe it has a level of credibility.”
Mr Cooper said he went on to Trustpilot – a consumer review website – and found that they were not the only people experiencing these issues.
Of 13 reviews on Trustpilot, bookatraveltest.com has received a score of 85 per cent bad ratings.
Many on the site cited not receiving test results.
One user, Daniel Mayfield, wrote: “Did my day two test and day five test to be released on Saturday and it’s June 8 today and I’ve still not got the first two test results.
“And my day eight test kit has not been posted to me yet even though it’s 3pm now on my day eight of quarantine.”
When contacted, bookatraveltest.com said it provided the tests but the results are processed separately by a laboratory and not the company.
A spokesman for bookatraveltest.com said: “When a customer receives their test, it will have instructions setting out the UK laboratory to send their test for the processing of results.
“There is a U.K medical infrastructure consisting of laboratories that process tests and provide results.
’In this instance, the relevant laboratory failed to process the results. Notwithstanding the failure of the lab, we processed Mr and Mrs Cooper with a full refund for the tests we provided.”
The spokesman said that processing the tests has been a UK-wide issue.
“It means that small businesses who are working hard to get tests to people rapidly are then providing refunds out of their own pockets because of failures across the laboratory infrastructure to actually process the tests they receive,” he said.
“The government website does state that we are ‘test providers’ and makes a distinction between test providers and the laboratories which process test results, which are also named.”
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