Who sells good primary antibodies for Westerns? - Who's your favourite supplier? Least favourite? (Jun/27/2006 )

dear coustomer care,
as couple of other members mentioned in this forum about santa curz antibody.
even i had a bad experience . i compared santcruz versus upstate and i was really surprised about the supplied product. i did not listen to my boss, as he was saying something about santcruz Ab quality, but now i m experienced.
by replacing the antibody, i donot think u will win researchers attention, because any researcher does not want to waste time in checking the specificity of an commercial antibody by spending so much money, rather buying antibody from companies whihc r reliable.

thanks for ur concern in replacing the antibody or reimbursment.
not many researchers wants to get replacement of the antibody and test their fate!!!!!

gud luk
payeli

Dear payeli,

Unfortunately, those of us in customer care and technical service have no control over what reagents are released for sale. And, we understand that our product literature can be confusing since great products are marketed alongside less great products.

However, please understand that we do have many good antibodies, and you do not need to replace an antibody that did not work with another "questionable" product.

Likewise, I mentioned that we do offer a full refund for products that do not perform. The refund offer is for one year from the date you receive the antibody.

While we realize that your time and reagents are valuable, if you call Technical Service before placing an order, we will give you our honest opinion on whether or not a product has been tested and what the results are so that you can make a fully informed decision on which reagent to choose.

In closing, please do contact us with your PO number if you would like a refund for those products which did not work in your lab. Although we cannot reimburse your other expenses, let us take care of giving you your money back for the antibody so that you can use it to buy other reagents that you may need. Unless money is not an issue in your lab, I will look forward to receiving your information at scbt@scbt.com so that we may issue you a refund. Or, you can go to our website www.scbt.com and send a message to customercare or technical service.

Best of luck to you in your research.
Santa Cruz Biotechnology Customer Care

Although I appreciate the refund policy and have used it, I agree that Santa Cruz should just start QCing their antibodies.

In my opinoin you sell enough decent antibodies that if you just QCed your antibodies and sold the good ones that you would still have plenty to sell and could improve your company's image in the eyes of academic researchers.

Dear MountainMan and MinnieMouse,

We in technical service agree with you wholeheartedly. We do QC our products, but not by every species and every application that we list in the catalog, which makes it very confusing for our customers. Any product you purchase has been put through quality control, but it is not clear in any of our product literature what that QC was, or how it may apply to your particular application.

Since our technical service department cannot change the way we QC our products (although not for lack of making continuous suggestions), what we can do for you is be as up front with you as possible and give you as much information as we can regarding the use of the products.

If you choose to purchase products from us in the future, the best thing that you can do is call our technical service group to get information on the products so that you can make an informed decision as to whether or not you'd like to try the antibody despite possible lack of testing.

Warm regards,
Technical Service at Santa Cruz Biotechnology
800-457-3801 ext. 2
scbt@scbt.com

hi coustomer care, santa cruz,
thanks for your patients in speaking with bioforum members.
any researcher who is interested in buying a particular product wants to have all the possible specific details.
my concern is if u leave about QC like what kind of tests they do for an antibody, when u say 'affinity purified in data sheet' most of the researchers stop thinking about any other parameters because that antibody is going to be specific anyways.
i ordered my antibody based on this statement and got unexpected results.
what explanation wud u like to give me for this issue?

thank you

Dear Payeli,

I appreciate your concerns and would like to clarify that we do affinity purify our peptide polyclonal antibodies against their respective peptide immunogens. We also test the antibodies by ELISA against their respective peptide immunogens.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "my concern is if u leave about QC like what kind of tests they do for an antibody, when u say 'affinity purified in data sheet' most of the researchers stop thinking about any other parameters".

I would be happy to go through your results. Perhaps you could email directly at scbt@scbt.com with specifics such as which antibody was used, for which application, and conditions for use. This may help us determine what went wrong. If the antibody is faulty, or if you are simply dissatisfied with the performance of the product, we can certainly replace it or refund the purchase.

Santa Cruz Biotechnology

Dear coustomer care,
thanks for ur concern in taking time to analyse my data. but i m not very much interested in making a debate about the past situation and again invest sometime on it. thanks for ur offer.

i m wondering whether it is possible for u to predict what wud have gone wrong?
u raised Ab against a peptide and confirmed with ELISA, when i do western blot for the protein i donot find expected bands? it wud be great if u can give the possible explanation.

thanks
payeli

Dear Payeli,

In order to give an explanation of what may have happened, having the experimental conditions and the product would be most helpful. I understand you not wanting to drudge up the details, but without them, a "possible explanation" to what may have caused the protein in your sample to not appear is simply impossible.

Given that you are not interested in describing specifics, I can give you a general idea of what might be involved. Not being able to detect the expected band(s) could be due to many different factors including amount of protein loaded, incubation time, dilution buffers, concentration of primary, source of secondary, possible alternate products (degradation products or modified protein forms), etc.

Of course, which one of these factors is a player would depend on the specific situation. To give you an idea of how these play out: A customer called with a question about a 40 kDa band, when he/she was expecting a 54 kDa band. Recent literature described an N-terminal truncation resulting in a shift in size from 54 to 40 kDa. The "questionable" band was the protein of interest. Had this customer not called, he/she may have interpreted that our antibody did not work when, in fact, this antibody was directed against the C-terminus and the literature confirmed the identity of the 40 kDa band. (Until the customer called, he/she was unaware of the 40 kDa form described in the literature).

As you might imagine, there are numerous examples, but hopefully the information above answers your question.

Again, we are happy to address any specific product questions you may have at scbt@scbt.com.

Santa Cruz Biotechnology Technical Service and Customer Care

dear coustomer care SC,

i m sorry for not being precise in asking the question. i was intended to ask u that, i use same cell lysates with Abs from different companies, one works fine other does not work at all, i repeated the experiment still same results. hence i was asking u that question.

payeli.