How the current COVID-19 outbreak affects our service
As you may know, Energy Control is based in Spain. On March 16th, 2020, the government declared a state of national alert and enacted confinement measures to slow down the spread of the virus. Among other measures, all non-essential jobs and businesses are suspended unless they can be carried out from home, people are to stay at home and only leave when absolutely necessary.
Our office building is closed for the time being, and the research center where we have our analytical instruments is only open for performing critical tasks. While we can carry on a lot of our work from home, keeping the analysis service open is not feasible under the current circumstances. It’s hard to say when we’ll be able to resume our normal operations, so for the time being we’ve disabled the purchase of new analyses. If you have recently purchased a sample code and would like to be reimbursed, e-mail us, and we’ll take care of it. Purchases made with Paypal or Bank Transfers can be refunded immediately, while refunds for Bitcoin payments may take a bit longer. This is because our hardware wallet and other tools are in the office, so we need to obtain permission to access the premises and retrieve them. We are working on getting permission and expect to have it resolved shortly.
If you’ve already mailed us the sample, we won’t be able to confirm if it has reached us, since we are unable to check for new packages arriving. If you’d like, you can wait for normal operations to resume, and we’ll provide an update as soon as we are able, but you’re also welcome to cancel the analysis and receive a refund.
Since most countries are taking similar measures, we think that trade routes for drugs and precursors will be severely affected, and are concerned about the effect that can have on purity and adulteration. We’re working on setting up a questionnaire that you guys can fill out if you encounter a sample that has unexpected or concerning side effects. Our hope is that if a dangerous batch starts being distributed, we’ll be able to analyze those samples by whatever means necessary and provide the community with some information to help keep you safe.
We will keep you updated, and now that we’re getting used to working from home will be keeping up with your emails. We hope that you’re all in good spirits and will stay safe and healthy as we navigate this ordeal together.