Paid covid study from ONS is it genuine?

[Babymamamama]

I've just had an important looking letter in the post marked "On Her Majesty's Service" inviting my household to take part in a paid study to be swabbed regularly for covid over the course of a year. Apparently the reimbursement is up to £425 per family member. I'm trying to work out if this is a genuine study. To be honest I'd participate in this kind of thing for free if it could help the scientists in any way. Has anyone else had such a letter? I'm trying to work out whether we've been randomly selected, if this is going to everyone across the country, or is it some kind of con? Please let me know your thoughts if you've had the letter too. Apparently it's a joint study with university of oxford and office for national statistics. Not sure if I'm being naive and should bin it or not.

We've done the first month. The system seems to divide everyone into "swabs only" or "monthly bloods". The people taking the blood samples seem to have to travel big distances each day and only get their work allocation the night before (so can't plan sensibly).

The researchers didn't appear to plan for people going to school or work. Surely those are the people they ought to be trying to test? I don't know how long the unused tests last, but I would have thought that it OUGHT to be possible for them to be dropped off on day and picked up another.

Hopefully the system will calm down when we all switch to monthly tests.

Oh and for those of you waiting for vouchers - they take 10-20 days to arrive, mainly via email, although some people opt for a Love2Shop card instead.
If you have problems there is a dedicated email address, but they are somewhat swamped and take a while to answer - but everyone gets answered eventually.
The Government is massively expanding this study so addresses are being randomly chosen as well as choosing people from previous ONS studies. Some testers are better than others, and some are very new to this kind of work. They can update your email address, but you can also use the dedicated email address to change emails and chase vouchers: [email protected]

Ahhhhhh I had requested a call back from the ONS covid helpline and just missed the call back!!! I will never get through to them!!!!

No calls so far to arrange nxt swab. Was over a week ago now. Plus no voucher emails nor any replies back to any emails. All I want to do is check our email address is correct. I have tried the email address above. That was a few days ago so I will keep hanging in. Still can't get through on the helpline number. Do they ever answer on option 2?
Will continue to wait......

And I was feeling a bit more positive last week after a 3 week wait in between my 1st and 2nd test... Still no sign of any response regarding my partners swab test 5 weeks ago, no voucher for him and no follow up for 3rd swab so far plus no response regarding my 2nd voucher. I'd say its still a bloody sham.

It’s now been 2 weeks since our 2nd swab.

When we registered they even asked if we had any holidays booked over the next 5 weeks because they would be coming EVERY week for 5 weeks!! Complete and utter shambles. Should have known it sounded to good to be true

Anyone on here working for the Ons? Maybe you could refer them to this page so they can see the level of unkept appointments/follow up visits/ non sending of vouchers. It's tantamount to bad practice in my opinion to 'lose' someone's dna and not being paid. Yes I've said it, and we were unfortunately expecting these vouchers as promised as like so many others I've lost my job.

Three weeks now since my friends 1st test and nothing...can’t get through. Don’t know if anyone is coming. it’s so poorly done.

Still no calls or response to my emails. No 2nd swab appointment booked. Still no vouchers either but then I won't get any vouchers if they have taken my email address down wrong. I would like to know if anyone has ever got through on option 2 on the helpline number?

I registered several weeks back but have heard nothing further. I’ve called a couple of times to ask whether anyone is going to contact me about a visit to do the tests. They say yes someone will be in touch this week... then nothing.

We still haven’t heard anything. There is a part of me that wonders if it’s because I’m a primary school teacher and last visit I answered the question about how many children I had contact with! Maybe they don’t want to know!

Also taking part in the ONS study - surprised at the issues others have experienced. We are having the visit on the same day each week and getting the vouchers by email 2-3 weeks after each visit. Very straightforward- sorry others have not had this experience.

Slightly off-topic but I am perturbed by the sloppy wording in the bit on the ONS website about choosing to donate your voucher:

'Unfortunately, we cannot donate on your behalf, but when redeeming your voucher there is an option to donate the money to a charity of your choice. If you choose "For Good Causes universal charity", there will be an option of donating directly to the NHS and other charities from the list of over 17,000 charities.'

The NHS is not a charity. It is paid for from taxation, not from philanthropy. Long may that continue.

So... I got my third swab test done yesterday (partners still not been paid for 1st one and now they've lost him on their system... I've yet to be paid for the 2nd one still... Tonight I got a call from another tester wanting to come test me tomorrow... I explained I had one one yesterday. Its just ompletely baffling me as to how much incompetence is going on in our case...

UPDATE
We have now had our vouchers for the first visit. However we still haven't had the second swap taken. When we get the phone call they always want to visit during the day time and when we are at work and the children are at school. So they put us 'back in the system '. 3 weeks now since first swab was taken.......

At the risk of identifying myself, we had our second "bloods" done a week late today with 45 minutes' notice. Of course DD was at school, so the teen has been missed for 3 out of 5 visits.

It sounds as if a list of people needing visits gets posted on a website/emailed and the "team" decide which they want to do (we just scraped into the "less than 30 minute drive" required by our latest tester).

When I say we had bloods taken, the young lady couldn't get any blood out of my arm (which is v odd because I have had regular blood tests at my Drs for over 30 years without issue - including one 2 hours later).

PS: yes the Drs do get sent a letter about the antibody test results - the nurse scrolled through my record and we saw a scan of mine.

@Karen899

Still no calls or response to my emails. No 2nd swab appointment booked. Still no vouchers either but then I won't get any vouchers if they have taken my email address down wrong. I would like to know if anyone has ever got through on option 2 on the helpline number?

@Karen899 did you ever hear back? What number are you calling?

Anyone else randomly get a "negative swab" letter weeks after swabbing?
We've all had 5 sets of swabs, and now all had a letter each.
DH got his 2 weeks after his 4th swab, but me, DS and DD got ours 3 weeks after 5th swabs.
They have all our email addresses, it seems a ridiculous waste of resources to post us all letters with hopelessly outdated information on them.

We're doin our 3rd swab today. Usually it's weekly but I think they were in chaos last week, so they never made it here. We're all scheduled in for 4pm his afternoon so pretty sure they'll show up this week. It took two weeks for the vouchers to be emailed to us and they can be spent online with retailers lie Amazon which is brilliant. The person carrying out the survey stands 2 meters apart from us and simply hands us a testing kit to do it ourselves, so all very safe and easy.

Yes I had one for my first one done beginning of September but not for any of the others done after and I thought exactly the same thing. Still awaiting payment for 3rd test nearly 3 weeks after it as done. (tomorrow 21st day). Seems they're stringing it out to pay as long as possible each month and after losing my job it's been somewhat disappointing not to receive them a bit sooner and for my partners 1st swab taken and then finding out they've lost all his details

I have never got through on option 2 on the helpline number. They did eventually call me back but I missed the call. Just had 2nd lots of swabs taken today. This is 4 weeks after the 1st ones. Bearing in mind they are meant to be done weekly. Wonder how long it will take for the next set?

They called me back last week, it’s now been 4 weeks since our last swab. They said on the phone that they are just busy and we are still in the system.

We’re doing it, second swabs were done on Friday, Thursday the week before and we had the vouchers a week later.

@InMySpareTime yes DH and I had the results of our swab from the end of September posted to us (arrived at the weekend). What a waste of money.

Having been at the drs earlier in the week it is the same format as the letter our GPS are sent.

The lady who came to do our second blood test thought it was our first, so the system must be a bit creaky. What worked for a few 100 people doesn't seem to have coped well with being upscaled.