Sperm banks - any recommendations or ones to avoid?

[Startingthejourney]

beginning our search for donor sperm, for use at a UK clinic.

Can anyone recommend or not recommend certain sperm banks? Our clinic briefly mentioned they don’t use a certain well known site as the quality hasn’t been good recently (and of course I’ve forgotten which clinic that was! Obviously i’ll be asking at my next appt)

Sorry that you haven't had any replies yet.

Hopefully this will bump for you

I went to California (genuinely can't remember which one!). Contrary to the papers' obsession with Denmark and the Viking invasion, California seems to have been the place to go for many years. You can search extensively (and no need to pay up front), but make sure you search for someone who complies with UK law (assuming you are having treatment here) - this just means that they are not anonymous really.

I can only speak from personal experience. I had a handful of IUI's last year with donor sperm from Fairfax Cryobank. Our clinic told us the quality was only borderline good enough and it didn't work (I have no known fertility issues myself - it's male factor for us and I'm quite young so they expected it to work but it didn't).

We also found Fairfax very impersonal and stressful to deal with as they are so corporate (I think a lot of the American banks are like this). There was no warmth or empathy, they just want to sell.

We have now chosen a new donor from a Danish bank called Born (previously SellmerDiers) and I can't even put into words the contrast. They are friendly and seem to be falling over themselves to help us, it's so different.

I never thought the customer service would matter as much as it does, but having had both of these experiences, we will not go back to an American bank now. Hopefully this will work and we won't need to!

@TunicFox thanks for the info! Fairfax is one which was suggested by our clinic. Born also was, and we have narrowed it down to two donors from Born and Cryos International (both in Denmark). Have your clinic commented on the quality of Born? I feel like i’ve looked at all the profiles from both sites about 20 times 😅

@Startingthejourney Nah, the clinic absolutely won't comment on anything that might sway you one way or the other. They just give you their list of approved clinics and say off you go.

My experience with Fairfax was just one experience with one donor, and it's always hard to tell because it could be that this one donor just had a drink the night before he gave the sample or was a bit hungover or something 😂

All you can really do is choose the donor you like and hope for the best. I do recommend Born for their brilliant customer service though. Good luck!

(Just to clarify, when I say the clinic won't comment on quality, I mean you will only tell you about the quality of your specific sample once you've bought it, and they have defrosted it ready for your treatment.

They won't comment generally on what they're receiving from a particular sperm bank, unless it's so bad that they've stopped using them altogether like yours have with the one they mentioned)