Elevation Chemicals elevationchemicals.com Quality Chemical Co Samantha Kearns Connor Kearns Illegally shipped corrosive chemicals that also were expired. Ignoring emails. Loma Linda CA

Last month I purchased a set of research chemical testing kits from this company, Elevation Chemicals. They arrived in a paper brown envelope that was slightly ripped open and had these little bits of debris falling out. 

The chemicals were also a very dark brown / black color indicating that they were exposed to high heat or direct sunlight or just straight up expired. Other vendors of these kits all agree that if the color of these chemicals are this dark they are bad quality / expired.

I emailed Elevation Chemicals and got back a canned response that the chemicals were fine, just use it. They also said the little bits of debris were to absorb any potential chemical leak as the chemical in these kits is primarily sulfuric acid and highly corrosive. 

I asked for a refund as I was not happy with my product and every attempt to email them since has been ignored. Do I dare dispute this charge with my bank and have it on record I was buying narcotic test kits? Still not sure I want to go that route.

After doing some research I found multiple threads on Reddit that talk about how these kits can only be shipped UPS and have special shipping requirements. They must be in hard plastic containers, just have a hard outer box with padding inside.  Clearly Elevation Chemicals is going around the law and just trying to ship these as cheap as possible to make a buck. They would not be able to compete with their competitors if they were shipping the correct, legal way. 

Reddit Thread Link - https://www.reddit.com/r/ReagentTesting/comments/b1yx91/elevation_chemicals_2019_psa_and_quality_assurance/

I even came across this one reddit thread where the company admits it will be changing its shipping method (still hasn't to date) and they admit they have to reship 1000s of kits due to product defect. They have been caught deleting and re-creating product listings on Amazon to hide the bad reviews about receiving packages that were melting from leaks. (And now all of these type of kits are banned from amazon and ebay, good going Elevation Chemicals.)

What I find worse is that this company, while trying to be a player in this harm reduction niche, has never once set foot on a festival or done any real outreach to educate people. They just try to sell the cheapest product to make money.

I strongly recommend you avoid this company. There are other vendors I discovered during my research that have proper packaging, better chemicals, better reviews and actively participate in harm reduction conferences and even risk jail to distibute their kits at music festivals where drug use is prevelant. 

How this company has not yet been approached and arrested by USPS is beyond me. It only seems like a matter of time until some poor USPS worker picks up one of their packages and has sulfuric acid spill on their hand.