UK discount store Home Bargains famously sells a home paternity test kit that costs just £4.99. The kit contains a set of mouth swabs (one for the child, one for the potential father), consent forms, and envelopes used to send the completed kit to a UK testing lab. The company that produces the tests promise to analyse your samples and have your results ready the next working day, using cutting-edge DNA science.
According to the Home Bargains website, the testing lab uses "24 markers, giving the most accurate result possible, using up to the minute technology" and the testing technology is "used by TV shows such as The Jeremy Kyle Show and media companies."
If that sounds like an outrageously cheap deal, well that's because it is. The £4.99 price tag is merely the cost of the box and its contents—the lab charges an additional processing fee of £99 for doing the actual scientific testing. So the real price you pay is £103.99.
It's worth noting that you can order the exact same kit online, direct from the testing company, which they will ship out for an up-front £99 fee—cutting out the middleman and the £4.99 you would pay in store.
And it's not just Home Bargains that sell over-the-counter DNA tests. Pharmacies such as Boots (in the UK) and CVS (in the States) sell similar kits with a similar pricing structure—i.e. you pay a small price at the till plus an additional lab fee for processing your results.
This raises a couple of questions then—is a store-bought paternity test the same as an online paternity test? Is one more accurate than the other? Is there any benefit to be gained from paying extra in the store?
Let's take a look at these questions one at a time...
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