Paternity fraud so common that 23andMe trains customer service to deal with it

pixelies · 2018-12-19T19:37:09+00:00

From the article: At 23andMe, those types of calls are so frequent that preparing for them is integrated into the company’s months-long training program. The most common issue, said Hillyer, is when a customer’s presumed father doesn’t show up on a test as the genetic dad. But sometimes mothers or siblings are a surprise, too.

“How most of those conversations start is people come to us to verify the accuracy,” said Hillyer. “Somebody has known something their whole life and then this company is telling them something different. It’s tough. And then it’s like, ‘Hey, I’m heading to a Thanksgiving dinner. Can you help me out with this before I go have this conversation with my mother?’”

2018-12-19T23:06:19+00:00

HAhahah it's like a joke but for real.

Blutarg · 2018-12-20T03:02:35+00:00

Dang, that's depressing. But not surprising.

slixx_06 · 2018-12-20T03:30:04+00:00

Paternity fraud, the original identity fraud.

DubsPackage · 2018-12-20T14:26:45+00:00

The "official" nonpaternity rate according to the US govt is about %2-%3.

Colloquially everybody knows they're full of shit, these are the same people that say that inflation is %2 when the cost of everything has doubled and tripled in the last 30 years. Subway fare used to be 25 cents in the 1970's, in the 2000's it was $2.50, that's about %1000 increase. You can also look at the cost of bread, milk, gas, housing, almost anything, %2 inflation my ass.

Paternity fraud is conservatively %10, going up to about %30 in the black community.

NecroHexr · 2018-12-20T03:57:34+00:00

r/nottheonion

jp_mra · 2018-12-20T18:00:21+00:00

I wonder if they are trained to say, "submit a test to our competitor to verify we didn't make a mistake"?

red_philosopher · 2018-12-20T11:12:09+00:00

If it was 1 in 100, it would still be often enough that 23andMe staff had a case every week, I would think. So of course they train them in it. This doesn't say much about how common paternity fraud is.

Also, these are the children finding out their parents aren't who they thought they were. Paternity fraud may be a common explanation, but far from the only one. That the child didn't know, doesn't mean the father didn't know.

geniice · 2018-12-19T21:35:02+00:00

"company’s months-long training program"

Things don't need to be common to appear in that. In any case Misattributed paternity (which is all that 23andMe can test for) is not the same as paternity fraud (since that requires that somebody knows that the designated father isn't).

Title	Paternity fraud so common that 23andMe trains customer service to deal with it
Author	pixelies
Upvotes	216
Comments	32
Date	December 19, 2018 7:36 PM UTC (7 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/a7pq1k/paternity_fraud_so_common_that_23andme_trains/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/paternity-fraud-so-common-that-23andme-trains.888025 https://theredarchive.com/post/888025

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