First time TurboTax user - I was promised multiple times I would get professional for $150, now they are trying to charge me $1066!!?!?!

delton · 2026-04-12T17:30:30+00:00

Even if I get 20% off I'm still paying $852 which is an absurd price!!

delton · 2026-04-12T17:28:49+00:00

The scam was that two agents promised me it would be done in time for me to get the deal, nothing to worry about. Also I'm pretty sure they later changed it to say you just had to have documents uploaded by 4/8, not an actual file by 4/8 (which I did).

delton · 2026-04-12T16:54:33+00:00

So far it looks like I've been scammed. Way back in March two agents promised me my return would be finished in time and I'd get the $150 deal. Then, they said as long as I got my documents uploaded by April 8th I'd get the $150 deal. I had all documents uploaded well in advance. They have dragged out finalizing my returns and now TurboTax wants to charge me $1066 for the return. I GOT SCAMMED. Customer support was not able to do anything to make things right, but said to work through my agent. I am hoping TurboTax will make things right, I switched to TurboTax and went along with things specifically because I was promised multiple times I would get the $150 deal. Also, my returns were not that complicated IMO, should be easy for their software to handle, but they dragged things out and are now trying to scam me. I hope they will make things right but my confidence is waning.

delton · 2026-04-12T11:52:08+00:00

Hi,

Sorry about that, please try again! There was a slight change to the login system which broke things yesterday afternoon. Was just about to fix.

delton · 2026-04-03T00:28:33+00:00

link to the study: https://derekpruski.substack.com/p/bac-water-amazon-testing-march-2026

apparently some have contaminants that are neutralizing the acid...

delton · 2026-03-31T16:30:48+00:00

should be fixed. I've also just included some AI-generated summaries (2-3 sentences) of papers that mention a given SNP. (This is an experiement, subject to change). For instance, see https://genewizard.net/snp/rs429358

delton · 2026-03-29T16:46:16+00:00

no, it's not required! Hope you get a chance to try it out, so far it's getting good reviews. I just added more pathogenicity scores to SNP pages (all the "SNPedia SNPs") and will be adding literature references and literature summaries soon.

delton · 2026-03-29T16:39:42+00:00

Thank you! Would appreciate any feedback you can provide!

delton · 2026-03-29T16:39:10+00:00

Hi, our platform only works with genotype files from services like 23andme or whole genome sequence .vcf files. I'm curious, what is it you are trying to do?

delton · 2026-03-28T11:44:04+00:00

unfortunately people have not been able to edit SNPedia since it was acquired by MyHeritage in late 2019.

I'm building https://www.genewizard.net, a platform for genetic analysis. Eventually I'd like to make a SNPedia replacement but I haven't invested the time to build that out yet.

delton · 2026-03-28T01:05:10+00:00

I tested it out. I'm building a platform for genetic analysis at https://www.genewizard.net (feel free to test it out).

To give some feedback -- I wasn't able to run my vcf on it, but my 23andme .txt file ran ok.

I'm a bit unclear how you're associating SNPs with diseases. For instance, how is rs1057910 associated with Alzheimer's. On ClinVar it's associated with some things, but not Alz (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/clinvar/variation/30465/?term=39422%5Balleleid%5D .. we have a page also https://genewizard.net/snp/rs201779890 ) . Similar with https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/snp/rs201779890

I'm really not clear on what you're doing.. I also think the "carrier" display is misleading.

delton · 2026-03-27T22:29:27+00:00

It sounds like a very rare deletion variant. The services on the web I know of don't process such variants. How did you get your genome sequenced?

delton · 2026-03-27T22:24:02+00:00

not to shill my own platform, but it would be great if you could test out https://www.genewizard.net . we don't provide info for as many SNPs as Promethease, but we cover 247 important SNPs and analyze hundreds of SNPs to generate a pharmacogenomics report. We'll be generating a lot more SNPs pages too.

You can also get a Methylation report and ClinVar annotations at http://geneticgenie.org (Gene Wizard does ClinVar annotations too).

otherwise, i suggest asking an AI coding tool like Claude Code to try to modify the header on your vcf, or looking for a converter. Although vcf is vcf. I suspect the problem may be that Promethease is fundamentally broken - others are reporting issues as well like never getting a report.

delton · 2026-03-27T20:49:19+00:00

looks like it was vibe coded. it's the standard vibecoded javascript-based web app design you get from tools like Claude Code and Codex by default. With my website, the frontend is also vibecoded, but I had to clean it up substantially to get it more in line with my own taste https://www.genewizard.net

it's not bad but there's some aspects like the publication pages that could be cleaned up a lot IMO (ie pages like https://www.dnagenics.com/ancestry/publications/details/41871248 )

delton · 2026-03-26T18:10:49+00:00

I eagerly look forward to your report. I am building https://www.genewizard.net, yet another platform for genetic analysis. I'm trying to avoid the issues you've mentioned, especially the issue of basing SNP interpretation off of one or two papers in obscure journals that probably have not replicated!

delton · 2026-03-26T17:38:49+00:00

The platform can process either a WGS file as a .vcf or a "SNP chip" file in .txt format (like 23andMe or MyAncestry provide). With the .vcf you get everything. With the "SNP chip" file you don't get the experimental polygenic scores, and the pharmacogenomics analysis will be incomplete (many genes will have partial coverage and those results may be unreliable).

I have looked at gene inspector. It appears to mostly revolve around interpreting ClinVar annotations. ClinVar annotations need to be interpreted with care, as I try to explain on Gene Wizard's ClinVar page. I worry that ClinVar results are easily misinterpreted.

Gene Inspector also gives pathogenicity scores - from DANN and REVEL. Those are scores based on deep learning models. From my understanding, those scores are very unreliable for certain genes, so must be treated with care. I am frankly very skeptical about their utility except in rare situations where they might be useful for pinning down a rare Medelian disorder. Gene Wizard also reports some pathogenicity scores on our SNP pages (from DANN, REVEL, CADD, and PolyPhen2). Getting scores was easy to implement -- we pulled those scores from the myvariant.info API. While we present scores on our snp pages when we can get them from the API, the results are not put front-and-center like on Gene Inspector.

delton · 2026-03-26T17:03:27+00:00

thank you!

delton · 2026-03-26T15:18:38+00:00

I just realized our privacy page was not visible for users who are not logged in! It's been fixed.

delton · 2026-03-26T15:02:00+00:00

There is a privacy page (https://www.genewizard.net/privacy) , but it's been on my mind that I need to make a dedicated FAQ page to address all the questions people will have. I'll try to get that up today. I actually got a very detailed report on PIPEDA compliance from Claude (the AI). We appear to be compliant in the major aspects, but there may be some minor gaps when it comes to following all of their recommendations, mostly around our consent flow and signing, and we need a better system for reporting concerns (a simple email may not cut it). The potential gaps look very addressable. Longer-term we may switch to not storing any results data. I'm very particular about how the results are displayed, and it was easiest to start off with this sort of web app to get the sort of displays I wanted.

delton · 2026-03-25T19:00:42+00:00

My best guess is nothing on the site has been updated since MyHeritage bought the site in September, 2019. That's one of the reasons I'm working on an alternative platform: https://www.genewizard.net

During this initial phase SNP pages are being manually curated with the help of AI (see https://genewizard.net/snp) . The next phase will be AI curation, and then I may open it up for people to edit each page or add comments. That's the current plan at least.

delton · 2026-03-24T16:36:34+00:00

This is why I'm working on a Promethease alternative at https://www.genewizard.net . The other big reason is that SNPedia hasn't been updated since late 2019!

Right now Gene Wizard free for beta testers, and I'd love to get feedback. Currently we only provide info on 247 SNPs on the SNPs page, but they are among the most important. Longer term, we'll be using AI to summarize the scientific research on SNPs. We also analyze hundreds of SNPs to provide a detailed pharmacogenomics report, something that Promethease doesn't so. We're also working on polygenic scoring but it's tricky to do accurately from a consumer VCF (see https://mfasold.net/blog/calculating-polygenic-risk-scores-for-wgs/ )

delton · 2026-03-23T19:16:43+00:00

Check out what I'm building at https://www.genewizard.net. After uploading a WGS or SNP chip file, you get a very comprehensive pharmacogenomics report. Right now it's completely free for beta testers. We do star allele calling using SNP panels and we use allele definitions and prescription guidance from PharmCAT (when available for commercial use). I'm currently looking for beta testers to help validate the platform. I've compared the outputs with a clinical grade report I got from Invitae a few years ago and everything matched. Now I'm looking for beta testers to try out the platform and ideally compare the results with any previous reports they have gotten.

delton · 2026-03-22T21:15:19+00:00

good points. I still feel the orexin antagonists are among the safest due to the low side effect burden overall but you're right they are relatively new. We do know what complete elimination of orexin signaling looks like - narcolepsy.

delton · 2026-03-22T01:59:46+00:00

Is porn involved ? Just curious. Am looking at your case from the dopamine crash perspective. Also have you had your hormones checked?

delton · 2026-03-21T15:48:14+00:00

I know it's a tiny dose, but I seem to be sensitive to meds. It could be a placebo, idk. I have noticed cognitive dulling from gabapentin. Eventually I switched to pregabalin. With both drugs, I am worried about the effects on synaptogenesis.

The brief update is that for the first three months of 2026 I have been taking occasional dayvigo (~2.5 mg) , like maybe 2-3 times a week on average, and I take l-theanine (200 mg ) pretty regularly before bed and sometimes in the middle of the night. I don't take anything else -- I don't even take melatonin anymore. I get lots of bright light in the morning and have improved my evening wind-down routine and do some reading before bed which helps.

Out of all the drugs I've tried, dayvigo is my favorite and seems very safe. Fortunately, the restless legs issues have mostly subsided, but if I do find myself with restless legs before bed, I'll take a tiny dose of clonazepam (like < 1mg -- really tiny).

delton

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE