What’s the weight of each item at the moment out of interest?
55 lbs for basic/pro
25 lbs for the filter, but that may wind up going up or down as we experiment with filter lifetime.
Jrnelson: you can have it shipped to me:) Or you might want to look into signing up for a US P.O. Box or kinekpoints for boarder shipping. Could save you a few hundred dollars.
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Yeah, I’m going to investigate shipping it to my buddy’s PO box, which is substantially cheaper. Still going to have to pay sales, but that’s better than having it on top of the extra $425 shipping! Before I choose to do that, though, I’d like to know what an “all-in” shipping cost would be, including brokerage fees. That’s something they only have to do once for the entire country, so I don’t think it’s much of a burden to ask.
Part of it is volume, though, not just weight. A very wide package that’s also somewhat heavy can be extremely expensive to ship.
Shipping dimensions are 46" x 29" x 16" and 70 pounds. The Glowforge Air Filter is 46" x 29" x 12" and 40 pounds.
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Sure, but part of that is simply the width of the unit. It’s really $$$$$ to ship a 4 foot long box.
After a week of being angry at the shipping costs, I finally ordered a Pro. Worst thing that could happen now is the shipping stays the same, best thing to happen would be some alternative way of shipping it at a lower cost. I really said that to myself 
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don’t forget the custom’s fees. My bank account is looking awfully low since ordering a GF but we haven’t even paid customs yet (note to self don’t buy any [more] expensive Christmas presents else I won’t have enough to pay customs!)
I’ve ordered the Pro version for our FabLab, which is a no profit organization, with no VAT and no way to get back the paid taxes.
So, we are going to pay taxes twice: once in US and one it comes to Italy, because of the customs fees.
I can’t believe that… I was already shocked by the shipping costs, but they are understandable, as not in control, but I’m so disappointed for these extra costs.
Not sure I want to waste so much money for this: is just not fair.
So sorry to hear about your frustration, @andrea. Very much understand if you want to cancel and wait for local availability; just let support@glowforge.com know.
This is not the way to make people happy. It’s just a way for you to lose clients, and trust from us.
You could have proposed other solutions, like:
- Give some “refund” (you already give a lot of $100 for referrals)
- Find a way to know advance the costs and share the custom fees
- Find a way to avoid non profit organizations like us to pay taxes twice (since, again, they can’t get them back anyway)
Instead, you simply suggest to cancel the order and “wait for local availability”: yes, sure.
I’m not going to cancel my order, yet: I’ll wait until the very last minute, to see if you become more proactive, if you find better solutions and, anyway, because it’s my right to decide at the very last minute.
Tough, guys, something’s smelling here.
Two name two smells: warranties that should have been provided since the beginning (I don’t know US laws, but I hardly believe you are not bound to some kind of warranty anyway), unclear shipment times (until today I thought that all shipments would have been done in December 2015, which apparently is not true).
It didnt say all preorders ships in december, it said starts shipping in december. If you ever thought they would be able to assemble thousands of units which are not even in a final design, you never put any research into what a crowfunded product is.
And if they are going to assemble them in the US, you dont throw a million people at it as you would in China.
I do know that in the past, when pledging for Kickstarter projects, when they provided a shipping month+year estimation, they meant to ship on that month and year (excluding these cases where they simply made a wrong estimation).
If I see “start shipping from December 2015”, with no more clarification, I expect the product be shipped sometime in December 2015, and not on sometime after it (which might be even one year later, at this point).
I don’t think I’m supposed to know how a crowdfunded product is handled: why I should?
I’m just a customer who tried to get the product at a convenient price, but then, a good percentage has been added to the shipping costs, then an unclear additional percentage will be added for the custom fees and for something I don’t even know when it will be delivered.
So disappointed, but thanks.
I’ll still wait until the end of the year: some associated of our organization have been contributing to help us raise the money for this product and would be a very bad news for them to see their money go back to them because someone else failed providing proper and clear information.
I have never seen this kind of involvement from management in a crowdsourced product before. I think they are very clear that they don’t have all the details yet and that there might be delays. I think I even saw a Q3 date (or was that before Q3?) somewhere. Of course that would hurt, but then again, you would have 6 months of other people hitting the bugs and lots of time to stockpile materials, doing designs and learn from others.
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Andrea, I’m truly sorry to hear about your disappointment. I encourage you to request a refund. We’re going to do the best we can and share as much as we can, and that’s not going to be enough for everyone. That’s OK, and I’d much rather have you happy as someone else’s customer than frustrated as ours.
If you understand the uncertainty (e.g. we just don’t have the resources to optimize international fulfillment) and still want to proceed, we’d be delighted to have you as a customer.
Dan,
We can cut a some of the money we need to waste (remember: no profit, twice the VAT), by simply removing the VAT from the delivery slip.
This is perfectly legal: just have someone from your sale, financial or whatever department contact me, and I’ll give all the details to make a proper invoice to my organization.
Then, the delivery slip you will include in the package, won’t need to include the VAT.
Is not the best solution, but it’s still a cut from the price I’ll have to pay to the customs.
Again, you can do that: let’s see if you also want to do it.
I’m so sorry, Andrea-it sounds like you need a level of logistics service that we’re just not staffed to provide you at this point. I wish we could be a great vendor for you right now. We’ll be much better equipped to call and help individual customers with their shipping needs after we’re in full retail distribution. Until then, we can only fulfill the shipping commitments we made, and cannot accommodate any other optimizations. I know it seems like a few minutes, but it actually starts with finding an international logistics expert to be sure we’re complying with the law, then making hundreds of calls to individual customers, then meeting with the shippers to see if they can accommodate… These are things we can do later, but which are not part of our preorder plan, and which would come at the expense of fulfilling the obligations we did make.
As always, say the word and we’ll issue a full refund.
Yes, sure. I could ask for a refund, as it seems that’s the only thing you can say, but I’ve ordered the product at half of its price, plus the additional discounts.
If I cancel the order and order later, when you will be able to properly handle your logistic (if ever), I will have to pay the full price, which will be even worse!
This is a very big fail from you: how could you have thought to send your product overseas, without even considering this sort of issues?
I can’t believe it, really!