I hope @dan will be at the Seattle Maker Faire! Have something for you and the team. 
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Check the seat next to you!
" From earlier this week in the news… The owner of a gray two-door Ford Mustang dropped the car off at a mechanic in the 1900 block of Freeport Road after it sustained damage during a recent storm, according to a release.The mechanic parked the car on the street until it could be worked on, and later returned to see it filling with brown smoke, officials said.
Crews said there weren’t any flames visible from the engine or trunk compartment, but smoke continued to fill the interior.
According to the release, when firefighters got the car open, they found a pair of burning underwear on the passenger seat, which had produced a small fire." 
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So it wouldn’t behoove me to drive to Seattle to do some dumpster diving behind the Glowforge Building…?
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Happy Birthday to HER! 
@dan, talking about shipping, on the FAQ it says
Q: Why is international shipping so expensive?
A: With limited logistics time and resources, we had to go with traditional
package delivery as the cheapest option we could launch with. […]
Given that the GF didn’t ship when the launch was planned an still won’t ship for some time, I was wondering it there will be any development on international shipping costs.
At the moment it looks like I’ll have to pay $478. Adding import taxes it’s going to be more than $1,000 on top of the actual $2,395 for the GF…
To be honest, i forgot about the import taxes when i pre-ordered 
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Geeze I so hope this isn’t a subliminal “softening up of the herd” type message in anticipation of things to come.
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Yeah. At least now it’s a working physical device, it’s not just smoke and mirrors. (Get it? “smoke and mirrors”)
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Now that’s funny! 
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Since we’re already late delivering what we’ve promised, it’s important for us to not take on any new work lest we wind up later.
I think you’ll find I’ve always said similar things.
It’s both! 
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Im assuming you still dont take any betatesters from overseas?
So, out of the gate I understand the global excuse justification solution of “well, if you’re not happy, you can always always ask for a refund”. You don’t get off that easy. From my work experience, you make a commitment, you don’t get to just tell people “oh, my bad, go find somebody else give you what I committed to do if you’re not happy”.
[quote=“jdodds, post:67,
topic:2823”]
Geeze I so hope this isn’t a subliminal “softening up of the herd” type message in anticipation of things to come.
[/quote]
It saddens me that you feel you can just say the above condescending rhetoric to customers that aren’t your Kool-Aid drinkers.
So, are you referring to statements like those below from the “Glowforge shipping date, beta releases, and bonus materials” announcement @dan? Because if you are, I read them just the opposite.
I did believe in you. But what I have long since come to realize is that your #1 skill is the ability to “sell ice cubes to eskimos”, followed closely by the “error of omission” as it relates to the completeness of the Glowforge hardware/software project compared to the super slick product marketing video.
At this point, I am putting my belief in the technical abilities of the rest of the Glowforge team to deliver a product by hear end that I bought in part based on that marketing video. Please continue to inspire them to a positive outcome @dan.
This is not my first first rodeo into $1,000+ crowdfunding technology product with delays, but to this point, it certainly has been the least satisfying in the pre-delivery phase.
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Please take this response as being from someone who has been around awhile, mainly observing and quietly waiting for their GF.
I have always seen @dan’s responses as being VERY guarded. He has always been very careful to not try and not say anything that could be considered a promise on something that he is not committed to provide. His consistent response of always offering a refund to unsatisfied customers is very unique and I at least appreciate it. To me it reads that he is truly interested in people being able to say “I’ve made my decision and I believe it to be the right choice”, instead of feeling like they just got “sold” by a very slick salesman. Even for myself, if I get an awesome deal on an awesome product, if I feel like I was pushed into it or tricked into purchasing it, I will regret the item and it will REALLY kill the enjoyment (i.e. Solar Panel Salesmen have always irked me. It seems like a great deal, but the sales pitches always strike me the wrong way.)
For this particular response, I don’t see @dan being condescending to you at all. He is being consistent with his message and trying very hard not to oversell what is really there, and also not trying to overshare in order to protect his product. His response confirming a date of delivery has always been Quality over everything else. He would LOVE to ship everything by whatever date was proposed. But he would love to give us a product that WE can be proud to own even more.
I have no experience in a product like this, or other $1000+ crowdfunding ventures, so this seems not unreasonable to me. I could be completely wrong, but I hope that @dan truly is as genuine as I believe him to be. I will still trust his words until proven false, and I hope he can gain your trust again as well.
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Yes @dan has always been very guarded in what he promises. What I don’t understand is how the web page I ordered from came to be, as that described a 3D laser with 1000 dpi resolution that could be pre-ordered for a discount and would be delivered starting December 2015. There was no mention of crowd funded development. It looked like a developed product that simply needed some orders upfront to kick start the volume production. Three months would just about long enough to order all the components and start a production line if it was a fully developed product with approvals in place. Did Dan not proof read it before launch or was it a deliberate con?
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I ordered a day or so before the cutoff and I knew that the units that were supposed to ship in December were beta units, not production units. I also knew it was a crowdfunding campaign. I even made sure that my wife knew before I placed the order that we would likely not get this thing for a year or more. That bit was intuition based on past crowdfunded tech, but the other bits were there to find.
This is something that I don’t understand at all. @dan and the GF team have communicated more information, shared more images, tests, laser Thursdays, personal stories, etc… than any other crowdfunding campaign I’ve ever seen. They have been open and honest about their issues, the reasons for their delays, and where they are at. This particular campaign has far and away been the best that I’ve ever seen. Many just post a single paragraph every couple of months stating their current status, but these people actually communicate actively with their community.
The only other big campaign that I’ve been a part of was a 3D printer in the $400 range. They had a similar community, but the actual creators didn’t communicate half as much as the GF team. That said, I’ve been a backer on a dozen or more smaller campaigns through Kickstarter, Indigogo, etc… and while some provide monthly updates, most just update at milestones, if at all. Video games are the worst though. They go away for months at a time, to the point where I have actually forgotten that I backed anything sometimes. Obviously I’m going to be more actively participating in something like GF, as I not only have thousands of dollars invested in it as compared to $30 in a video game, but I also need to ramp up my knowledge in design and use of the machine before I actually receive it.
The overall point of this is that the GF team, in my opinion has done a stellar job in running their campaign and staying active, and actively communicating to the community that has grown around it, than any other crowdfunded item I’ve ever been a part of.
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I jumped in at the very beginning and I never got the impression that I would be getting my GF before end of Q2 2016. I remember thinking about whether I should sign up for the beta testing so I could get a GF December 2015.
I always understood that first date had only been for beta testers and business orders.
However, since this topic keeps coming up, it should have been more clearly stated at the beginning. If it was read carefully I think people would have understood that the general shipping date would have been the end of Q2. But a cursory read that most people do would make it seem like units were primed to ship out before the end of 2015.
I believe it was proof-read, but by someone who already knew what everything meant and not meant as a deliberate con. Ever since I’ve been a part of the community I’ve seen their actions to fall much more on the altruistic side. If they ever prove themselves to be less than sincere in their attempts to create a laser that a first-timer can use and understand (aka me), then I’ll join in the dissent. But for now, I’m still happy to sit and wait for a product that has the potential to drastically upgrade some of my hobbies.
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They didn’t use the crowd-funded money for development. They are using investor money for development.
When I ordered, I knew it was a pre-order/crowd-funding/kick-starter/whatever. From reading the website before I ordered, it seemed to be very clear about that.
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I ordered on the second day of the campaign I think, from this page https://web.archive.org/web/20150927190345/http://www.glowforge.com/order.
It says “Preorder Your Glowforge at 50% Off. Early bird pricing available for a limited time only. Shipping December 2015.”. Small print says “You are pre-ordering a product that has not yet been manufactured.”.
It doesn’t say it is a product that isn’t developed yet.
There is no mention of beta units or Q2.
I don’t see how anybody would interpret it as meaning anything other than pre-order now, they will start rolling out in December. I have backed many Kickstarter and Indigigogo campaigns with my eyes open and expect a year or more to go from a prototype mock up to full production. Since this was only three months it had to be fully developed. The fact it wasn’t was a con. Nobody with any product development experience could think it would ship in December or even in Q2 if they new it was only at early prototype stage, not fully functional and needing approvals.
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The website was more than just the order page with that blurb about it not being manufactured yet. It was in the text on another part of the website that the December units were going to be beta, and it was in the text elsewhere on the site that this was a crowdfunding campaign, and I recall the Q2 part as well. I would hope that anyone spending $2-$4k would take the time to scour every available piece of text on the website before ordering.
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I think this thread has the info you are looking for. There are multiple posts with multiple ways of answering the questions you brought up.
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