Follow-up questions… our order is in my girlfriend’s name… does my activity count, or does the activity have to be on her account?
Also, can you estimate approximately how many posts a day a customer who has been waiting since September 2016 needs to make in order to maintain their place in line? If need be, we’re willing to put in the time, though of course it will be difficult to contain our anger and frustration at this new development.
This board shows approximately 5400 total users, with around 1800 active users in the last 30 days. Can you give us some visibility on how many people are going to get bumped up?
Honestly, though, this latest bombshell shakes me more than the production delays. Design issues, production headaches, those all are disappointing but understandable. Breaking your promise to ship orders as they were received, that’s a bad decision that treats customers unfairly, which gives us serious pause.
Actually Tom, your post isn’t accurate either. Quoting the December update…
“We will be manufacturing hundreds of units per month through February and scale up to thousands starting in April. Most customers will get their deliveries in May through August.”
I mistakenly said March/April, when it was to have started in February and ramped to thousands of units by April. Our order was placed within the first couple days, so assuming the company could meet this new plan and if they were honoring the commitment to ship customer orders as they were received, we would have been looking at April or possibly May.
This update suggests that only prerelease units are currently shipping, and that they expect to fill orders in July/August and that they will be bumping potentially hundreds (if not thousands) of customers in order to push the most active forum users (possibly including ‘regulars’ such as yourself) to the front of the queue.
As per my previous post, though I am curious as to how many posts a day we’d need to make in order to maintain our place in line, and whether that can be done on my account or if it needs to be on my gf’s account (as the order is in her name). It would also be helpful to have an idea how many people will be getting shipped ahead of us as a result of this change (it could be a few dozen, it could be several hundred or more). Without transparency, and given all the history of delays and excuses, it’s hard not to assume the worst… and I would still like to have hope.
I can understand your frustration. Might I recommend this discussion:
I recognize where you are coming from, and you certainly may disagree with Dan or with my view of this decision. There are several people who have suggested some pretty viable advantages to this policy.
I don’t know exactly how much you must read or post to get into the front of the line; but if you can get past the frustration and spend some time seeing what has been created, it will be time well spent. I recommend starting with weekly highlights.
I wouldn’t worry about enough people being bumped for it to noticeably push the shipment of your unit. There’s no specific “posts per day” but being active and helpful in the forums would be a good start. As to if the account matters, I would doubt it, but am not staff so hopefully they chime in to let you know for sure.
Based on what’s been said about switching manufacturing lines and things, I would say it’s safe to bet that manufacturing is progressing as previous updates had said it would, but as Tom said, units being produced doesn’t specifically mean units going to customers. Dan has been pretty consistent with the orders from the earlier pre-order period going out by the end of July and the rest by the end of August and promising nothing earlier than that for production units, so most of us have just been assuming we’ll get our units at the end of July to keep from going crazy.
Was it? The bit I quoted was from Dan’s December schedule update, and what you wrote was different. I get it though, as a forum regular you have a vested interest in defending the announcement as it benefits you directly.
As far as I understand it there’s only a hundred or two forum members who are on the list. There’s probably a great many of those individuals who ordered very early in the game so they aren’t really going to get bumped any further ahead in the line since they were already ahead of you. The number of people on that list is statistically so small though that you might at worst see a delay of a day between when you’d have gotten yours with and without the “preferential” treatment. But with how early you ordered you won’t have to wait much longer than when the first few people start saying theirs is in the mail. I’m choosing not to take it personally, and just get wildly excited when the people that got bumped up start getting their units and GF can use those people as guinne pigs and get the rest of the units out without a hitch.
Don’t assume April. If you insist on assuming May, assume about the 31st for the 3:00am orders on the first day. Just a tip for managing disappointment.
@trilo, there have been a LOT of discussions since December. Things have been debated and clarified time and again. @Tom_A is still completely accurate as of the further conversations that have occurred since December.
Check out @cmreeder’s post discussing the March Update and why it makes sense.
If nothing else convinces you that there is a good and logical reason to bump people who have donated their time, efforts, and expertise to make these machines better for you, me, and everyone else, then please take a little comfort in the numbers. If thousands are being produced in a given month, those that are bumped to the front are in the realm of hundred(s). Even if there were 500, you would still get yours in the first batch of 1000 being made. You wouldn’t even notice a difference. So until Dan states that the number of folks getting their machine early starts to approach the first 1000, I wouldn’t worry that the schedule for your particular machine is going to change much at all.
Since you have forum privileges it would seem your activity counts.
Sept.2016 places your order in line to be delivered by end of August, your place in line has not slipped. Orders that were placed before Oct. 24th 2015 are due to be delivered by end of July, a difference of a month - even though they have been waiting 10 months longer.
Somewhere around 200 members who contributed to product development and community support is the estimate.
On the scale of mass production when thousands are going out the door 200 might be two days worth. Not even noticeable, and as I have said before, hardly more than a wink in the direction of those who have poured themselves into support of the product.
You have some really nice work on your web site, too bad you haven’t been able to participate more, your creative insight and input would be welcome.
You’re here with us now, so enjoy all the forum has to offer, and rest assured - no significant time has been added to your wait.
If you placed your order in Sept 2015 (vs the Sept 2016 you refer to in a later post in this thread) you’ll be getting yours shipped in July according to the schedule. You’re a “pre-order” (those who purchased before Oct 25, 2015) so you’re in the July group.
If it was Sept 2016 then it’s only been about 6 months (and slightly less than a year when your deliver would be) and you’ll get it shipped to you in August.
so at 1 day it’s conceivable someone could receive their glowforge before someone who did get bumped up just due to living closer to the glowforge hatchery?
and for the record I did not get bumped up if anyone is trying to keep score.
That’s a reasonable assessment. If Day 1 they ship to the bumped up folks and Day 2 they start shipping in remaining order then you’re right it’s likely the Day 1 guy in Alabama is going to get it after the Day 2 guy in California simply due to transit times.
Although it does seem it’s not going to really impact either. Neither would know when they might have gotten it if the bump didn’t occur. I mean if you got yours on a Friday, would you say to yourself (or GF) “I could have gotten it on Thursday if someone hasn’t been bumped in front of me!”?
Shipping the unit to us initially is bad enough. Shipping it back and forth is a terrible idea. Making this change after delaying over a year makes me want to cancel.
You can’t say it’s not doable, everything is. I built my own CNC router and made $60k last year off it. Surly I can competently replace a bulb after signing a waiver.
To boot, being down for two weeks is also a show stopper. I don’t care if you’re replacing the bulb for free at that point.
I hope this is resolved, if not I’ll have waited 2 years for nothing after I cancel.
Love that!