It’s a tough break on the reward points. On one hand it’s not fair that you’re losing them, on the other if the points were retained even after canceled orders people would have gamed the system.
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Please clarify: it sounds like your update suggests there will be additional delays. If there are more delays in the pipeline I think you owe it to your customers to keep us informed and to help manage our expectations. Updating us this week by asking us to wait till next week’s update is a bit irritating.
Based on what you know now are you suggesting that the upcoming delays are plural: days, weeks or months away?
Please note I’m not asking about the nature of the delay, I just want to know how much longer the delay will be.
The “system” is whatever glowforge says it is.
Can we get half the value in store credit for each referral that cancelled after the third broken promise? No? Nada. Okay. Well… its not my system, so, have to either convince MORE people to get on the train or deal with it.
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I suppose the alternative would have been to wait until next week to post anything. I’m not sure that would have been much better.
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You raise a good point, which I don’t disagree with. With that said, I think it’s fair to ask for a rough estimate for the upcoming delay.
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They’re sending everyone a personalized email with the delay for each person:
I think it’s fair to give them a week to do that. It could be a lot of work figuring out an estimate for each person. And I know I’d rather have an individual estimate for my own order rather than some vague range that covers everyone from now until they ship the last order that came in yesterday.
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Bwa-ha hahaha…please don’t dash my little remaining hope!!!
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Just to play devils advocate: the income from Amazon’s thriving fulfillment business can be leveraged to keep the lights on and R&D employees paid while you prefect a future product and associated press releases. Amazon doesn’t have to crowd source a venture. Therefore you can afford to keep customers in the dark.
Whereas GlowForge has only a single product that hasn’t fully shipped, and therefore must be operating with negative cash flow. Their investors’ preorders are keeping the lights on and their employees paid. I think it’s fair to expect more frequent and timely updates, along with realistic deadlines.
I work with software vendors as well. I agree there’s always a roadmap, but often you need to sign a NDA to hear the roadmap as the vendor doesn’t want to share their plans with the competition. Seems similar to this situation to me…
edz
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I’m not asking for a per person estimate. I’m asking for a clarification on what sounds like yet-another-delay for the stated goal of shipping all the preorders in October.
The rough estimate should cover just the orders that came in during their Kickstarter campaign 100 weeks and three 6-month delays ago.
Providing a vague range will help manage our expectations. And next week they can contact the remaining customers and provide a personalized deadline. If there are delays.
If the originally stated goal is still intact then I’m fine waiting till next week for my personalized ETA.
Has Dan confirmed this? I’ve seen a few people allude to this interpretation but that’s not how I read it at all. All it seems to say is that every remaining person will get an email? As in, anyone that doesn’t get their golden ticket from now til then will get an email with a revised schedule. Seems to me that everyone would get a new general deadline date like before. Not that each person will get an individual estimated date.
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I’d sign a GlowForge NDA if it meant having more a accurate ETA.
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It’s right in the announcement:
The email update you receive next week will tell you when to expect delivery based on your order date, US or International, and product (Basic/Pro/Air).
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Yes, I saw that. That doesn’t mean it will be individualized to each purchaser. There are two groups already. The original preorder campaign and all subsequent orders. Every timeline they’ve used previously has those two groups split on delivery date… thus that statement could easily be saying that you’ll get an email telling you the new delivery date based on you’re order date (meaning your group)… i.e. just another general delivery prediction.
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It says it in more definite terms at the bottom of the update:
If you haven’t received your Glowforge shipping email yet, you’ll hear from us next week with a shipping update that is specific to your order.
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And to everyone else who persists in this: there was never a Kickstarter.
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Aha, that’s the bit I should have quoted to start with. I knew I’d remembered reading that, but I just grabbed the first mention of email I saw (which was in bold, hence quite eye-catching).
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KS is just shorthand for crowdfunding now.the platform doesn’t particularly matter
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I hope that’s what it means. That’s just not how I read it. Especially considering that’s far more useful info than has EVER been offered thus far.
It’s also less believable personally. They can’t seem to predict the broad strokes of when orders go out. Why would I assume they can get an accurate estimate for every single specific order.
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Noted. GlowForge was the largest crowed funded campaign. The previous record holder was the Pebble watch on Kickstarter. I guess the people who are using the trade mark “Kickstarter” should be using the generic term “crowd funded” instead.
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