Glowforge Customer service terrible

Anyone else have a terrible experience with GF support been trying to get ahold of them for days…as a small shop this is destroying me.

Very common complaint unfortunately.

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looks like time for a thunder

Describe your problem for us, perhaps we could help.

recalibration failing on wifi and hotspot all is tested with great speed.

passthrough will not align when shifted

I have no experience with the pass-through, but others here do. That makes this the best place outside of support to seek help. BTW, welcome to the community. As a glowforge owner, this place is a valuable resource.

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Calibration failed multiple times for me, even though the machine has been 100% reliable on my wifi otherwise. I had to set up a different router to get the calibration to work. I had even tried “repeaters” and “signal boosters”, nothing else worked. I have the ability/tools to map wifi signal strength and there was absolutely nothing wrong with the wifi where the machine is located. I’ve worked in IT since the late 80’s and with wifi since it has existed. Download/upload numbers using a laptop were nearly identical with a laptop on top of the GF as they were in the same room as the router.

I set up an old router connected directly to my regular one, connected the machine to that, then ran the calibration successfully. Then removed the additional router and returned the machine to the regular wifi, and it’s been 100% reliable again since.

The calibration is just odd in that way.

(Edited to add - I have 1Gbps broadband, and upload/download speeds are only limited by the wifi technology itself. I get 600Mbps up and down from my laptop, anywhere on my property, up to 4x as far away as the GF is from my router. The 2.4GHz band is slower but I still get ~100Mbps anywhere on my property. This is on 2.4GHz:)

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Before they had the system they have now I had long been using a workaround that I still prefer. By aligning the material to the right hand rail the x value of the material is fixed. By only using the up down arrow keys (with Shift for faster movement) the x value of the design is fixed.

By breaking up the design into multiple pieces you get to decide where that break happens (unlike the program that breaks across a single level). By breaking only at places that the lines are vertical the x value of the break is fixed. The near horizontal places can be attached to one piece or the other as long as each part is less than 10.5 inches tall.

Set up that way as much as a millimeter error cannot be distinguished and it is a lot faster to move everything, and a lot more reliable as there are no places where the cut will jag.

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I am having same issue. My laser tube is not lit and laser not printing anything. I’ve checked everything and it looks like it needs to be replaced but support not getting back to me with even a we’ll contact you in a few days. This is really bad, I paid for extended support and not receiving anything.

Not sure what that means. There is no “extended support” from Glowforge.

You can buy an extended warranty with the machine, but that is from a third-party, not Glowforge.

Sorry you are right, extended warranty. But that was pushed by Glowforge. Its still pretty unacceptable that we can’t receive some type of response within a day. I worked for a technology company and that would have been unacceptable

The SSD stopped working in my Dell laptop, under warranty, and it took 10 days to get an email response other than the “we received your ticket” mail, and 3 more days to get them to schedule a repair. I’ve been unable to reach a human about a Google Merchant Center issue for years, and they’re a pretty big tech company too. Customer service just isn’t what it used to be. Glowforge is slow but at least I can say they’re there, they’re in-house, they’re knowledgeable, and they always fixed my problems to my satisfaction in the end.

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That is the response I’m waiting for, we got your ticket. I have no idea right now if anyone has even received it. I agree that Glowforge is great once they start working on it but right now I’m totally in the dark and I’m anticipating I’ll need to send it to them so every day this sits is a day it can’t be used and I’m looking at weeks right now. Just very frustrating. There are automation support tools out there that can make this less painless for all of us Glowforge customers, that was my point.

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They use them. GF support uses Zendesk, all tickets receive immediate response that the request was received along with a ticket number. Then it can take several business days to respond in-person. If it was determined you do need a replacement machine, it can take several more days. If it’s going thru the 3rd-party warranty, even more.

If you didn’t receive the automated response, there is likely a problem with your email filtering/spam.

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