Glowforge replacement poopstorm

So my Glowforge Pro popped in july 2021,

Glowforge would not repair the unit instead I got offered a refurbished one. But I had to shell out €1800 (shipping and all) for the unit. I received my unit and started using it in september 2021. But all the things were off on this machine. Kerf was too wide, did not cut in the far corners. After another long month and another back and forth with Glowforge I had to exchange the refurbished unit for a new unit.

Glowforge shipped me another refurbished unit. I doubted it at first but sure it was there right on the paperwork. I double checked at glowforge and there was a mistake at their fault. In january 2022 I got the confirmation that a new unit was to be shipped to me by 22 februari 2022.

Another week go by and I email them when will this machine arrive. I get an email (from glowforge) march 7th that it cleared customs and will be out for delivery as soon as possible.

fast forward another 2 weeks and it’s march 21st. I shoot out another reply to this email: “When will this arrive?” And two days later I get a reply that the machine was returned to Glowforge and that ANOTHER new order had to be made. This new machine will ship in 2 weeks! By then it will be April 2022.

That’s 10 months from the initial issue to get me properly up and running again.

That all stinks. Just curious, why’d you post about it? Like what are you hoping to hear from us here?

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Considering the difficulties involved and the expenses of shipping outside the US including customs the chances of snafu are quite high. You say that there was an electrical short in your machine, but getting the one you had repaired might have turned out exactly the same except that it might have taken another six months.

You say it got to customs in your country but was sent back. Why was that? Was it waiting for you or someone else there to do something or did someone back a truck into it? It was certainly nobody in Seattle at the time. You blame Glowforge but at worst it was someone they hired. It seems likely that Glowforge paid for six trips plus customs, plus repairs on three machines while charging you for just one.

If the one sent to you was hit by a truck you would not want that one back repaired or not. The problems you list about your second machine could easily be caused by rough shipping throwing the aim of the laser off. It is either that or dirty windows that would cause the issues you speak of. I have had the white window get a barely perceptible film in a single cut that threw off the cut enough to not make it through and widen the kerf. Also, that blurring threw the beam worse as the head was farther away.

Normally if the angle of the beam is off it will eat into the head when trying to cut on the far right side.

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I need a place to vent and I hope to inform others who might consider this machine.

Funny, I just read this:

I’ve been in your shoes when I was really mad at gf support… I look back on it now and that article rings very true to me.

You mean warn them off? I think you overestimate a couple of things here — this site has far less reach than that and judging by the questions we see here the average Glowforge customer reads far less than you might think before buying.

Also you’re almost exclusively talking to people who bought a Glowforge already, so I’m not sure you’re reaching your intended audience.

If you’re hoping google will direct people here you didn’t exactly optimize your post to be searchable… I don’t think the average new customer is thinking “I should check to see if Glowforge users have reported any poopstorms”, but who knows? Let’s see:

https://www.google.com/search?&q=glowforge+"poopstorm"

Oh wow it was almost a googlewhack! [1] Anyway. Sorry about your poopstorm, I really do understand a bit about how you feel.


  1. A googlewhack means you only find one unique result in your search. I found two, so close! ↩︎

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If you want more visibility, I can move this to “Community Support”? If anyone is looking at the reliability of the product that is where they would look.

The “Everything Else” section is usually for off-topic items not really related to :glowforge: so people might not look here.

That’s terrible, @darkdesign - I’m going to share this with the team to investigate what happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again. Thanks for letting us know.

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Of course, if they had agreed to repair your busted machine, what you would have gotten back from them was a “refurbished” machine, too, even though it was the identical machine you sent in for repair.

This is standard operating procedure for warranty replacements of “high value” products. You send in a bad unit, they repair it and it goes in to inventory to be used as a replacement for some other customer’s return. They ship you one from the same inventory pool that’s already been repaired.

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