Glowforge updates: the road to production

Seriously? If I were running this whole coffee operation I’d build 7-11s and Dunkins near everyone. Then you could get your coffee right now. It’s easy to build those things, you see them popping up everywhere. It’s almost like there’s some kind of giant scam going on. Or maybe the coffee people are just incompetent. I mean, how long can it take to get a drone delivery of coffee. They were on commercials for pete’s sake. We should get the attorneys general involved. There’s undoubtedly a cover-up here. After all, I could build a drone in like 5 minutes. I could base a whole fleet of them in the new 7-11s and Dunkins in like a lot less time. Sheesh. I’d ask for my money back if I were you but then you can’t bitch :sunglasses:

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Thanks for spelling it out so succinctly. I don’t think your post could be improved on, but then I also would guess that there are those who can’t / don’t want to accept what you’ve written, and just need to feel taken advantage of.
For me, it was the largest sum of money that I’ve ever spent (yes, numerically more than my house cost, albeit 60 years ago, so not comparable), and having been risk averse all my adult life, it was a problem.
But just for once, I could see what it might do for me in terms of making the impossible possible, and given that I could change my mind at any time, allowed me to develop my ideas over the waiting time.
Now, I’m even more confident in the future,
John

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We were so off track in this thread my first thought was "where did this rant come from?"
Then I looked at the title of the thread :joy:

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LOL - my post took a few minutes to write - and the posts that inspired it got buried in references to coffee and drones somehow :wink:

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Oh…that was me. :relaxed:

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that’s entirely unnecessary.

i expected a few months delay at least but from the beginning i definitely thought they were further along than they were, and there’s nothing wrong with pointing that out.

i’m not naive or stupid. and despite what it’s called, this isn’t really a crowdfunding campaign as much as it is a vc-backed pre-order. it’s why they’ve been so stable with staffing, that’s why they can do refunds, and i think it’s why everyone’s stuck around as long as they have. it’s also why dan and co have found any time at all to interact with the forum to this extent.

don’t get me wrong, i’ve talked the company up, convinced literally dozens of people to order one, and i’ve talked about “when the laser comes” to the point that i’m probably halfway to a divorce. it doesn’t mean people can’t be critical. i think current issues may be indicative of why being able to figure out a third-party solution is so necessary once the open-sourced firmware becomes available.

call it out if you must, even i do from time to time, but there’s no need to be so insulting about it.

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i agree. it’s true that we should all have known it wasn’t a “finished product” the day we preordered (especially those who ordered in the early crowdfunding campaign). but it wasn’t unreasonable to expect it not be more than a year past the original promise date. nor is it unreasonable to be disappointed or mention you’re unhappy with the additional delays.

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to be fair i haven’t seen much complaining about people being upset with the delays, it’s only those posts that are also critical that get ganged up on. i mean, see above, where we have people making posts about not making posts.

and there’s totally a point where, to use a term i think i may have unwittingly repopularized, it becomes necrohippoflagellation.

it’s just all so silly.

at least at this point it’s become pretty obvious that machines are shipping, and it’s only a relatively simple matter of when rather than if. and i think it’ll be sooner rather than later, because it’s costing them big bucks to keep all this going, especially without being able to touch the customer cash.

completely aside, i wonder what their production runs will look like once they’ve shipped all the pre-orders. i’m sure they’ll be selling machines, but probably not on the order of thousands a week, and they’ve invested a lot of time and money on production line work and QA, and such. does that get mothballed and brought out quarterly? lots of stuff about this few of us know about.

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T[quote=“jrnelson, post:369, topic:2542”]
i expected a few months delay at least but from the beginning i definitely thought they were further along than they were, and there’s nothing wrong with pointing that out.
[/quote]

I think you said it right here - “expectations”. Expectations tend to bite us every time.

It’s OK to be disappointed, but I think every complaint and accusation regarding those expectations has been posted over and over and over and over here in the forums. At some point we have to take responsibility for ourselves and continue to wait or move on to another machine.

It’s kind of like moving to Seattle after being told how beautiful it is here and what a temperate climate is here and what an amazing place it is to live, then complaining over and over about the rain. Eventually, you have to either accept it and learn to dance even in the rain or move someplace else that will give you what you want today.

Try out the new BOD cold brew https://bodybrew.com/ I used Filtron for about 25 years (was even a distributor once). BOD is simpler and just as good, if not better coffee. No connection, just a happy customer.

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sure, but let’s be very honest, not all expectations are the same, and mine were pretty reasonable.

ha!

this is kind of a terrible analogy since i know plenty of seattlers who complain about the rain all the time (happy to trade, i hate the sun except for how it provides, you know, for all life on earth).

you’re not wrong, but it’s also hard to find those complaints where someone doesn’t derogatorily respond. i find it baffling since they are almost never directed at other users.

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It was never my intent to insult. But I do think too many people have unrealistic expectations. That was the intent of my ‘wake up’. I agree we all have a right to be disappointed. Heck, I’m disappointed - note the use of all caps in pertinent spots, and my previous post 5 months ago. But we are where we are. We can choose to constantly look backward, or we can look forward. Looking backward (in my mind) is continually venting on the schedule delay, which may provide some therapeutic value, but doesn’t actually do anything else. Looking forward means taking this experience in as part of our decisions to support future VC-backed companies, and preparing for actually receiving our unit.

Dan has attempted to provide some compensation for the delay in the form of vouchers, and extending our warranty. We should give him credit for this, and realize he’s running a business and can’t give away the farm. I’m sure he’s open to other suggestions, but they have to pass muster financially and be fair to the entire customer base.

My post wasn’t so much directed at those who are expressing disappointment at the delays, but rather those who continually ask for delivery date guarantees, or complain because their ‘expectations’ don’t match reality.

I would note that over the course of this, the delivery date shifts have gotten increasingly smaller - the first shift was a year, the second 6 months, and the 3rd is now 3 months - and note that last is a shift in the date of the last pre-order unit being shipped. So although Dan has always been overly optimistic in his dates, he’s getting better :wink:

Now one might ask oneself - how many of these people would have pre-ordered based on a delivery date 2 years in the future? I would bet a very small number. But we’re all getting an incredible deal on what looks to be a great product, and we’ve all had the opportunity to pull out at any time, with the only cost to us being the opportunity cost of our money that could have been working for us somewhere else.

One suggestion I do have for @Dan - create a new forum topic - Therapy - where individuals who just need an outlet can vent. Of course GlowForge needs to monitor the forum and respond occasionally. I was actually a backer of a KickStarter campaign that had this :wink:

Anyway, apologies to those that took offense - that was not my intent.

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More like reality doesn’t match the advertising.

No it was Dec 15 to summer 16, then Dec 16, then July/August now Oct / Nov and Dec 17 for the air filter.

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i don’t think you mean anything by it, but in the future consider saying “those that were offended” since otherwise it sounds a little backhanded.

that said, i think even this post suggests that complaints are unreasonable. and again, i have to bring up items like tube replacement. if there wasn’t such an outcry, this product may have been rendered unusuable by more than one person. it’s good to hold companies accountable, even friendly, charming, has-the-best-of-intentions-companies like glowforge.

obviously everyone here knows the great deal, especially if you’ve received huge discounts above and beyond. i’ve certainly never felt stiffed, and i don’t think they owe us anything, let alone the free materials and designs. i just hate seeing people gang up on others without good reason (caps lock, accusations of theft, etc).

i get that a lot of people are emotionally invested in this product for a multitude of reasons. i just think that that too often manifests as feeling personally insulted with these things happen. when people start making absurd demands, i tend to respond and move on if they continue. i don’t tell them they aren’t allowed to feel that way or should cancel (which tbh i commend everyone from the company on down to the users for backing off that line in recent months).

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I think that is the trouble with expectations - we always think that ours are reasonable, but they still are expectations…

LOL! I think there are a number of Seattle-ites who could learn from this for sure. Come up, though – the PNW is actually pretty awesome :slightly_smiling_face:

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well, duh. but there are expectations like the box of bacon i bought today, i expect there to be bacon inside vs i expect severe meteor showers tomorrow.

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So back to my unicorn… It will live in the cloud. Do you think if I fed it Skittles it would fart rainbows like I want? If not what food would you recommend?

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I totally agree with your point - and tube replacement is a great example. Complaints/suggestions about product features, support policies, etc. should be encouraged!! But just whining (sorry there I go again, I know) about the schedule delays, and asking for guarantees on said schedule is what I was specifically referring to. There was also an indirect reference to one post suggesting everyone should be upgraded to Pro as a result of the delay; what benefit did the poster suggest for those that already ordered a Pro unit (and thus had an even greater sum of money invested, and thus should receive even greater compensation for the delay)?

I DO NOT suggest that people shouldn’t have the right to speak. But I would like to limit complaining just to complain (‘Venting’) to another thread (thus the suggestion for the Therapy thread).

And I should point out that your post implies that those of us who disagree with the complainers don’t have the right to express our opinion. At no point in my post do I suggest people withhold from commenting; I simply try to point out my perspective, and highlight (the ‘wake up’ comment) where I believe they have perhaps set unrealistic expectations.

And I also agree with your comment about being emotionally invested. Combine emotional investment and expectations that don’t align with reality, and it’s not a good mix - on any front.

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True that – I imagine when your GF arrives, it will be very reasonable to expect a GF in the box --and that you will be overjoyed! :slightly_smiling_face:

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i agree.

i’ve always been patient, i have no business waiting on this (as many have opined) and it’s more for me to have fun with and try things out and learn on a laser without having to do all the “why is this not working? are the mirrors out of alignment again? did the cheap tube with this crap out?” kind of stuff you often seem to get with the cheap, chinese k40s and the like. i don’t want to constantly troubleshoot technology, i just want to experiment with the creative side.

the issue with “expectations” is that GF/Dan would set them, then not meet them, multiple times. i don’t think it’s unreasonable to hold their feet to the fire for setting their own expectations then failing to meet them, and by significant timelines. and that’s the rub, the end users weren’t setting all the expectations that weren’t met. GF/Dan set them.

overall i’m still in the happy and waiting camp, but i have no beef with others who are unhappy with the delays. only with the people who claim they are being scammed and will never see their machines. those are the ones i think the “you should probably get a refund” comments are fair responses to.

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