Goodbye Glowforge

I thought for my last post here I would share the contents of my “One last question. We want to do better Can you please let us know the reason you’re canceling?” message.

Apologies in advance to the fellow who will be losing the $100 referral credit from me.

Content:
I have had enough of being strung along and hung out to dry by a company who’s marketing strategies come across just shy of shifty and dishonest. With each announcement of yet more delays, I have asked myself how the heck did it take them until the time when my order should almost be shipping to realize that it would be yet another 6 months!!? That is the strung along part. It is impossible at this point to have any assurance that my Glowforge will ever show up for whatever imaginable reason that may present itself two weeks before the last shipping estimate. How am I to know that there will ever be Canadian certification? You have asked me to wait two and a half years, you have offered no solid facts for how we are to do tube replacement, oh boy is that going to be a not pleasant surprise for everyone??

I have lost valuable time furthering my creativity and profitability with tools that I do not have, and yet you do not even offer a solid verifiable valid reason fro the additional massive delay while everyone else in the US gets their orders, original order queue being in my case of absolutely no relevance and my email asking for some solid reasoning is ignored. Did you really honestly have no idea during the last two years of strategy building and product development that there might be some issues shipping my Glowforge to190 miles as the crow flies from your head offices to your nearest neighboring country, or were you just stringing me along the whole time!?
Conveniently, you are actually saving a pretty penny on this sale by my cancelling. & referralls credits left and all the promised stuff I get for waiting for the end of eternity for my Glowforge to materialize is now back in your pocket. Yup! Mightly convenient indeed!

I can no longer trust you and am investing in a cnc router to work with until at whichever point I either find your NAME to be trustworthy and reliable or I find a competitors product that is equally intriguing.

Perhaps as show of good will for me selling 11 (-4cancellations) units for you, putting up with this crap for as long as I did and giving you a sizable interest free loan that looks good for your investors, perhaps you should consider giving me a discount of at least $1000 redeemable any time in the next 5 years in the slight chance I should ever want to give you my business again. Until then, it’s goodbye!

Please do try your best to get my money back to me without any last second 360 turn arounds on refund policy, unforseen circumstances or intentional, uh, I mean international hiccups.

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Sorry it didn’t work out, but best of luck to you. Hopefully you’ll be rejoining us at some point in the future!

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I can certainly sympathize with your frustration, but … I just got my Glowforge Pro and IMO it was worth waiting for. Clearly the company underestimated what it would take to make a significantly innovative, consumer-friendly laser cutter, but I’d say that they pulled it off. Yes, a few features are not there yet (e.g. using the passthrough with auto-alignment of large designs) but what’s there is working well for me.

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If I could afford to keep waiting for what may be another year for all I know, I might just have been foolish enough to continue sticking it out, but I cannot. I do truly hope that this thing works out for everyone else who has invested their hard earned money. It’s just not a chance I am willing to take any more.

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Sunk time bro! all this time and to bail with the end in sight… They are shipping now, so it’s not like it has been for every delay.
I do understand. If I were an international customer I don’'t know if I could have made it as far as you did.
Good Luck!

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A day after submitting my cancellation, I finally received a response to my somehat disgrutled message sent last week asking for clarification and assurance on some things, which of course was a generic copy and paste You have every right to be upset with us bls bla response that was completely impersonal and did not in any way shape or form provide any incentive had I still been on the fence about waiting another 6 months.

I had some feelings of cancellation regret yesterday but thankfully customer support fully affirmed my decision

I am very unimpressed with their indifference towards me as a customer and as an early backer of their product launch.
I really hope someone at Glowforge actually reads my complaints and uses my feedback to help them realize where IMO they have made fairly major mistakes in customer relations.

I’m sorry we weren’t able to get you the product you ordered, @sublimsound. That’s our failure entirely. I read all the feedback on cancellations; I appreciate you taking your time to let us know what we could have done better.

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