Where are you investing? If I stuck the same amount of money in a general savings or money market account, I wouldn’t earn 5%. I’d be lucky to earn 2%. A 6-year CD is only paying around 2.5% these days. My mortgage is still around 4%. Sure high risk investments pay more, but you could also loose money.
I assume some of the interest is to cover currency conversion costs.
I’m not surprised China was added to the list. I’m only surprised it was just added. I’d be afraid the “great firewall” would block the GF cloud services from working. Apple has to run its iCloud services on Chinese state run servers, so GF might have had to do the same, which might have been cost prohibitive.
(And’ I’d have killed for a solid 8% return on the stock investments I was making…but those were much more turbulent times.)
These days it makes me nervous again. I see a lot of the same signs. So I’m probably playing it safer than I need to.
At least we’re not to the burying it in a tin can in the back yard stage yet. (When I need that garden dug up, I plan to announce that, and get the labor done on the cheap.)
Obviously I’m not talking about CD’s and bank institution savings accounts. I’m talking actual investing, 401K, Roth IRA’s, Wall Street, real estate. You’re NEVER going to see north of 5% ROI on investments like CD’s etc. Where there is risk, there is reward.
I didn’t change the scope. I replied to the original message in this thread, which suggested that refunding some international orders was “not right” and somehow a scam. If you read what I said, it was that “scam” implies doing it on purpose to benefit from it, and I don’t see how any of this whole sordid affair of delays and cancellations makes sense as a “scam” (a dishonest scheme; a fraud). The only potential angle is that they got into this with the intention of profiting off of borrowing the money, which seems preposterous to me. If you don’t think they did, then my insult is not targeted at you.
I was never talking about the ROI of certification or whether cancelling the orders makes sense now. This is totally an epic screwup. Your indignation is righteous. I am no longer objective on these matters because I already got my machine. I agree with all of that.
You missed “some would say”. I was attempting to be a jackass by predicting that this thread would devolve into an argument about how much money you could have earned by investing in X instead of a Glowforge (it is a regular occurrence here). But in the time I took to write the post, that argument had already happened and burned itself out.
That’s a GREAT point. See, back when the market took a nose dive, I saw the writing on the wall. I moved all my funds to bonds during that time. Moved them back into the mix JUST prior to our last election, because I saw the writing on the wall then as well. ( Despite the MSM best efforts to cover it up. )
Needless to say, I’m making an absolute killing out there.
You’re forgetting that this discussion is about refunds to other countries no longer supported by Glowforge, so we have to take off our rose-colored “'merica glasses.”
The refund would be $4,500 or less (unless they ordered multiple units). There aren’t a lot of real estate investments at that price and many countries don’t have something similar to a IRA or 401(k). (I know some EU countries have something similar, but they aren’t on this list).
In all honesty, I don’t know much about investment opportunities available to people in Sri Lanka and Angola (who are on the list). Only thing I know about these countries is from photos of their beautiful countryside. Maybe 5% interest is is bad, maybe is good for them.
Anyway, most of the interest is probably going towards covering the currency exchange fees they paid when they bought their GF and will pay when they get their money back in US dollars.
