Let me tell you a beautiful story followed by a very sad story. I do so here because Support has failed to answer repeated emails and as you all know they do not have a phone number.
My son had cancer two years ago and nearly lost his life do to the tumor blocking his trachea. It was a blessed miracle he survived the first week after diagnosis. As he went through the next months of chemo and radiation therapy he was invited to be a Make-A-Wish child. This 13 year old boy wished for tools for a mini makerspace and graciously received a generous gift of a 3D printer and a Glowforge basic-such a gift that we never would have expected, and we never could have otherwise acquired such a tool. Despite the wait of over 2 years, the excitement helped my son endure all the treatments and the regular teasing for his stunted growth. The Glowforge did come and my son and the whole family has been amazed and blessed by this tool. It has opened a whole world of making and creating.
Now the sad story. Because the unit was purchased by Make-A-Wish, they had to use their email address to create a Glowforge account. Our representative from Make-A-Wish let us set up the account including choosing a password, naming the device and so forth. The only thing was we couldn’t change the original email to our family email. This became a problem when we tried to trouble shoot issues because Glowforge will only communicate with email addresses established during purchase of a unit. We explained the situation early on but received no support. So over the last year of working with the machine, our Make-A-Wish representative has patiently forwarded emails to us. Things have been smooth for a while but we recently ordered some Pro Material for Christmas projects and again our Make-A-Wish representative had to forward the shipping notice. I thought, “Our family is looking forward to a long relationship with Glowforge (because we truly love the machine) and we can’t keep expecting our communications to go through our Make-A-Wish representative.” So, I decided to contact support again asking that we switch the email address. I received a reply just the next day (amazing) giving instructions on how the original email owner can invite us to use the machine, then once we are connected they can delete the original email. Sounds reasonable, just one catch-we loose all our credits for waiting, we loose our founding status (no 10% off stuff), we loose our extended warranty for waiting. My son had patiently waited and earned all of that. The machine is ours, an amazing gift yes, but it is our machine: it was shipped to our house and we have been the sole users of the machine. Not recognizing the fine print, our Make-A-Wish rep followed the directions to make the changes. I quickly replied to Support not to make the changes yet until we can at least use up our credits-but, too late, Glowforge Support ignored my plea and deleted the original email. One big problem, we never connected with the new email address and now the only way to do so is to “set up” our “new Glowforge.” There is an issue with that, it is already set up so when you turn it on it doesn’t broadcast a wifi signal it just calibrates and is ready to print. So, here we are, active users of a wonderful Glowforge Basic, eager to prepare for Christmas and we have been denied access to our machine.
That was both stories, now comes the source of true frustration. I contacted Support immediately when we lost access, pleading for them to call me (foolish me, it looks like from all the posts I have read that Support never calls) to fix this issue. No response through the end of the next business day. I sent in a second email summarizing the issue and pleading for a phone call. Nothing. Now three days later (the time interval in which Glowforge owners are promised a response), nothing.
We are sitting on a bunch of projects with quickly approaching deadlines. It is insulting to read hollow statements of, “we are there for you,” “we have a group of incredible folks who love to help,” and when a customer has been shafted by Support themselves and is growing in frustration, they choose not to say anything. Had I received a human response, even by email, asking for more details and assuring they are trying to figure it out. I would have been pacified.
Glowforge? Dan? I am waiting for a reply and a solution to get our account and access fixed.