Some good ideas in there. I like the idea of “the first X cuts per month” are premium. 25 sounds like a lot but Glowforge would know what’s a smart threshold by looking at usage data.
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This would basically turn many machines into bricks because it would break the contract of buying the hardware. The machine I bought cannot work without their service and that was their choice, not mine They can’t take my machine away from me
Despite the restructuring, it would probably result in a lawsuit. Personally, I wouldn’t sue, but I would get rid of my GF.
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I’m not sure if you’re being literal here but if you are:
I don’t know for sure but I’m willing to bet that there was never a directly enforceable legally binding anything (let alone a contract) that promises that it will always be free to use their web services. Some loose promises but I doubt anything legally binding.
If you have something that you think qualifies please share it; I’d be very surprised if they would have tied their own hands like that.
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Haven’t been around much in awhile, so I was caught offguard by this update.
My first thought was that they need to worry less about us creating boxes and worry a bit more about keeping up with the technology. I am having trouble seeing how GF will remain relevant as a laser company by creating more software. But maybe that’s the plan moving forward… creating handy software tools on a subscription model that anyone could use.
As for the Snapmarks thing, I hope they grandfather people in. I don’t think it matters if it was beta, or if it was originally promised, there were people actively using it who now can’t. And I don’t think they need to overthink the grandfathering. Some OGs already have a subscription, so nothing has changed for them. Some OGs don’t care about Snapmarks, so nothing has changed for them. Additional, some no long have/use their lasers. What you’re left with is a (presumably) small subset of people who use Snapmarks and care that it has been taken away, but don’t see other value in the subscription. Grandfathering those folks in isn’t going to cost the company a vast amount of money, since many won’t pay the subscription just on principle. What it does do is create good will, while rewarding those who have stuck around since the introduction of Snapmarks. There are plenty of people who have purchased since then who will be excited to get something brand new.
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I was being literal. Making machines that people bought stop working would almost certainly trigger a lawsuit. Whether that lawsuit would prevail in court is another story, but suits like that frequently get settled before they end up before a jury.
I don’t think the question is whether they made a contract to always provide the service for free, but whether they informed consumers that the machines they were buying might stop working without a monthly fee being paid. I certainly do not remember agreeing to anything when I bought my Glowforge that said that they might start charging me a monthly fee at some point.
Also, GF made promises that, if the service ever stopped working, they would release all the source code. The argument could certainly be made that action like this makes machines stop working, and the promise is now due. Again, things like this usually get settled out of court.
Glowforge doesn’t want such a lawsuit to ever happen, so I doubt they will take an action that will almost certainly trigger one.
I think the fundamental problem is that GF’s business model relied on making money from Proofgrade materials. The first problem was that they overpromised — the settings were not specific to the actual material. Instead, they were/are generic for the material and generally have been boosted enough to account for variances. Worse, early on they didn’t boost the settings enough and people had a lot of failures. This meant the entire community learned that the promise wasn’t being delivered on. The second problem was that the margins on material supply aren’t high enough. Combined with lower material sales than expected and the logistical issues of shipping, it just wasn’t enough to make the business profitable. Glowforge raised $183M in investment and sold perhaps 200,000 units (I’m probably being generous), meaning they lost about $1K on each unit. That’s a lot to make up for in material sales. My actual guess is that they lost more initially and are now making money on unit sales. The restructuring, which wipes out their investors, puts them on a better footing to survive, which is good for customers.
I understand why they have Premium and I am not arguing that they shouldn’t have it. But, I would argue if I were forced to pay a monthly fee just to continue using my laser. That said, I am annoyed they took Snapmarks away from me (I was one of the people who had it, though I used it rarely). I am also annoyed at the “advertising” in the app. I am annoyed at all the advertising (things I will never buy) that I see when I open the app and sprinkled throughout the user interface (visual clutter — I count 11 of 32 items that are Premium only).
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So you threw a lot of spaghetti at the wall there and it’s hard to take it point by point because of Brandolini’s law but here are a few things to consider.
There will “almost certainly” be no lawsuits.
They might if (nearly?) every one of us hadn’t waived the right to lawsuits, we are required to use arbitration. That is unless you exercised section 6.7.3 of the agreement that reads (in part):
Opt-Out. If you do not wish to resolve disputes by binding arbitration, you may opt out of the provisions of this Section 6.7 within 30 days after the date that you agree to these Terms by sending a letter to Glowforge, Inc.
I’m speculating about this but I bet very few people did this. I sure didn’t.
Not only that but occasionally they update the terms and ask you to re-agree. Again, speculating and not a lawyer but I bet you’d have to opt out every time they do so. So all of your premises that rely on legally binding arguments are pretty much out the window: they had a team of lawyers and I’ll bet you rubber stamped it like I did.
Your whole analysis of their financials is speculative.
While some of it sounds plausible it’s rife with speculation to the point that I’ll just say as a blanket statement that you don’t have enough data to back pretty much any of your claims. You might be right about parts of it, maybe wrong about others but I don’t have that data either. it’s hard to pick just one of the speculative aspects but take this for example:
“A lot”, compared to what? What % of their sales resulted in issues? How many of those required compensation? How many people were turned off by the [“a lot”] complaints?
You have no idea, Glowforge shared none of that info. So all of your premises about customer satisfaction levels are also out of the window as well — you’re speculating.
Your math doesn’t make sense to me.
Even if you’re not speculating, you said:
Glowforge raised $183M in investment and sold perhaps 200,000 units (I’m probably being generous), meaning they lost about $1K on each unit.
$183M/200,000 units is 915 $/unit. I paid 4x that during crowdfunding for my pro, I really don’t get where your math was heading… and 200,000 units is again completely speculative. They’re not public so we just have zero clue about the details you’d need to make any argument here.
The terms of service are worth a read.
Section 3.8 reads (in part):
Glowforge also reserves the right to modify or discontinue the Service at any time (including by limiting or discontinuing certain features of the Service), temporarily or permanently, without notice to you
So… yes they did inform us that things might stop working. The entire TOS document outlines how Glowforge is protected from liability, and (speculating here) you waived your rights a long time ago.
Seriously go give the TOS a read
It’s here: https://glowforge.com/terms
… or even just ask chatgpt to summarize it (and then verify clauses to be sure gpt didn’t make it up). You’ll be amazed at what you find in there.
For example take this type of argument:
TOS retorts in section 3.1.5:
Feedback. If you choose to provide Feedback, then you hereby grant Glowforge an unrestricted, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, fully-paid, royalty-free right to exploit the Feedback in any manner and for any purpose, including to improve the Products and the Service, and to create other products and services.
This seems to immediately undo any argument along these lines. Theres no provision that offers any compensation for feedback — quite the opposite. Glowforge can take your feedback and use it for any purpose.
Surprisingly they define feedback pretty tightly in other parts of the TOS; most of the other language in there is broad and in their favor. I’m speculating but I’ll bet beta testers of snapmarks not only fall under this clause but also had to sign an additional document, which they may not even be able to acknowledge if it came with an NDA; NDAs often come with a clause that precludes discussing its existence.
I agree with you in principle.
I really do. Grandfathering this would be great, but I think it’s important to point to what we do know and keep a clear idea of what we have a right to expect based on those things with a minimum of speculation and pointing it out when we do speculate. In fact it’s one of the rules of this forum:
Be careful not to state opinions as facts. For example, imagine that we posted we were moving Glowforge world headquarters to Antarctica. “I think they said they’re moving to Alaska” is an OK (if incorrect) post, assuming that’s what you thought you heard. “Glowforge said they’re moving to Antarctica, but I don’t believe it”, is also OK. However, “Glowforge is moving to Arkansas” is a post that will need to be flagged and edited, since it states something as a fact which is either a mistake, or speculation disguised as fact.
OK so what can I help you with?
Ok now you’re talking. I’m also annoyed by those things. You can use any number of plugins to make this better. I use an ad blocker to suppress the catalog ads and promotions on the dash. I use stylebot to block the sidebar in the user interface. I use an extension to make my interface beep when it needs my attention.
If any aspect of the user experience annoys you, take action! It’s so much nicer once you do.
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I suspect the restructuring which Dan characterized as a buyout before liquidation also wiped out any existing liabilities, including any to their existing customers. The old GF corporation that we bought from likely no longer exists. Typically in these situations a new corporation is formed that takes all the assets from the original and none of the liabilities. One of the assets would be the common or marketing name/identity so everyone still deals with GF but the legal entity is different. The new legal entity can’t be sued for anything the old legal entity did or promised - it wasn’t a party to any of that as it didn’t even exist.
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all of that is true. but it doesn’t mean they can’t be abandoned en masse by their customers and/or have those customers put a lot of negative reviews and comments out in the ether that would help tank their business. so there’s a calculation of value of bad vibes/reviews from existing customers vs acquisition cost of new customers.. as well as losing potential future purchasing from those existing customers (whether it’s software, future hardware, or materials).
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[my opinion]
They won’t. People are resistant to change and they’ve already sunk the cost. Glowforge has a very good vertical integration/lock-in model, people aren’t going to leave in large numbers over snapmarks.
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you’re right that it won’t be “en masse” as in “people just throw out their machines.” but even if it takes 2-3 years as people move away, it could still put a heavy hit on GF revenues over time.
over time, death by paper cuts is still death.
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We’ll see. 2-3 years is a long time in this space. People tend to forget. In that timeframe there could be many changes to GF and the sector as a whole.
For example the xtool p2 only hit the market in May 2023.
Or to put it into laser timeline context for you:
You posted this topic just over two years ago. I actually never came back to see if the scoop removal worked. Looks like it was great!
Anyway point is that that post feels like quite a while ago to me. I suspect this snapmarks issue will be similarly behind us in 2027. Ymmv.
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you see it as “a snapmarks” issue. i see it as a “wait, you took this feature i’ve been using for years and moved it behind a paywall?” issue. even if it was a small group who had access, it’s still one of those slippery slope kind of things that people start worrying about. the kind of thing that makes you say, “well, i’ll never buy an //insert tv brand// again after that fiasco.”
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I hear you but they’ve broken promises and rolled back demo features before. I don’t know how much impact those decisions had, but Glowforge does. They have all manner of telemetry and still made this choice.
To me that means one of two things: either we, with limited data, have a better idea of how this will play out.. or Glowforge with their data and lawyers and execs whose whole job it is to make informed decisions about these things have the upper hand here.
I’m not betting on my ability to vibe my way into a valid business plan here.
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who knows? we’re all just spouting opinions here. mine is it gets less and less likely i’ll buy another GF when the time comes. the lack of innovation, size limitations, customer service issues… snapmarks is just one more straw on the camel’s back.
my machine isn’t dead yet, but if, say, i suddenly had an order for 10-15 guitars that were all full body engrave, i’d be tempted to plow all of that profit into an X3. unlikely, but not impossible. by the end of this year, i’ll have done probably 15 guitars in the past 12 months.
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But that’s just due to the size, yeah? No amount of grandfathering or customer goodwill could solve for that constraint. You’d have left anyway.
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i could be pushed out sooner, and i can be turned into an anti-ambassador. neither of those is good for GF. individually? doesn’t mean much. if hundreds+ do it? it could become an issue.
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This is very true, and I think they have to already be feeling it. I’m in a number of laser-focused groups, and when someone asks for advice about buying lasers, there will be several people who will reply, “Anything but a Glowforge.” This doesn’t happen with any other brand. I’ve seen people who had planned to buy a GF shift very quickly to a different brand. And while there are solid arguments about the closed system, cost vs. cost of other similar products, etc., what I see most is an appalling lack of customer service. There was a period when GF was rapidly growing that customer service was stretched thin. People actually have very long memories, especially when trust is broken. They may not remember the loss of Snapmarks, but they will remember how that loss made them feel. @shop is right - people aren’t going to throw out their lasers. But when they inevitably need to purchase a new one, they’re going to look somewhere else. Not only that, but they will potentially encourage others to do the same. It goes back to that adage that it’s far less expensive to keep current customers than to find new ones.
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I think a lot of that comes from the lack of repairability of the current Glowforge models and the broken promises about tube replacement.
The #1 thing Glowforge could do to reverse that sentiment would be to make their future product designs more repairable (either by end users or by repair shops) and have some way to swap tubes that’s not completely impractical.
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Possibly. But I think that even if they were to make those changes, it would take a very long time to repair that trust. It reminds me of the Cricut fiasco where they decided to implement a mandatory subscription. It lasted 5 seconds because people lost their minds, but even though that policy basically never went into effect, there are those of us who will buy any other brand before a Cricut.
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Hi everyone. I apologize for the delayed response. As noticed in this thread, the Snapmark feature is a topic that users are passionate about, and I want to make sure we’re providing the correct information and addressing concerns raised.
To start, I reached out directly to our Senior Customer Care Manager regarding the following Support message posted earlier in this thread:
Thanks for your interest in Snapmark. Unfortunately, it is no longer available for additional customers to receive access. We announced that we’ve stopped work on Snapmark but more importantly, that the work on Snapmark enabled us to provide the lid camera calibration tool.
When your Glowforge is working as expected, prints should land on your material within 1/4in of where you place them in the app. If you’d like, you can use the Camera Recalibrator to see if further improvement is possible. It will only make changes if it can make your camera more accurate; otherwise, it will exit without any changes. It takes about half an hour….
I can confirm that the information above was intended for inquiries about Snapmark feature before the November update.The leadership team is aware of this thread and actively working with our team members to ensure concerns and questions are addressed with updated information and resolutions.
For next steps, please create a ticket by reaching out directly to support@glowforge.com (if you have not already done so). That will help with tracking and responses for affected users. You can also tag me in this thread with your ticket number if needed. I can follow up directly with Support for added visibility.
I’ll continue to monitor feedback and responses in the channels and communicate with the teams here.
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