Pushed Back a Month From March to April

Everything Else
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This is the frustrating thing about international deliveries: it costs us a great deal more time and money to deliver to other countries, and even though we spend more to serve you, you wind up with a worse experience.

I’m sure we both wish I could pull the engineers, logistics, and other employees who are all working like mad to get you your Glowforge onto other projects - but we’re not going to. They’ll keep chipping away at the various hurdles until we’ve cleared them all. I wish it could be now; I wish I could guarantee you a date. But all I can tell you is - it’s hard, and it’s expensive, and we’re doing it anyway. I know we both wish we could do it faster.

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Firstly, @dan, what are you doing up? It’s 2 in the morning right? Go to bed!

Secondly, I can’t speak for others but please understand it is more information that I would like. No need to pull others from there jobs. Just let me know what’s going on.

But do it when you’re at work… go to bed!

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Yeah seriously, get some sleep. I’m just getting up!

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@dan I appreciate the amount of effort that you guys put into making this product - it’s the single reason I haven’t cancelled yet. Thing is, you’re telling me you’re not willing to pull resources away from other projects in order to get international shipments out faster, but I see US backers who weren’t prepared to take punt on your guys in the campaign now getting units before any of the internationals. At this stage, why wouldn’t you pull resources away from serving those customers (NOT backers!) to speed international deliveries? There’s something fundamentally unfair about that which doesn’t sit right with me.

But yes, I’m with the others. Go get some sleep - you’re no good to us, or your family, dead.

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It also cost UK buyers a $1000 for shipping, so not only extra cost for you!
My Pro date has slipped by 6 weeks but the filter date hasn’t slipped at all, why?
As far as I am aware compliance is about electrical safety and the laser, I cannot believe the regulations are that different between the US & the UK, other companies manage this quite easily.

After the campaign had finished I seem to remember reading lots of posts about how you would be shipping in terms of order date, at no time did you say international orders would be delayed by 4 months and that post campaign US orders would ship before any international ones!

I also remember reading on this forum how you didn’t expect many international orders, they would still have had the same issues even if you only had a couple. Perhaps in hind sight you shouldn’t have accepted any international money. In reality you have been happy to use our money to raise your working capital and get production running only to leave us at the bottom of the pile.

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explicit explicit explicit…

just checked went from 02-02 to march 13 2018… The Netherlands

This really is ridiculous. I must be mad that I put up with this. Or so I’m told. I’ve stopped caring some time ago and just handle it as a couple of thousand euro’s lost. Whenever that glowforge shows up if at all I’ll get excited again. We are planning to start building our new farmhouse come March so I’ll probably end up just storing the Glowforge in the workshop for a year before I get to use it.

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I’ve given up and have cancelled this morning.

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Yes, we’re in the UK and have just been notified of a new delivery date of mid-April - a push-back of six weeks. A more detailed reason for the delay would be courteous.

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Man, I understand and sympathize with International customers situation, however, your belief that your money funded working capital is in error according to the company.
All of the pre-sale funds were set aside and the company was fueled by an initial 9 million in venture capital, with a subsequent additional 10 million according to Dan. When my unit is delivered the money I paid becomes operating capital.

The certification required for international customers is the factor here, not an intentional slight.
For certification, a final build has to be submitted for compliance analysis. The company just reached that point fairly recently.

This is not an attempt to invalidate your feelings, for two years we all had the same frustration, I still remember it well. It’s just that International customers are at the bottom of the pile because of government regulation, not because a decision was made to ignore International customers.

I wish everyone could be experiencing to Joy of finally having their personal laser, and I can hardly imagine how difficult it is to see so many getting theirs only to see your estimated date recede even further.
My own date was extended by a month, and then it started getting shorter. It should be delivered this Wednesday, more than a month before the initial projection.
That is a reflection of changes in production schedule that is dependent on many factors like parts availability.
When certification is completed, I’m sure International orders will start flying out.

Because of our cumulative prodding for better estimation of our delivery dates, the company responded by putting together the dynamic mechanism to predict delivery dates for every individual and now they get heat for providing what we asked for. They can’t win.

I believe the company is doing their level best, this is just the way the cards fell.
I was hesitant to write this reply because I know many see me as a company shill, that’s fair. I am probably their biggest fanboy.
The reason is that I have wanted a laser for at least half of my 62 year life, and most of all - I have used one of these for 7 months now, and I don’t regret a minute of the wait or a dime of the cost.

So feel free to contest my opinion, or flame me as a naive shill. I’m bulletproof because of my experience with this machine and the company that gave birth to it.
Good luck reigning in your frustration, and clinging to your frayed patience. There is a well earned reward for it at the end.

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I’m so sorry I wasn’t clear. The people I’m referring to our dedicated to getting your Glowforge to you. It’s a tremendous priority for us, and we’re spending tremendous resources on it.

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You missed my point about funding, it was those prepaid orders that helped raise the venture capital. I never said they used the pre order money directly.
Regarding compliance, they already have to adhere to electrical & laser safety standards in the US which I do not believe are that different to Europe! It would be a different matter if it was China!
A production model should have been sent for compliance testing at the same time the first us customer received theirs! Just seems to me that “compliance” is a handy international excuse.
Funny how Dan has ignored this post but looked at the following one.

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While this is mostly true, I think this is essentially the rub. Completely speculating here, so U.S. buyers shouldn’t worry. While they have to meet many of the same standards to sell sustainably in the U.S. they don’t have to prove it to anybody. (Well, mostly, there are some buyers who are required to wait until a NRTL signs off and as far as I know they’re still waiting like international buyers.)

Meeting standards and proving it are two different things. And on some of this stuff it’s vague enough that reasonable people can disagree. And this is why, I suspect, that Glowforge would choose not to talk about it. These discussions could easily get blown out of proportion if made public and make solving them in a timely and cost effective way very difficult. My guess is that the consequences of talking would be worse than staying mum as hard as that is to imagine.

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I think there’s a lot of sense in that. But silence after a change of 5-6 weeks in the shipping date is a real slap in the face. If this included all of the US buyers as well, this forum would not be a positive place.

I don’t think it is asking too much to be kept informed. If the date slips by a few days, fair enough. But this is 5-6 weeks. In one hit. I think it should also be noted that having the shipping date indicator is a really useful tool and very much appreciated but it shouldn’t replace all other communication.

@dan Please rethink your decision to stay silent on this. I haven’t been this close to cancelling since the first big delay. I’m feeling a little let down and unappreciated right now and I would really like some laserlove to make me want to “hang on in there”.

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35

Glen, I’m not Dan, (he’s a guy, it’s difficult to confuse the two of us), but I sincerely hope you don’t give up on it.

It’s not fair that the International folk have to wait so much longer than anyone else, but I firmly believe it is still due to logistics, and not any reason other than that. There isn’t anything they can do other than make sure everything is working as well as they can get it before they start shipping these things out overseas. Look at how much trouble they are still having with domestic shipments…they can’t afford to have that happen with the international shipments. They can’t be shipping replacement units internationally the way they are having to do here, the cost would be punitive.

On the plus side, for you guys, you are going to get a machine that is rock solid when you get it, and won’t have to struggle through the occasional downtimes and blips that we are seeing now. The software will be tweaked a lot further along than it is now. No alignment issues. No hang-ups in processing. (Or a lot fewer…no one can say none without sounding like an idiot.)

The last folks to get the machines will get machines that have a lot of the bugs worked out, and more capabilities than these see. I know it’s not much to hang on to, but your learning curve is going to be a lot easier than ours was. You’ll probably get up to speed quicker than some of the folks receiving them now.

Anyway, the situation totally sux, I know it, you know it, they know it. And I know they feel bad about it. They just can’t give out information they don’t have. :neutral_face:

And I see @dan is replying as well, so just ignore this. (But hang in there.)

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Indeed, it’s frustrating that you spend, more, and it costs more to serve you (we make significantly less money from each international order), yet all that extra spending from both of us still results in service that’s not as good as what we can do for domestic customers.

We forecast them separately, based on different data.

I’m replying from my phone en route to a flight - apologies; with thousands of posts to read, I sometimes miss one, particularly when I’m not at my desk.

CE has no equivalent process in US law.

Also, @markwal’s post is very correct.

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37

Part of my job for a medical device company is making sure we have testing performed for various certifications. As our devices run on electricity and have WiFi we have to meet the same or similar standards as glowforge (plus others, but no lasers.) One mistake, one oversight, and timelines are pushed back weeks and months on a country by country basis.

I have no idea if this is affecting glowforge, but currently all of the auditing companies (TUV, BSI, etc…) are flooded with work certifying US medical device companies to a new standard that combines the US, Brazil and some other countries. These firms audit non-medical device companies, and undoubtedly have auditors not trained for this new standard, but they have no room in their schedules right now if you need an audit to renew, or become certified to, a standard. I’m just pointing out that in compliance, there can be factors beyond your control that impact your business and aren’t generally obvious.

I am in the US and I have my unit, but it is not NRTL certified. It is probably the same machine that will eventually ship to Europe, but it never will be from a certifications standpoint. It is a decision we are allowed to make, that most non-US buyers aren’t.

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You’re definitely right about that. Even with announcements, it generally got pretty ugly every time it happened. Most of the time, the company decided not to detail reasons for delay and they waited until almost the last minute to publicly recognize they were going to slip.

That’s why I think the personalized date that moves as the data is updated is an improvement over waiting until they’ve got a publicly consumable statement that doesn’t tell you what you want to know anyway.

Neither way removes the frustration, I think. It’s frustrating, no question. I understand that boat, I’ve been in it.

I think part of the disheartening thing about seeing the date move out for me was the worry that there would always be something coming up and I’d never get a laser cutter.

I know some folks who cancelled and said call me back when you’re current on your order book. Obvious problem with that approach is that you lose the discount.

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39

Hi @dan,
As we are now entering significantly into 2018 calendar year before international orders are going to be received by end users - can you please take a look at extending the founders offer of “10% discount on Proofgrade materials and in the Design catalog through the end of 2018.”.
Cheers,
Tim

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From an update in June, I believe.

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Although somewhat pointedly, if you receive it in June of 2018, you’re not really getting a year on it…