All I can do is answer the questions that I know the answer to.
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Thatâs a great point - will do. If you get your Glowforge and I havenât circled back on this, feel free to remind me then.
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Thatâs a great point - will do. If you get your Glowforge and I havenât circled back on this, feel free to remind me then.
To me, this one month delay appears as another buy some extra time but we donât know exactly when we can deliver. It looks like the previous 6 month delays earlier. I donât believe itâs because of a specific setback but more related to their decision to put all their resources in the domestic orders.
Iâd love to laser as soon as possible so every delay is a disappointment but I understand and wait because their is no good alternative for me and think Dan and his team are working very hard to deliver an outstanding product. Itâs difficult to decide what I would like to hear. A reliable forecast or the the message just wait at this moment we canât say anything reliable because it doesnât have our priority yet.
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Hi All!
Another international buyer here, ordered on day 17 of the campaign and just got moved back another 6 weeks for delivery to Holland. Going from FEB 12 to MAR 27âŚwoohooo almost canât hold my tears.
And just to make things even more complicatedâŚ@dan what will happen on this magic date:
A. We will receive THE mail (and have to wait another 6 weeks or more for delivery)
B. The GF ships on this date towards my destination from the factory
C. This is the estimated delivery date at my doorstep (doubt this oneâŚbut you canât tell me I canât dreamâŚ).
If I somehow missed this specific piece of information Iâm sorry, but I cannot find it anywhere.
I feel year 3 coming upâŚ
Still in the boat, even though itâs rocking like a madmen. Letâs all hang on, I see a tropical island on the horizon.
Have a great day everyone!
Elwin
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The December update is here andâŚ
"We continue to move forward on both international and air filter as well. Itâs a little harder to forecast when shipping will begin, but whenever we have a breakthrough or setback we update our individualized shipping forecast at glowforge.com/account."
Sigh
On another front, the person I referred has his Glowforge (Yay!) and I got my $125 referral creditâŚ
âfree shipping is available to all customers as of right now, but we only service the US. We havenât announced shipping prices for international customers as we havenât launched the shop for international deliveries yet.â
Sigh
But thatâs okay because I can transfer that into $100. I just need to fill out a formâŚ
âPlease enter your US Mobile Number hereâ
Iâm not sure I have the energy or will to even sign anymore.
I have dealt with US-centric businesses before. No one does this on purpose. Itâs a by product of being from one of the largest countries in the world. But can I suggest that Glowforge staff just ask themselves one question each time a new product/process is formed?
âHow does this affect international customers?â
You will save yourself so much time if this is mentioned at a staff meeting, occasionally checked by managers etc. So much of this stuff is in the detail like not offering âFree Shippingâ to customers who not only will not get free shipping but currently canât be shipped to at all. If the person that wrote that email just had in their back on their minds, âHow does this affect international customers?â, then support would not have had to deal with my querying email or any of the others that other customers will send.
There may be 400m potential customers in the USA but there are over 6.6 billion outside it. Yes there are challenges to be faced to service those customers but not considering us from the outset is demeaning, undermining and pompous. And I know that these are things that you do not want to be.
Sorry for being ârantyâ, but I really am losing patience.
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For US customers the magic date is the date you receive your email. The 6 week window until actual delivery starts when you respond to the email saying, please ship my unit. Some people get their unit pretty quickly while others wait the full six weeks. Most seem to wait 2-4 weeks. Mine was in my house 3 weeks to the day I responded to the email (1 week spent in transit.)
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Canada here, I fell backwards a month too. Now June.
Considering shipping time I just lost my ability to use it for HOPE (http://hopehelps.com/) this year with that extra month delay.
Is there a reasonable chance the delivery date may go forward or are likely to only see it slide back due to surprises? Optimisim in delivery dates often reports best cases, itâs fine if thatâs the reporting. Iâd just like to know.
Obviously only the company can answer your question. Still, historically an answer other than âitâs possibleâ is not likely.
My two cents⌠There have been slips and accelerations in the estimated dates. Domestic purchasers have seen dates moved up by weeks. These are probably a result of parts availability and/or increases in manufacturing throughput. However the recent slide of a month for International purchases is more likely the result of estimates for when certifications, shipping changes, or country specific requirements could be satisfied. I think the truth is that if there are more slides you will see them before you see any significant accelerations.
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Can you do the shipping to a US location and then bring it across the boarder? You might be able to jump up several months by doing that. I would think that would be worth even a long drive to do. Then you should have it in plenty of time.
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This is a common problem for US companies; most are unable to understand it this way.
When you DO see a US company that thinks outside their own borders then it is amazing how high the ratio of success vs. failure is.
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They were (are) a company with a handful of employees and a nice chunk of financing behind them. It would be very easy to make the argument that they were naive, if not outright idiotic, to both attempt to bring the glowforge to market as promised and offer it for sale in every non-embargoed country in the world. Better to have worried about the hardware and software for the US (and maybe Canada) and then once it was done roll it out to the rest of the world. Why complicate a very difficult task with a global compliance and distribution headache? Be successful first and then conquer the world. If they had gone that route they could have signed-up local distributors. That would have allowed shipping in containers to the destination geography with local repair facilities. Instead they have eye-watering shipping costs and iirc with the exception of out of box failures, non-US customers who have to pay eye-watering shipping if they need to use their warranty. None of this doesnât mean a non-US customer shouldnât be upset: glowforge made promises they didnât keep and are pushing back your dates. But to me, it is perplexing why they went the global route from the start instead of a staged roll out.
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Yup, as an International i could not agree more with all you wrote.
There are a number of cool tools/items that are USA-only⌠would love to get them but since they refuse to offer the OS option i wont buy them. As i mentioned in another thread, here in Australia we have enough problems with crappy Chinese products flooding the market and offering no warranty to bother volunteering to take on the risk.
The only reason i bought in was because it was offered for OS sale and i felt it was safe to assume that this meant SOMEONE had actually sat down and thought about all this entails.
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Considering it. Wonder if I can get any indication that itâll actually change my date before committing to that.
Itâs worth asking.
UPDATE: Asked support@, Iâd still rather use my permanent address and not have to schedule a time to be in the US for a safe window or inspect at a brokerâs hoping I donât miss anything. Although, itâd be fun to show it off ;). Iâll share where possible.
This is incorrect - while itâs never been true, itâs particularly not true right now, as we have a number working on it as a very high priority (including me, who hears about one international issue or another at least daily).
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I donât want to speculate, but these dates are a forecast, not a âbest caseâ, so thereâs definitely room in both directions.
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I donât understand why people keep looking at these estimated shipping dates as anything more than estimates. If your date moved back a month, itâs not because Glowforge decided to change your shipping date. Itâs because their prediction model decided the new date was the most accurate one at the time it was posted. You donât have a firm shipping date until your Glowforge shows up on your doorstep. The date on your account is not necessarily the exact date you will receive your email. Weâve seen this already, with people receiving the email earlier or later than the date predicted. I know a slip of a month or more is hard to swallow, but it could still change for the better, however unlikely. I guess my main point is that the date you see should be taken as what it is, which is just a prediction. If the all-knowing weatherman on my local news tells me itâll snow on Christmas, I realize thereâs a chance it could be 75 and sunny. If he made that prediction 6 months ago, it would be even less accurate. The fact of the matter is that Glowforge will get everyone what they ordered as quickly as they can. Theyâre not pushing dates back to punish anyone. Theyâre not neglecting international customers. At this point, you should all know what you signed up for, and that delays are a regular occurrence. If itâs unacceptable, get a refund. Repeatedly requesting specifics as to why shipping dates have slipped wonât make them change their policy on sharing that info. What difference does it make anyway? If they tell you their supplier of a certain part canât meet their demands, or if the factory had a power outage for 3 days, or a conveyor belt broke, etc., what purpose does it serve? It gives you a potential answer to your question, but it has no net effect on when youâll get what you ordered. Demanding answers you know they wonât give you only causes more frustration.
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The problem isnât the delay, but more that they havenât started shipping outside the US. This indicates that they still dont have their regulatory approvals.
Thanks
Now, now, Glowforge may have prediction issues, and people are understandably upset, but comparing them to the weatherman is uncalled for. That is just mean.
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