(Question about) Delivery of pre-order units

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#1

Hi there guys.

Loyal yet not that vocal customer here.

I am looking for a little clarification from @dan. The banner at the top still says:-

“Crowdfunding Campaign: We’re scheduled to ship all orders placed before Oct 25 2015 by July 31, 2017.
Post-Campaign: We are scheduled to ship all units ordered after the campaign by August 31, 2017”

Yet in an interview with Abuzz Designs @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MOPk2tPq1A&t=0m48s @dan states that we may have to wait until the end of August.

Have i missed an announcement?

I would have preferred to hear about another delay from GF themselves and not in an interview on YouTube.

I am still super excited to be getting one of these magic boxes and have waited patiently for 18 months without complaining once. i could not bare another last minute delay when we are so close. I know i have another two months to wait (being an international customer and so a long way down on the priority list for Glowforge) but to be delayed again with no notification will be hard to take.

I am hoping that this was a slip of the tongue and dan meant that all orders pre and post campaign will be shipped by the end of August.

Loyal yet not that vocal customer

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#2

Post campaign orders are still pre-orders, so there has not been a change in the published schedule. However, since there hasn’t been a single production unit shipped yet I personally doubt those dates will be met.

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#3

I hope that this distinction is what dan is talking about. i am also worried that without any production units in the wild we will be hearing about a delay soon enough.

#4

I expect they will announce a delay once a few production units start going out, just as they held off announcing the last delay until the first pre-production unit was delivered. It looks a lot better that way.

#5

not sure it really looks better just delays the tirade of abuse i am sure they get each time they delay.

1 Like
#6

Hi J,

I wouldn’t hold @dan to his exact words during an impromptu YouTube interview although as palmercr says, post campaign orders as still pre-orders. I’m an early-investing, international orderer who bought a pro-model with air filter. So I will probably be one of the people suffering the longest “when-i-should-be-in-the-queue” to “when-i-am-actually-in-the-queue” delays. However, I’m just stoked that I only have a few more months to wait because I can start my plan for world domination.

What else would I do with a laser?

9 Likes
#7

If they announce it after production units start going out then at least people can see they will get theirs in a believable finite time. If they announced it before any go out it would look like the wait could go on forever.

A few people have got letters committing to dispatch of a basic in six weeks, starting one week ago. If it really is as late as the end of June then they would have one month to ramp up to high volume and dispatch something like 8000 machines, more than half of those pro models. Does that seem believable?

If they manage to send some out next week and ramp up from there perhaps it might just be achievable but very different from the plan of hundreds though Feb and March, thousands from April onwards. From that plan they look to be six months behind already.

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#8

I am so very exited now.

My studio is rapidly filling up with all sorts of materials i have been finding/buying/being given.

I currently have a box/drawer for

Leather
Wood
Acrylic
Plastics
Metals
Fabrics

what am i missing?

2 Likes
#9

A laser?

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#10

I wondered why these things weren’t cutting themselves.

Very quick Pal

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#11

@dan said that ALL pre-order customers would have their units shipped by the end of August. That includes the people who ordered after the Crowdfunding campaign. (Crowdfunders will have their units shipped by the end of July.)

Nothing has changed. :wink: (yet)

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#12

While I think he was referring to new orders I would not be shocked by a slight slip in delivery. Everything takes longer than planned even if you know that everything takes longer than planned.

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#13

That would be really crummy, as there should be no technical reason not to ship, otherwise those should have been disclosed already. You can’t announce you are shipping, then say that you aren’t.

I really hope not, because that would be deceitful.

#14

No more deceitful than the original marketing “Pre order now, first deliveries Dec (2015)” and all the previous updates. And in my book you can’t announce shipping when you are not actually dispatching units to customers. Sending an email promising shipping in the next six weeks is not “we are shipping”, it is “we will be shipping soon”. If all units are still going to be shipped by July/ August then it would have to be very soon!

2 Likes
#15

There could be leeway in an overly optimistic schedule and assumptions that would make the December 2015 date unbelievable. I certainly would not have ordered if I new it was still going to be over a year away.

Till now, the promises have been of when things will be ready by - we crossed a different milestone on the “we are shipping now” statement. You could cut some slack and say that its shipping, given that the expectation is that it be a 6 week lead time from order to delivery.

If my unit is delayed a few more weeks beyond July, it won’t matter as much to me, but I can’t see how there could be any technical delays at this point, given that “we are shipping now”.

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#16

My PRU has been technically flawless (hardware) since I got it last month. No issues with anything that hasn’t been addressed by software - I had some distortion in the lid camera so it couldn’t recognize the QR code for PG material in the front right extreme corner. That was fixed with some software update.

Mostly just a learning experience with how the GF does things vs my other laser experience.

4 Likes
#17

Well something is stopping them being shipped or why would they have not sent some already? It would be an amazing coincidence if the first unit was ready to ship on the day they announced it at BAMF. I am sure they would have loved to send some out before going to BAMF and announcing they were shipping but they must have not been ready. So they announced it anyway and tried to make it look true by sending some emails. If they had dispatched on return of the shipping address then at a long stretch “we are shipping” could be considered true but they haven’t because some would have been received by now. The amount charged for shipping is so high they should all be shipped express and only take a day or two, not weeks.

They sent a few to themselves at BAMF and all reports are they worked very well, better than the “pre-production” machines. It is reported that one was DOA though, so that means there is an issue in QA or packaging that needs to be sorted before any more can be sent at the very least. There might be other reasons and they must think it could be six weeks before they can ship worst case.

6 Likes
#18

@jamesdhatch that is really good to hear. There are a few of the initial marketing video features that have not been demoed, and it seems that its just a matter of having the software catch up to get those implemented, but one thing that would be nice would be to get a “State of the union” on what the expectations should be on the functionality of the units being delivered.

1 Like
#19

You should expect that in association with the shipping request e-mail.

#20

Sorry for the confusion - that was just me communicating poorly in a live interview amidst the hustle and bustle. The posted schedule is the most current.

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