Rapidly losing confidence in GlowForge

Everything Else
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There are just too many things piling up and not enough clear honest communication. I’m a day 1 Pro order in the US and still haven’t received my email.

  • I see a thread posted in Problems and Support get locked with a terse response from @dan
  • I see a banner on the forum that has no “last updated” timestamp but has reflected the same info for a couple of weeks but then Dan say that they’re updating “at least once a week”.
  • I see posts on Facebook from people asking “when are you shipping?” with enthusiastic responses from GlowForge saying “we’re shipping now!” and continuing to claim that new orders will be delivered by November.
  • I see barely a trickle of new posts or updates to the spreadsheet stating folks have received their email or their unit, and those all appear to be basic units.
  • I see GlowForge at Maker Faires touting the device and continuing to make promises of delivery to new customers by November.
  • I see posts about damaged units and ‘acceptable’ cosmetic issues being explained away, while I see other Facebook posts that have responses from GlowForge stating clearly that they are now shipping final production units.

Things just don’t add up. In two days it will be two years since I ordered.

Please, no “I’m sorry, we let you down” responses or “well you can just cancel” responses. I also don’t want to hear “they aren’t required to divulge specific shipping volumes or internal timelines or other sensitive company info” – I’m not asking for those things. It’s time for GlowForge to be up front and honest with what’s going on.

Feeling hugely disrespected as a customer.

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They are still working their way through the Day 1 Pro orders. You will likely be hearing from them soon. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I’m right there with you, never posted on here and have been patiently waiting whatever information has been slowly fed to us. Hate to say but if they push back the shipping date again, I’ll be canceling. I wouldn’t accept this level of customer service and transparency with another company.

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And that’s the problem. “Soon” is turning out to be months, on top of the previous delays. They claimed Pro orders started shipping at the end of June. We are now days away from the end of September and they haven’t even reached my day 1 order yet. There’s no chance they can be on schedule (because, frankly, it’s super obvious that they aren’t), but they’re pretending that everything is fine.

I wish I could have said “I’ll pay for it soon” when I ordered, and then come up with my own definition of “soon” (and how about my own definition of “pay”).

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I’ve always found that if I’m unsure about whether I should buy a product or not, then the right answer for me is that I shouldn’t buy it. I’m not going to be happy with it when I get it.

(And for the record, I’m not unsure about this one.)

No one likes being kept in the dark during a product that’s being built, and I know you guys are not going to believe this, but this has been very open, communications-wise.

What you (all) don’t understand, because this is probably your first exposure to watching a product be built from scratch, is that they are not telling us because they don’t know. They take their best guess and then try to hit it. By this point, they have got a good handle on things, but yes, things could still go wrong, and it could be delayed a little more.

What I’m seeing though, is a determination to see it through on the part of Glowforge, no matter how long it takes, and a determination to send out a quality product. Unfortunately, along the way, a few people are going to change their minds about buying one, either because they are tired of waiting, or because they feel personally slighted over GF not hitting their target dates. And frankly those people shouldn’t be buying them. It would be the wrong choice for both the customer and for Glowforge. The resentment over the delays will make the customer dissatisfied with it, and you don’t want to spend that much money for something that makes you angry. And Glowforge doesn’t want angry customers - that’s not the idea behind this thing. The idea is to get an affordable laser out to people who have not had that option up until now.

Ultimately though, the decision is up to each individual. I think you’ll wind up regretting it if you cancel now that the machines are going out - there are a lot of happy users out there now, and there are going to be even more very soon. But if you have an arbitrary drop-dead date set for accepting it…well, you have your answer.

Hopefully you’ll get the email before then. But no one can tell you whether you should keep the order or not. It’s up to you.

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Agree.

giphy (3)

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I am afraid I don’t believe your scheduled deliver by date can possibly be achieved now and I am sure you know that it can’t. It doesn’t make sense that you can make all rest of the machines and deliver them in 39 days when you have only delivered about 1/6th in 127 days.

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That is an incredibly condescending response. You don’t know me at all and you are making a bunch of seriously wrong assumptions.

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I’m sorry you see it that way. Good luck making your decision.

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I don’t know anyone here personally, but I only saw one sentence in @Jules response that spoke directly about you. The rest was regarding her thoughts about GF, their process, etc. Overall, I think it was a thoughtful response from her perspective - at least that’s how I received it.

I say that because I share most all of your feelings about the process and the communication and have been privately quite frustrated as well, voicing very little here. I think I really do feel your pain and frustration personally.

What I took away from Jules’ reply as far as action steps for me was really the only thing another user can offer at this time - and that’s that I can decide to get a refund or I can wait - other options are unlikely to present themselves and history tells me that direct answers to other questions won’t be forthcoming.

I dislike that reality, but that’s where I think I am.

You’re not alone. I know that brings little to no solace. I just want to make cool presents for my friends this Christmas with this thing I told them I’d have two Christmases ago.

So I’ll continue to wait. And read. And bookmark. And design in my head.

I genuinely wish the best for you and everyone else who has been waiting in the relative dark this long. I hope our waiting is close to an end.

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That seems to be one of the most prevalent themes in these types of discussion; they think I’m crazy for waiting, they think it’s never going to come, they think I’m being scammed, they think or they say…

Just an observation. It seems that external pressures really get to folks.

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Perhaps. Sometimes this has been true, but not with the delays. Every time they’ve delayed in the past, it’s fairly clear they’ve known for some time, but wanted to wait until they had a better idea of how much longer it would take, plus sometimes they needed to line up goodies with investors and Inventables.

But they’ve also been timing their message relative to good news and Makerfaire.

We’re in the same zone again. Most reasonable people can see that the likelihood is low that they can ramp production fast enough and big enough to be able to get all US campaign pre-orders into hands by Oct 31. They’ve been open enough for that to be painfully obvious. It may not even be desirable since they may not need anywhere near that capacity for their normal run rate post campaign delivery.

Now the questions are: when will they tell us (definitely after Makerfaire, but how long after?) and what is the good news they’ll wrap the disappointment sandwich in?

This isn’t my first crowdsource rodeo by a longshot, and while they’ve been more open than some, they’ve also been less forthcoming than some good example (IMHO) projects that were late. Though even in those cases, when people are disappointed, no amount of information makes the disappointment go away, but it does help with trust and feeling involved and invested in the outcome.

Whatever they’re doing, it appears to work. Their booth still gets way more attention than any of the competitors and that’s with 3 big delays already in the public record. I’m not sure how it translates into orders though. Hopefully it translates into new orders since we’ll want Glowforge to be a successful ongoing concern after they’re through what must be a very stressful and longer-than-they’d-hoped birthing process.

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Yes, that was definitely a group “you”. All the way through. Thanks @BigBlueMark for clarifying it for everyone.

Guess I need to be more careful how I phrase things.

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It’s because they still have a compelling story for their use case. Look at a Trotec or Epilog next to a Glowforge. The GF looks like you could bring it home and they show you that it can do all the cool things the Trotec/Epilog demos are doing. The Trotec/Epilog machines look intimidating in comparison (not to mention just really large and needing space most people don’t want to dedicate to a single tool). So people flock to the GF. And most people are unaware of the long road we’ve traveled and won’t really care because they’re coming after the long wait.

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After the countless hours you’ve invested in everyone here, I had zero doubt of your intent. I think many of us are a bit more bruised than we would otherwise be given the situation, so it’s easier to read into things and take some wounds that aren’t ours to take. I know I am prone to that myself. Thanks for all you do here. It is noticed and appreciated.

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Chuckle! I can be a mixed blessing sometimes - I tend to shortcut explanations due to time constraints.

Anyway, thanks for trying to soothe the bruised feelings in my wake. :roll_eyes:

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Hearing from folks that already have a Glowforge is both a blessing and a curse. It’s nice to get some reassurance that people like them when they get them, but I also understand why it’s easy to get frustrated being told to wait patiently or get out (or perceive so) by someone that isn’t having to wait anymore (either because they have one to use or have their own).

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Totally. If there weren’t people posting here who already have theirs, I likely would have tapped out a long time ago. What I see being made here is what has kept me hanging on this long in hopes I’ll get to post some things too someday. But is a mixed thing indeed.

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I think we need a topic category that is labeled Venting. That way, folks who are angry/disappointed/disillusioned/all of the above can have a place where they can safely vent, but those who don’t share their view or want to see it can just bypass the whole category. Posts that really want answers have avenues to pursue that information, but I think venting is necessary for some, and those aren’t really looking for answers – just a place to vent…

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Oh, I understand that…it’s one of the reasons that the number of items I’ve been showing has fallen off in the last few weeks. :wink: Besides, now is the time for the new recipients to be showing what they do with their machines. There are tons of ideas out there, and cool items to be made.

I also understand that the last few weeks are the worst from a waiting and anxiety standpoint for everyone, (me included, I don’t have mine yet either) , but that there isn’t much to be done about it except wait it out. I’m not about to cancel.

(I’m not upset or anything. You guys are real sweethearts, and one of the main reasons I’ve been hanging around as long as I have.)

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