Oh man, those who have been affected must feel terrible. What a disappointment after such a long, long wait. I can’t imagine how they’re feeling. Probably a careful combination of disbelief and sadness and anger.
Even though only a few people were affected, apparently, they’ve been dealt the worst blow for sure. No matter what date my eventual email estimates my delivery, I’ll remember to be happy that I’m getting a delivery at all.
Edit: it just occured to me that glowforge could have refunded those customers, and deleted their forum accounts, and most of us (or maybe all) probably wouldn’t have even noticed. So, thanks for being open about it. Its not nice to read updates like this, but I am glad we are getting updates at all.
They could have. But there are plenty of other forums of communication on the glowforge. Even if it only affected a small number of people, the moment it got out that they cancelled peoples orders after over two years of waiting, they would have gotten a lot of hate and worry from those remaining. Especially from the remaining international buyers. Its better to announce it.
This is sad news. I feel for those who waited so long to have their orders cancelled, but GF’s decision to forego those orders is understandable if the costs and logistics of compliance in those countries was onerous. This is especially true if the # of orders affected in each such country was minimal. It’s the right business decision to make.
Should they have known about all of the issues sooner? Perhaps. They evidently turned the matter over to outside consultants to find out what needed to be done to deliver a machine into each country from which an order was received. Whether the consultants dragged their feet on the assignment or GF delayed turning over the project to them to begin with, we will never know. But finding out so late in the game is surely going to anger those who let GF sit on their cash for up to 2 years while waiting for something that will never be delivered to them. Getting their money back likely won’t mollify their anger, but it will answer back those who falsely felt they might be getting scammed.
This news will make me cherish my own GF even more once I receive it.
Oh yeah. Remember Europe pre-EU? We just take it for granted I can order something from a company half a world away and it will show up on my doorstep in pretty short order.
hope thats not happening. But maybe because they have not done any CE certifications it will take longer. Thats because I asked month ago how CE is going.
Indeed. Most countries have common requirements, but some have their own unique and unusual requirements.
We didn’t make decisions based on the certification cost in a country. We’d take the cash hit; that’s on us for saying we’d do it. In fact we’re doing that for countries where the ROI isn’t there because we said we’d do it. But investing engineering efforts to regulatory compliance in a country with 1-10 orders, when we could put the same engineers to improving the product for 10,000 people - that is a greater unfairness to everyone else.
I have been asking about regulatory certifications for the past 2 years. I am not surprised and wish they listen to their customers.
before you jump on me about “you do not know how hard it is to get certifications / customs clearance”. I have traveled around the world and have been certifying high speed electronic equipment (i.e. 100 Gbit Ethernet). I have personally sent product through brazil and know exactly what is required (they typically require testing to be done in their country but some times companies like NTS can do it in the US).
I continue to be amazed by the number of people here that are better at the jobs needing to be done than GF has been able to hire. I smell a grassroots Kickstarter brewing to take over the laser world by storm. Can’t wait to see it pop up on my Kickstarter feed.
at the moment there is the laser saur as a open source project but it is very well documented and I know a couple of Fab labs and spaces that have successfully build it in Berlin, Freiburg, Karlsruhe and I have a friend that just build a massive laser with his own design. One guy that started this year. He is not finished yet but I will share it here once he is ready.
Yeah. I looked at it before I bought into the GF. I like the large format but it was before the Laserweb guys started their project (which I’ve backed via beers for aussies ). It was the software side of the house that interested me most in the GF. And the one piece 'fits in the home" style of the box.
There’s another post here for a Fablab machine that looks an awful lot like a skinned lasersaur to me and it’s running Laserweb so it would have given the GF a run for its money in my decision making process.
I saw it in a trade show here in Munich. They tried to do a campaign but failed and that is because they offer a kit. Then I would rather build a laser saur or wait for my friend to finish.
@dan
you can pay company’s like NTS to do the testing for you (a ROI calculation)! how is that taking engineering hours? you could also hire more engineers to do just the testing (again a ROI calculation). I struggle to understand your logic when you say it is not just a ROI. Can you explain???
@dan Is there a way to get specific information for a country in the list as to what the issue was? I was hoping to order one to be delivered to one of those countries and would like to know if I can just ship it on my own from the US.
). It was the software side of the house that interested me most in the GF. And the one piece 'fits in the home" style of the box.