Schedule update (December '16)

Read @markevans36301 posts on this thread…Man up would literally translate to show us the broken bits and the production processes … basically we as “crowdfunders” have the right to know how things are going not just getting emails saying "we are terribly sorry it will be another 6 months till you get it "

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i think this is what ALOT OF US would like to see MORE transparency in the Glowforge company we want to see pictures of the facory floor we want to see videos of things that you are doing we want to see things being done we what to see out money being in a good place and good standing we what to see details of your everyday we want to see what exactly we are supposedly getting

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Ah. I see. We’ll see what gets answered in the live Q&A. I’ll link your post in that thread. If you have any more questions, post them here:

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As many others, I’m also terribly disappointed and thought of cancelling…
but will be more disappointed not receiving it nor receiving a defect or poorly made stuff different from your sales talk. I’ll be waiting for a perfect glowforge in July… Hopefully?
At this point we all need to hear the truth. Is it possible to release the perfect glowforge by July or would need more time? It probably depends on all untested and unsolved problems… perhaps will increase with more release of pre-release units. What are the odds? In anycase it must be very difficult, hope you keep up the hard work and will be trusting you till new deadline.

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I assume this would be the next update from @dan.
…“I am terrible sorry but we didn’t realized that we have international customers. But if you don’t like what we offer, you can still cancel your order…”

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I’m terribly confused and so sorry you heard that - that sounds bizarre to me too. By any chance could you point me to the message you’re thinking of, if you remember where you saw it?

I’ll see about getting some pictures soon.

That’s a great suggestion - I’ll investigate.

I’m just sorry we couldn’t get it to you sooner.

I know we let you down, Erick. I’m sorry.

As you might imagine, posts are coming in faster than I can reply - while at the same time helping out some of the team that’s still here. I’m going to get as far as I can before I crash tonight.

I don’t think we earn your trust by doing anything other than delivering your Glowforge.

It’s not an unreasonable request; I’m sorry to report that the answer is no. When we ended our pricing, that was permanent. We’re not giving new purchasers the price that you paid, and we’re not able to give Pro upgrades now the price of those who upgraded to Pro previously.

Those features have been a part of the Glowforge design for a long time; we’re only just now able to announce them.

We’d be happy to set you up with monthly emails. You’ll get notified when we (and only we) post announcements by following these directions. We post announcements about once a month.

Thank you, @quinnone2. We wish we weren’t making you wait.

And regardless of how big we are, our indebtedness to you, our customers, is enormous. We have a lot of work to do for you.

I apologize - you may be correct that you are unable to redeem the Inventables offer from some countries.

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I’m not trying to be funny here, but if that’s the only thing you can do that earns you our trust, then your track record doesn’t exactly shine, to say the least.

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Well, all things considered. I think that went quite well.:grin:

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lol

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I’m disappointed too. I apologize, and we will not do that.

I understand, Erick, and I don’t blame you.

We’re working night and day from here until then to make that happen.

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Is there a way to verify that we’re subscribed to the Beta/Pre-release tester list? I signed up a while back, but I can’t find any sign-up acknowledgement e-mails or anything in my profile.
Can we have that be a field in our private profile info?

Can’t say I’m not disappointed about the delay, but I’ve dealt with quite a few products, mostly software, that have been released publicly and for professionals that should qualify as beta or even alpha releases. I have a lot of great projects in mind for when I finally get my GF Pro and I expect it to be a Pro product. I don’t want to be dealing with quality issues 5 minutes out of the gate…

BTW the 3D engraving looks great, can’t wait to test its limits, I’m a 3D Artist so I know depth maps and I’m not afraid to use them…

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Hi dan,

I think he may have been referring to what are you able to do to assist your international backers? A lot of these things, including discounts on your own proofgrade materials do not really apply to us due to the many other regulations or constraints on shipping. I am curious, knowing that international backers will most likely be later in your shipping run due to the increased constraints.

Thanks Duane

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If you signed up, you’re in there. He’s mentioned this a few times. I don’t see it becoming a field on your profile because the two dbs aren’t linked at all, they’d have to go in manually.

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Unfortunately no, but if you’re signed up, we got you.

I’ve never worked with them before but I’m boggled by how effective they are and how, once you get the hang of it, vector art becomes a great 3D tool.

We don’t have any different plans for international customers at this time.

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@dan can you give me a number on how many Glowforge’s that are on order that have NOT been canceled?

Your logic is flawed, company size is based on number of employees, not money. A friend of mine works for a small mobile app company with less than 40 employees and they pull in around a million a day. Yet they occupy half a floor in an office building that you would never know existed. Maybe GF has hired 200 people, but they feel like a pretty small shop from their communications.

Now, maybe that’s part of the issue and cause for delay… it’s hard to say if they are understaffed with so little information about the cause of delay and staffing.

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This delay means two year of dead investment now. I think glowforge should have sold initially in US only and then should have gone global. Really scared to go ahead with this now. If there will be technical issues when it arrives it will be impossible to be repaired or to service, which may take months again, when I stay far far east.

[quote=“ade, post:85, topic:3657, full:true”]
I’m not trying to be funny here, but if that’s the only thing you can do that earns you our trust, then your track record doesn’t exactly shine, to say the least.[/quote]

@dan You can do a hell of a lot more than give a dismissive answer to a very serious question.

I’m not trying to be funny here, but if that’s the only thing you can do that earns you our trust, then your track record doesn’t exactly shine, to say the least.

I gave you $4170 dollars on 9/15/15 (upgraded to pro after). You are a very charismatic person, you come off as honest and open. But lets be real here, people don’t trust you right now. They feel cheated, betrayed and defrauded. Simply saying

Since you utterly missed the mark the first time, here are some suggestions for what you can do to START earning back our trust.

1: Hire a full time person to share everything going on at Glowforge and your manufacturing facility. This person is responsible for multiple daily updates to the community and showing new examples of things designed by the community. No more votive candles! 1 person, 1 camera, 1 computer and unlimited access.

As someone who has 20 employees I know that you could have this done in less than a week if you were properly motivated as there are a lot of people in Seattle who could do this. I could make recommendations for people with a lot of community management experience

2: Stop hiding behind the full refund. It’s a passive aggressive cop out that more people are seeing through as we move forward. It is going to result in a lot more anger than you are seeing tonight.

3: Use your new hire to publicly document and updateson your successes and failures. No more everything is fine the week before and I am so sad to push back the date another 6 months the next week. You are trying to keep a competitive edge, that’s fine don’t tell us all the secret sauce. But you goddamn better quit lying to us, even if its by omission or else you’re going to set the reputation of Glowforge for years to come.

4: Give more detailed and realistic timeline for what is happening. I have three kickstarters that provide weekly updates with SPECIFIC DETAILS on the process. Each of them have had multiple manufacturing setbacks and were UPFRONT AND HONEST so my expectations were managed properly.

Constructive criticism: You are terrible at managing expectations. Everything is great until its not.

I am more pissed about feeling lied and deceived than I would have been if you managed the expectations by communicating better

5: Update your website, it still says delivering in December and the wrong warranty info.


The above is off the top of my head and I am sure there will be other ideas from the community. So lets do this again…

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While I don’t like your tone, after I get past that I think you have some good ideas in there.

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That’s not a number we planned to share, but I can look into it when things settle down. May I ask why you’d like to know?

Thank you for taking the time to care about this, the time to think through this, and the time to share your recommendations. I don’t fault you for being mad and I think your anger is justified.

My priority is delivering above all else. It makes it all the harder for failing at that. Perhaps I should reallocate resources as you suggest, and I should be spending more time and resources every day on this, for example sharing our daily or weekly triumphs and disappointments as many Kickstarter campaigns do. If that’s true, and I’m making the wrong decision, than both I and our company will be punished by you, our customers, for my mistake.

But regardless, I understand that some people who want us to conduct our business differently will decide that monthly updates aren’t for them and will take their funds elsewhere. We’ll make that as painless as possible, because we’ve already caused you enough grief and disappointment by letting you down.

Please let us know if that’s the path you’d like to take, and we’ll issue your refund right away. If not, then I accept your criticism, and will continue to work to bring your Glowforge to you as quickly - and as well - as I possibly can.

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