Something else to consider: before they ship, figure out what the fees are going to be. This is something that you can work with your shipper (at least to Canada) to figure out so nobody is surprised when the knock at the door comes.
I live in Seattle. Is there anyway I can pickup my system at your office? (and avoid or reduce shipping?)
Thanks
They answer this in another thread; they arenāt going to have any of the lasers on site; instead wherever theyāre being made (Iām guessing China?) theyāll get shipped to a distro center from there, and then out to customers.
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Iām one of the Europeans that bit the bullet and went for the pro model. Shipping came up to $954.
Total I spent on a pre-order + shipping
$4,849.00 (someone used my referral code)
As soon as it crosses my countries borders (Netherlands) I will be charged the following:
- 21% taxes over purchase + shipping. ($1018,29)
- Import tax
- handling fee ā¬11
As Iām buying this as a business I can get the 21% tax back over which is why I went ahead with it. But thatās the cost run down for just buying in NL. excluding having to buy a 230v - 110v transformer to make it turn on 
Still very excited!
R.
Whatās the weight of each item at the moment out of interest?
55 lbs for basic/pro
25 lbs for the filter, but that may wind up going up or down as we experiment with filter lifetime.
Jrnelson: you can have it shipped to me:) Or you might want to look into signing up for a US P.O. Box or kinekpoints for boarder shipping. Could save you a few hundred dollars.
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Yeah, Iām going to investigate shipping it to my buddyās PO box, which is substantially cheaper. Still going to have to pay sales, but thatās better than having it on top of the extra $425 shipping! Before I choose to do that, though, Iād like to know what an āall-inā shipping cost would be, including brokerage fees. Thatās something they only have to do once for the entire country, so I donāt think itās much of a burden to ask.
Part of it is volume, though, not just weight. A very wide package thatās also somewhat heavy can be extremely expensive to ship.
Shipping dimensions are 46" x 29" x 16" and 70 pounds. The Glowforge Air Filter is 46" x 29" x 12" and 40 pounds.
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Sure, but part of that is simply the width of the unit. Itās really $$$$$ to ship a 4 foot long box.
After a week of being angry at the shipping costs, I finally ordered a Pro. Worst thing that could happen now is the shipping stays the same, best thing to happen would be some alternative way of shipping it at a lower cost. I really said that to myself 
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donāt forget the customās fees. My bank account is looking awfully low since ordering a GF but we havenāt even paid customs yet (note to self donāt buy any [more] expensive Christmas presents else I wonāt have enough to pay customs!)
Iāve ordered the Pro version for our FabLab, which is a no profit organization, with no VAT and no way to get back the paid taxes.
So, we are going to pay taxes twice: once in US and one it comes to Italy, because of the customs fees.
I canāt believe thatā¦ I was already shocked by the shipping costs, but they are understandable, as not in control, but Iām so disappointed for these extra costs.
Not sure I want to waste so much money for this: is just not fair.
So sorry to hear about your frustration, @andrea. Very much understand if you want to cancel and wait for local availability; just let support@glowforge.com know.
This is not the way to make people happy. Itās just a way for you to lose clients, and trust from us.
You could have proposed other solutions, like:
- Give some ārefundā (you already give a lot of $100 for referrals)
- Find a way to know advance the costs and share the custom fees
- Find a way to avoid non profit organizations like us to pay taxes twice (since, again, they canāt get them back anyway)
Instead, you simply suggest to cancel the order and āwait for local availabilityā: yes, sure.
Iām not going to cancel my order, yet: Iāll wait until the very last minute, to see if you become more proactive, if you find better solutions and, anyway, because itās my right to decide at the very last minute.
Tough, guys, somethingās smelling here.
Two name two smells: warranties that should have been provided since the beginning (I donāt know US laws, but I hardly believe you are not bound to some kind of warranty anyway), unclear shipment times (until today I thought that all shipments would have been done in December 2015, which apparently is not true).
It didnt say all preorders ships in december, it said starts shipping in december. If you ever thought they would be able to assemble thousands of units which are not even in a final design, you never put any research into what a crowfunded product is.
And if they are going to assemble them in the US, you dont throw a million people at it as you would in China.
I do know that in the past, when pledging for Kickstarter projects, when they provided a shipping month+year estimation, they meant to ship on that month and year (excluding these cases where they simply made a wrong estimation).
If I see āstart shipping from December 2015ā, with no more clarification, I expect the product be shipped sometime in December 2015, and not on sometime after it (which might be even one year later, at this point).
I donāt think Iām supposed to know how a crowdfunded product is handled: why I should?
Iām just a customer who tried to get the product at a convenient price, but then, a good percentage has been added to the shipping costs, then an unclear additional percentage will be added for the custom fees and for something I donāt even know when it will be delivered.
So disappointed, but thanks.
Iāll still wait until the end of the year: some associated of our organization have been contributing to help us raise the money for this product and would be a very bad news for them to see their money go back to them because someone else failed providing proper and clear information.
I have never seen this kind of involvement from management in a crowdsourced product before. I think they are very clear that they donāt have all the details yet and that there might be delays. I think I even saw a Q3 date (or was that before Q3?) somewhere. Of course that would hurt, but then again, you would have 6 months of other people hitting the bugs and lots of time to stockpile materials, doing designs and learn from others.
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