Hi there.
I am wondering, after seeing the hugh succesfull of the campaign, and after Dan mentioned in the blog that 20% of the buyers come from outside the States, if the shipping prices are going to finally be lower.
I imagine that shipping more lasers than expected would make them rethink the shipping processes and maybe get better fares as they could probably send more products within the same shipment.
Thanks!
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Prices are determined by size/weight and such by the shipping companies so I do not think they will change. Dan has said they have done what they could to keep the price as low as possible without sacrificing too many features.
What you are thinking about is freight shipping, they are not doing this. This would delay alot of orders and requires resources GF don’t have(or are using to better use elsewhere) to organise this at this stage. The only way to get a reasonable shipping charge abroad will be to wait untill there is an international distributor.
It may be interesting to compare the shipping prices of various carriers using a tool like the Shipito shipping calculator
For the base unit at 70 lbs and 46 x 29 x 16 in, I get $634 using DHL (the carrier GlowForge used) but only $458 using TNT, the “fastest and most popular” carrier displayed, to my location in Australia.
Of course this price could vary considerably to different destinations, and GlowForge don’t want to use a different carrier for individual orders. However say the TNT price is consistently better for all AU users they may go with them, and hopefully pass on the saving to us. Perhaps a few purchasers could try the calculator for their location and post the result here so we get some idea?
Note that in my case I could save over $70 by having GlowForge ship to Shipito at $99, and have them send it on.
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I think a large part of the shipping is for insurance because the pro costs a lot more to ship than the standard but I guess it is the same size and not much heavier.
Certainly when I ship things around the world the courier’s insurance is ridiculous, so I charge customers a much smaller amount and use the pot of money to cover any losses. In general it is always best not to insure anything that you can afford to replace yourself because the insurer will always charge more than enough to cover the risk to cover their costs and make a profit.
I included full price insurance when I got those prices.
But you are right, the shipper’s insurance policies can be very expensive, and then when you go to claim on a lost shipment they make it very difficult. We have had them argue that they would only pay for the cost of the input materials that went into a product we built in our factory and they lost, would you believe!
When we were shipping a lot of product overseas we took out “marine insurance” which covered all freight in and out, as an add-on to the standard policy on our factory, a much cheaper way to go.
I’d like to see the shipping price in the US come down too. I just had a new $3500 commercial fridge delivered to my home by freight for $125. That included delivery into my home and put in place after being transported for 1200 miles. The fridge weighed 900 lbs.
Re: Shipping to Australia (Sydney NSW 2232).
RE: c-born’s post (#4).
I got same quotation from “Shipito” / TNT Economy *Fast at $549.01 insurance included; and $459 TNT Express.
A VERY BIG saving over the $675 GF charge, so I support request to have GF use this service for us in Australia.
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You got charged $675? I got charged over $1300US for shipping to Australia. What model did you get? I got the basic with filter.
Ah, just noticed the price difference is for the filter. If I picked up on that I probably would have got it minus the filter… oh well.
pmckee: that’s why I didn’t think the Filter was a good value with that punishing shipping charge. It possible to amend your Order if you want.
Check out and join our Aussie User Group at http://www.facebook.com/groups/Glowforge.users/
I’ve just checked out Shipito for shipping to Perth, Western Australia (6109).
Quote for the Pro model (without air filter) comes to $492 with TNT express, so I would also be quite happy if Glowforge was able to ship to Aus through them.
I have checked out Shipito for shipping to Zurich, Switzerland.
The Quote for the Pro model with the air filter with TNT express is 673 dollars, almost 400 dollars less than the actual shipping price offered by Glowforge. I think that’s a big difference, and I would be happy to see that they ship machines to Europe trough them.
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I have a much bigger machine sent from the US to Norway for $200…by plane!
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Unfortunately I know a great deal about international shipping, having invested quite a bit of time in getting it right for Robot Turtles previously. We decided to focus on quality and speed over cost efficiency for the preorder campaign.