Hey @dan and co, suggestion for when you are really gearing up to get shipping going (on top of the million other things you already have on your plates of course!)
It would be great to know where we are in line for shipping and generally have a sense of how fast the line is being processed.
Basically I’d love a way to know what progress on shipping is like and be able to make an intelligent guess on when I’ll get my unit. I ask as I am a late purchaser (early January) which means your June window is not for me and “by the end of the year” is a pretty big window in which I have no idea where I stand in the wait time scheme of life.
A potential implementation might be: “you are currently 1,237 in line to receive your pro forge with filter” text somewhere on the account page, with a display of recent shipping data (maybe a bar chart with weekly units shipped?)
If the info in shipping needs to be kept under wraps, I get it. But if not, it might be a good way to let us late bloomers have a sense of when we might receive our boxes of awesome without your having to make specific predictions that invite user anger if not met.
Even being able to make a rough estimate would be so helpful - getting it by mid August opens a huge range of uses for a project in September, but a September/October arrival means that project will have to be forge-free, and if I know that rough window in June when shipping is in full swing I can plan accordingly…
I read that notice every time I log in. But for the non-Kickstarter group the window given is “before the end of the year” - which is huge. And if there is a way to get a tighter estimate without the GF team Feeling forced to make promises they might not be able to deliver (since this is manufacturing and Murphy’s law always applies), it would be great to have.
Like I said - millions of more pressing issues to take care of I’m sure. Just wanted to float the idea.
I have suggested the same idea to previous pre-order campaigns I have been stuck waiting on. And I still think it is a nice idea.
If shipping order is based on “first ordered, first shipped” then somewhere there is a numbered list of who ships when. Putting a “order #XXXX” next to our order date seems like it should be pretty trivial.
Also, if people have a number attached to their order in line, then it is possible to say which number was last served. Updating such a number even just once a week gives SOME measure of prediction to the people eagerly waiting their turn. If last Friday you had shipped out to 1,245 and this Friday you had shipped out to 1,356 and I am order 10,000… I know that I have about 90 weeks to wait.
If I have data over the course of 12 weeks showing that some weeks you ship 5, and other weeks you ship 1,000 then I know that such a prediction is not very reliable, but it is still at least a best/worst scenario that I didn’t have before.
Granted… the order is more complicated than “first in, first out” because of international shipping. So that may make it less feasible here.
Don’t forget that there is also the fact that some people are waiting for a Pro, others the basic. I believe Dan mentioned that they would be made at the same time, but I’m sure it isn’t( or won’t be) a 1:1 production. It may depend which tubes they get first (40 or 45W), and there are the filters, are they shipped separately later, or wait for them to ship together…
What ever the case may be, I just hope most ( or all ) bugs are worked out before they ship and I have it in time for Xmas.
We’ve looked at this a few times, and it always came down to a lot of logistics like the engineering time necessary to build the tool, and the inevitable flood of support questions like “I ordered 7,328th but my friend who ordered 8,112th got his first, why do you hate me”.
The response should always be “When you were in 3rd grade you kicked my puppy”
The engineering time for building isn’t something you have to approximate, if you are just posting a “last night unit #XXXX shipped out” every week or so. Then it is left to the people reading the updates to extrapolate their own approximate shipping date.
And yes, the “I know someone who is later ordered and further away who got theirs first” can happen… but you will get those ANYWAY, along with all of the “When will I get mine!” you get now.
Of course, I know that once people start getting their forge’s on the doorstep we will have a forum thread for people to post their order date and arrival date. So the level of prediction I am hoping to have will be there anyway.
To be honest, as far as the forums are concerned, this is going to happen anyways. Now that we have our orders timestamped, that gives us an approximate position in the order queue, so when someone says “I just got my glowforge! My order date was xx/xx/2015!”, theres going to be someone who complains because their order date was before that and they havent gotten their glowforge yet. Either way, I understand @dan 's reluctance to make estimates, as they will be taken as promises by some people…
I found a link that will show us when our individual Glowforges will be delivered. I believe it to be fairly accurate. You may have to enter some specific information.
Wonder how many people who complain about not having received theirs before people who ordered later will also have an email sitting in their inbox waiting for a shipping address.
From the Terms and Conditions: " If you do not provide your shipping information within 30 days of Glowforge’s request, Glowforge may, at its sole discretion, provide you a full refund of the amount you paid or continue to attempt to contact you."
Again this is just legalese and Glowforge will probably wait for quite a while before cancelling but no one wants to find out an 8 month wait was wasted because of a spam filter.
Hey man,
If my order was canceled because I was busy HERE instead of my spam filter…
“There will be blood”.
After spending 6 months of my life here, because it is as close to my 'forge as I could get -
I haven’t had a restraining order pulled on me in quite a while now…
Been waiting to post this video. Here is as good as any. So many things might provoke a riot. I was thinking once the manufacturing location was announced we could reenact the storming of the Bastille.
I read that notice every time I log in. But for the non-Kickstarter group the window given is “before the end of the year” - which is huge. And if there is a way to get a tighter estimate without the GF team Feeling forced to make promises they might not be able to deliver (since this is manufacturing and Murphy’s law always applies), it would be great to have.
