There is still ZERO transparency. Why?

I wonder if that was deliberate?

Edit: Rats, see what happens when you come late to a party, you shout your mouth off before reading the entire thread only to find that it was indeed deliberate. I’m leaving this here to remind me what a numpty I can be.

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Slight thread derailment – sorry!

The strangest problem I can think of was the time I had a customer who kept complaining about interference (like wavy lines and video artifacts) appearing on her computer screen. She was a graphics designer, so this was especially annoying. I replaced the video card, the motherboard, and even completely wiped and rebuilt the computer before finally replacing the hard drive. That fixed it. It turned out that for some reason the original hard drive was generating interference and if you placed it anywhere in the case the problem would appear.

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I thought school yard bullies were supposed to take your money, not suggest that you get all your money back whenever you want it. :slight_smile:

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I’m right there with you on just deciding to wait.

@takitus, thank you for explaining what I said better than I did.

Internally, someone who we hired recently & is also a customer said, “It’s easier to explain when there’s just a broken power supply. It’s harder to explain that there’s lots of things that are working, but not bulletproof.” I think that’s true - you’re exactly right that there’s a lot of things that need refinement and dialing in, rather than one big problem we can all point to. It’s understandable to want a singular answer of “what’s the one thing” or “what are the three things” - but the truth is that it’s just a slow process to do it right, and we decided that rushing it would not yield good results.

This is, sadly, true - anything we say can and will come back to haunt us. That doesn’t stop us from sharing huge amounts of information here as we’ve done so far (e.g. in our pre-release letter recently), but does put some limits on the details.

We’ll be sharing more, but we’re going to be thoughtful and careful about it. That’s going to make some people decide to cancel in the interim, but we’re willing to pay that price (literally - in dollars) to do it right.

Indeed. (That problem has been solved, incidentally, but is a good example of the sort of challenges we tick through regularly.)

There were - that’s why they’re now in the basement in storage, as we’ve root-caused each of them and fixed the underlying problems.

Ironically I typed the reply myself, no copy-paste, and confirmed with @rita that she wrote a personal reply as well… one of about 150 emails I read & replied to personally earlier this week. I won’t be able to do that going forward, but for me to do my job, I need to know firsthand what all of you are thinking and feeling.

To be clear… I love to post photos and video. :slight_smile: Feel free to request whatever you want in the Q&A section of the forum. It just takes a while to do. That particular one was relatively easy since it was just pictures of Glowforge units sitting around the office and we had a photographer onsite that day (taking some test photos for the Catalog).

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Soon =). I’ll definitely be sharing here

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My bad. . . I’m a Boomer. When I grew up in rural Ontario, it was easier to deal with bullies as they were right in your face in the “school yard”. And yes, they bullied to take you lunch money. With the Gen-X and late gen Millennial types it’s changed to “cyber bullying” hiding behind the anonymity of a keyboard and a faceless avatar. And yes, the motivation changed from one of “taking your lunch money” to just being malicious. Is it because they are angry, frustrated, or because they are bored and have too much time on their hands? Who knows. Sadly, bullies just like being bullies.

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between the people who want more information and those that are quietly swallowing the news while gritting their teeth

@dan_berry. you forgot the third group which is the group of us who want more information, but realize that 300 people have already posted that sentiment, and while I understand venting, it’s tiring that people keep opening new threads, that keep reiterating what has been said repeatedly in multiple exiting threads in hundreds+ of comments.

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Well, maybe if enough people ask for a bit more information, we’ll get it?

Someone earlier said something about ‘10,000 pages of engineer notes.’ That’s not what I’m asking for and that’s not what anyone is asking for. I’m simply asking for a slightly better description of the problems they’re having and what is causing one delay after another. If the problem is ‘we want to make sure the hinge of the door won’t break after 10,000 uses’ that’s one thing. If the problem is “the laser mechanism goes off track after 1 pass and we don’t know what’s causing it” that’s a whole different story.

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It’s very helpful to hear everyone’s opinion, and I appreciate you sharing yours.

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Hmmmm…huge sense of entitlement running rampant since the delay was announced.

Oddly, I don’t see any lack of transparency in the responses we’ve gotten – or any actual requests for transparency either. I see a lot of (a) I’m pissed off, (b) I’m disappointed, (c) I’m feeling unimportant, (d) I really have no idea how a new tech device actually comes to market, or (e) any combination of the above, and then demands for accountability to satisfy the individual as to why they feel any or all of (a) thru (e) above, and what can GF do to stop the individual from feeling any or all of (a) thru (e) above.

This situation is what it is, and the agreement each of us signed was about as clear as it gets. We really aren’t OWED much of anything further, and certainly not a blow by blow accounting of everything that is going on in the development and bringing to market of the GF. From what I can tell, even if we got it, there would be so much arm-chair quarterbacking that we would all go mad :slight_smile: I really think @dawime said it well with these 5 points:

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I think we are entitled to honesty and not deceit, and we were entitled to be told volume manufacture was not going ahead in Dec long before 2nd Dec and not given every indication that it was right up till then.

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Yes, this why so many on the forum have vented their anger. As Dan said, he’s happy to hear how everyone is feeling/thinking. I am sorry you felt deceived…I felt like it could have been handled better too. Hang in there (Dan too). - Rich

I understand there are a number of folks who feel they were deceived. My suggestion is to just go ahead and get your full refund and walk away. Keelhauling someone is not an option, and burning at the stake is against the law. Perhaps just take your money as the full refund, and then think twice before buying into a crowdfunded project in the future. Heaven knows I’ve lost out on one or two kickstarter and indiegogo campaigns that never came through. But I, personally, plan to stick with the GF – I really believe in it.

Mark Twain in his later years told the story of how he frequently had invested in new fangled inventions and ideas – and lost his money every time. He finally put his foot down, and when an earnest young man approached him for backing on a new invention, Mr. Samuel Clemens told him no.

Unfortunately, that young man’s name was Alexander Graham Bell…

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A difference in perception. Silly that we would get excited at each other over the difference in perspectives. We have each molded our own across life, and it is a result of our own personal experiences. That makes each one unique, it is ours alone.
Because I don’t identify with that of others, or they with mine doesn’t invalidate either one.
This one is mine

I personally don’t require a detailed explanation of issues/bugs they are chasing to polish this off. It may be interesting to know the problems, but SHOUTING a demand for a list is confrontational and suggests a perceived deception.
I don’t believe I am being deceived, just the opposite.
I was offered the opportunity to buy a world class innovative product at a greatly reduced price, that is already selling for $1,000 more than I paid, and it hasn’t even shipped yet! :sunglasses:

Whatever information Glowforge decides to grace me with is their decision. I understand my payment doesn’t entitle me to being privy to day to day company operations. I am grateful for all that has been shown and shared, but Dan doesn’t owe me a running report on what’s on his plate.
It is not my place to demand anything beyond what I agreed to - the best laser they can manage to build.

Personally I am very comfortable that a skilled team of engineers and professionals are dedicated to weeding out the minor issues that inevitably manifest in the final assemblage of a technically complicated product.
They are closing in on it, and it’s going to be great! :+1:

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Don’t be so patronising. It wasn’t marketed as a crowdfunded project at the time I backed it. That was one of the deceptions if you count it as a crowdfunded project now, which I still don’t. I have experience of many which I went into with my eyes wide open and you don’t get the option of taking your money back with those.

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I apologize – I never meant to be patronizing at all. Just feel that taking action in the form of the refund is preferable to vilification of the folks trying to bring the GF to market. Hostility and accusation has never worked well for me in getting what I am hoping for.

New tech is tricky. Here, we have the world’s largest tunnel boring machine drilling under the city, and an unforeseen and unpredicted problem caused about 2 years in delay while it was being fixed.

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It might be preferable for you that I cancel but it makes no sense for me while there is no chance of losing my money and some chance of the Glowforge arriving eventually. If the VC money runs out and they lose patience then it will be like a run on a bank and I will definitely cancel at that point, hopefully just before if I see the writing on the wall.

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My recollection at the time of purchase was that it was a crowd-funding project to bring a prototype to market. I even told my wife that because it was crowd-funded, and these things tend to have massive delays, that we shouldn’t expect the GF until at least 2017.

Currently I know it for what it is, which is a crowd-funded venture capital backed project to bring a prototype to market.

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Yes but it didn’t look like that when I backed it, which was something like the second or third day I think. I see that Norm from tested also thought he would get his Dec 15, so it is not just me being stupid.

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