I can tell you think you’ve written a well reasoned essay and responses fairly evaluating the situation. However, you’ve made a number of invalid assumptions.
The internet and the world at large are completely overrun with the complainers. There is little impetus for anyone to just say “all is well”.
This is a meager two data points that are greatly dissimilar, any college statistics class would fail this argument immediately.
That is almost the entirety of this forum, both the good and the bad covering multiple years. By asking this question are you saying you haven’t read it any of it?
Most of your replies are clearly slanted toward “I’m looking for people to validate my own experiences”. While that is is certainly a valid endeavor, you do not display any interest in hearing another viewpoint.
Whether a business should have a backup plan or not has been hashed to death all over all the various GF groups, here and otherwise. I don’t even run a business with mine but I still know of several laser services in my area. This isn’t business planning, just life planning and living. There’s always a solution to whatever situation one is facing.
I have had my GF less than a year now. I spend many hours a day on it and this forum (all while running a successful home business with my wife). I open every new post on this forum and try to help those that I can with what I have learned from experience and the information shared by others. I’ll be honest, I feel for you that have had difficulties and frustrations but I have stopped spending time on those posts that want to bash @dan and the staff. For the price point of this product it is an engineering masterpiece. I spent a great deal of my professional career in technology and industry and therefore maybe have a greater understanding or appreciation of just what it takes to get a product to market and aftermarket support. Anyone wanting to build a business around a new device, product or technology had better have a contingency plan for downtimes or machine failure. I hope you get your problems resolved and are up and running very soon but just a friendly word, why drink the bitter water of a glass half empty when the glass half full is cool and sweet?
This. Also, every interaction I have had with any representative of Glowforge has been absolutely positive. They care. They do their best to help. They are dedicated to their product and company. I once had the good fortune of being a part of a team who worked together as though we could read each other’s minds; who were so close and tightly knit that we both worked and played together; we were a family. It was magical and wonderful and we did amazing things together.
What I see of Glowforge’s staff reeks of that same magic. I envy them that, and I also know that for as long as they keep the magic, they will have success in their endeavors. I appreciate a leader who is able to make that magic happen, to cultivate and nourish it and keep it alive. Growing too fast is death to that kind of team. You have to find the right people, not just whatever warm body shows up with the proper skills. I would much rather see them grow slowly and carefully, because that’s what’s going to keep the magic alive.
This. I’ve had few reasons to contact support, but each time they have answered in a reasonable amount of time and usually have be back up and running in a day. I had one warranty replacement (on the very last day of coverage!) and received the refurb in less than a week. The only other hardware issue encountered was resolved in 3 days with a part mailed to me.
A bit ago they hit 1,000,000 prints in a single month, and if you take the number of support tickets/complaints during that time, you’d see they are a small fraction of the overall experience. (Even smaller when a large chunk of those tickets are user error.) That doesn’t mean there aren’t people who’ve had bad service or equipment or justified frustrations, it’s just an example of how we only hear the negatives because other users didn’t post 1,000,000 times to say things worked great.
Yes, service isn’t on demand like the service I can get on my LG stove, but I can say I’ve never had more ethical or a genuinely courteous service experience than I’ve had with GF. There’s a lot of room for improvement and getting it sooner than later would be great, but you bought a relatively inexpensive hobby laser to run a business and you decided not to have a backup plan. I have sympathy for you and hope things get resolved quickly so you’re back in business, but going with a lower end laser instead of a smaller $20,000 commercial laser is on you.
Update on my HVAC repair saga: The tech’s father died of COVID-19. Quarantine means that he can’t come in and work on my car. they might be able to get someone to do it. Two weeks and counting.