Pardon me for being blunt but what others experienced isn’t really my concern. I am talking about now, now that the company is moving forward with this and these are the things that I feel are important to bring up. $4000 is a decent amount of money, this IS about me and my finances. When making a large purchase like this as an investment for my business, means I need to get a good return on that investment and if I miss some of the Holiday selling season that affects my bottom line. I hope you understand where I am coming from here, its just business.
Oh and I didn’t order a filter I order the Plus which said was IN STOCK…
Because you are more special than anyone? I also was promised delivery on Nov first and was not operational; till Feb. and I spent $6k not four and had all the same concerns. It is indeed just business and not everything happens as you would wish. You could have spent $300 for a Chinese machine and still be figuring it out a year from now, and the many other issues, or $30k for an Epilog and have a good machine that will do a stronger cut on bigger stuff but harder financial nut to crack.
A number of folks here have all those and more some no more than the Glowforge. Your lack of concern for others does make it harder for those others to have concern for your problems (even though they usually manage)
If everyone felt the same way you wouldn’t get any replies.
Good luck with your shipment.
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I tried to tell you this is just about business and I believe my concerns are legitimate. I do not have a lack of concern for what others went though but their travails don’t really help me now do they. This is not the onset of this company, its has been in production and I think its great it is being some widely acclaimed and purchased. No, I don’t think I am “more special” … Like I said, this IS about my business and I don’t need platitudes, I would have appreciated answers actually. So the snark is not only unwarranted its really unnecessary…I’m trying to run a business and for me, this kind of thing just doesn’t sit well with me. When I tell a customer an item I have sold them is going to ship at a certain time or date, I go out of my way to make sure I keep my word and if I don’t I try to do something to make sure I keep them as a customer and maintain the best relationship possible. I realize this is a different set of circumstances but I find the lack of communication a great concern, especially if I have any issues moving forward…so unless you have something more constructive to say or offer, other than an insult, then I am no longer in need of any of your insights, but thanks for trying…
you’ll probably want to post this in problems and support. posting it in “everything else” is unlikely to get a support response to your question.
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Why is being honest about how you are feeling a problem for people. I said this was about business, I’m looking for real answers not platitudes, I am in business and made this purchase after a ton of research and did not expect to have this issue…
Hear hear
I was actually just looking for someone who had a good experience like yes mine said x,y ,z and I got it a few days later etc. How people came about getting theirs “years” after they ordered it doesn’t help me. I was looking for recent purchases and timelines. I am not a bitch, just a business woman who is trying to get this machine so I can take advantage of the Holiday selling season. Perhaps you are all hobbyists and waiting wasn’t an issue but if I was told it would ship on a certain day, then as a business who honors their commitments, I expected the same…
FWIW, I got my email shipping notification shortly after UPS delivered my unit.
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I asked a question, was I wanted was real time current answers, did I really need to ask for that specifically? How does something that happened 3 years ago when this was all a dream help me now?
Ugh, obviously communications are not their best asset, wondering how this will affect problems in the future, but thanks very much for the heads up, so even their “notifications” are off 
Oh and for some reason I can’t “reply” anymore for 19 hours…SMH
I actually think she is. Most of us (the veterans around here anyway) were early day buyers - we bought knowing it was a development project (not as much as it turned out though).
This post is from someone who bought after Dan transitioned from pre-purchase to “get yours in 10 days”. The company is either no longer in startup mode or it’s a grown up that needs to follow business norms. If you’re selling on Amazon people have an expectation of how you’ll deliver - the GF of the past three years does not match those expectations and what the early pioneers went through is not relevant to the guy buying today with an “in stock” notice.
GF may not be ready for a normal business sales, marketing & fulfillment model. That doesn’t invalidate their failure to meet their customers’ reasonable expectations caused by their decision to declare mission accomplished, find us on Amazon.
I’d suggest this is a bigger fail than the 3 years of delays many of us went through. I don’t buy something shown on Amazon and expect crowd funded company behavior.
It’s very similar to another thread here about a small company failing to deliver wood in a timely & communicative manner but with radically different responses from forum-folk 
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You might have missed this…it is the answer you were seeking.
Business owner to business owner…I have a couple of suggestions:
- If you have never used a laser before, spend the time while you are waiting getting to know how the machine works by reading through as many tutorials ahead of it’s arrival as you can. Got a really good starter list here:
-
If you already feel comfortable using various kinds of design software, spend the time creating designs so you will have them ready to implement when the machine arrives.
-
And pre-purchasing material to have it ready also speeds up the process.
Good luck.
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If you had read this forum you would have known almost every issue good and bad.
You got answers, you just did not like them.
I think that you will find that most are in business, some large some not so much. not many folk can spend that much on a “hobby” machine.
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I’ve spent 69 full (as in 24hr) days over nearly 1,000 calendar days reading 318,000 posts. (@rpegg’s even worse )
I think it’s unfair to suggest that reading this forum is appropriate for finding the truth about a product featured on Amazon.
Those of us who have been here for the journey need to understand most all of the new folks we’re seeing here are new customers coming after Dan declared done.
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The thing that drives me nuts with Amazon is the total lack of information, even about very basic things, much less details. I did buy the Glowforge without sufficient knowledge, but the key I focused on was actually working for non-techies, and that was my greatest concern for any of these robots. I had sadly come to the conclusion that 3D printing was too slow and only worked in plastic. All the really big or fast systems were tens of thousands of dollars ora pile of pieces to put together, and metal printing also beyond hope.
Much that I knew and much that I did not were things I did not like about laser cutting in general or Glowforge specifically, but I also knew that nobody was producing the Star Trek replicators yet and after watching the Stargate series perhaps that is a good thing.
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Content deleted by owner as it did nothing to further the discussion.
Goodbye cruel world.
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How would she know that?
She’s been here a week. She just ordered a product offered for retail sale. She hasn’t got any of the customary channels available to talk to the company that sold it to her - you know, like a phone number she could call, or an email for sales or shipping or something besides support where her answer is an automated response. She’s gotten radio silence from the company that took her money. She reaches out here and we tell her it’s her own fault, her expectations are flawed and she needs to read a few hundred thousand posts so she gets her expectations in line.
How many of us would order anything else for their business (or home for that matter) and find this acceptable? Is that your expectation from Kohl’s or Target or Dell or Best Buy?
For those who would claim they would, please go read all the comments in the Woodchuck thread. We’re coloring our responses here with our shared history of the crowd funding experience. We are the poster children for Stockholm Syndrome.
I feel nothing but sympathy for what she’s going through. She didn’t buy a crowdsourced pre-order. My honest advice would be for her to check out Craigslist and see if she can find a used Trotec or Epilog or Universal, buy it and cancel the GF. As we’ve seen, they’re not setup to properly respond to mission critical devices in a commercial setting. Unless you buy multiples you always face the possibility that it won’t work when you need it and it could take you several weeks to get your problem resolved. You might be lucky and have no issues but that’s not going to help the people who are dead in the water with deadlines approaching.
It’s bad business practice to rely on a sole sourced critical tool, supplier, material or other service provider. You have few options if they fail you. Far better to build your business around something with multiple sources of supply.
If Dremel gets theirs out the door, we may see that having external cooling is not as big a deal-breaker as many assume. I don’t expect they’ll alter their support model to mimic GF’s.
@deb1 - PM me and let’s see if there’s a way you can use my GF while you wait.
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