Update:
Email replied on June 18, 2014, 1:18am PST.
Stephen,
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I have not received the return shipping label. Please make sure have it ready by this Friday, since I will have a business trip next week. Nobody will take care the return of the replacement afterwards.
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If my Form1 printer is a functional one and I am looking for a performance upgrade, the upgrading fee is reasonable. HOWEVER, two printers in the past four months I experienced are defected and need to be repaired. This is not a upgrading. It’s a bug fix. The upgrading fee is extremely unreasonable. I am asking you send send back a replacement printer with improved system.
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Too many time and money have been wasted on the defected printer. At this moment, I reserve my right of escalating this issue. Instead, I am referring others’ comments about the defected printer and your service, so you would have a batter picture what’s going on at your customers’ side.
Best,
Zheng
Other customers’ comments from https://support.formlabs.com/entries/73304626-Form-1-What-it-should-have-been-originally-not-an-upgrade-
J.
Excellent customer support?! What company are you talking about? They don’t have a phone number and only have email conversations at a max speed of 4 days per reply. You call me for support and I answer the phone and you know what’s wrong in minutes. I deeply regret buying from Formlabs, in fact I have considered suing over the fact I bought a printer nearly a year ago and it has only been here and working less than 3 months. I still don’t have it back from repair and it took 6 months to arrive when I was told 3 months. Come to find out today that they want a $750 “upgrade” fee to make the printer work as advertised! I may not accept the delivery when it does come.
M.
June 10, 2014 12:32 PM
We can understand that problems can happen, especially for new hardware and new businness. But because the Form1+ will cost same as the Form1, and because this “+” upgrade is a BUGFIX release… the hardware upgrade shoud be automatic in case of the Form1 goes out of order, because that laser and galvos problems (that is a production problem).
I don’t need new machine, I just need that the new laser and galvos system have the quality that we bought. A 20 print-and-then-die machine isn’t the one we bought in the last months.
V.
After multiple returned printers, multiple wasted liters of expensive resin, countless wasted hours of struggling with this thing, all the times spending a week or two just to have a 3 minute conversation, etc… and now they expect me to pay $750 more to fix what they figured out they did wrong thanks to all of us paying to be beta testers. Un-f******-real!
June 10, 2014 02:16 PM
C.
Ive been silent about my issues but after hearing the recent announcements I feel I have to chime in.
After FIVE replacements I demanded my money back. Most of the issues I had like unfocussed lasers and unlevel trays could have been things quality tested at the factory but instead I was the one that had to devote countless of hours and resin on my dime to test and give feedback.
Out of a year of owning the machine, apart from doing test/trouble shooting prints, I managed ONE successful print which I am very proud of: https://support.formlabs.com/entries/27259543-Elephant-head-
Frustrating as it was, I can say that customer support was great. But in the end of the day, out of no fault of my own, I dont get to be part of the evolution of the Form1 and it bums me out…something that I helped funded in the first place.
Vent over. GG.
June 10, 2014 06:34 PM
M.D.
I’ve also been silent with my issues and have just not been using my printer at all in the last 6 months, it’s like a giant conversation piece / paperweight at this point–yielding anything but perfect prints. My experiences appear to be the same as everyone else, the first several prints were pretty great–nice resolution, sharp edges, the works. However, the printing experience has deteriorated with failed print after failed print with supports not curing rigidly enough / fragmenting during peel, requiring attempt after attempt to yield an acceptable print. Edges have lost their sharpness, squares printing as rectangular, circles printing as ovals, etc.
Seeing Formlabs release the Form 1+, you would think there would be reason to rejoice–but considering that the Form 1+ is a complete replacement to the Form 1 (in that the Form 1 is not being simultaneously sold alongside the Form 1+), it’s clear that the Form 1 was really just a Beta product with the Form 1+ being the final release.
Form 1 owners should in no way have to pay $750 to “upgrade” and receive a properly-functioning product. The “upgrade” / repair should be offered at (hardware) cost as a service to the customers & supporters of the product–Formlabs should not be profiting off this upgrade given there’s clearly a material / design flaw. It’s like a car company selling a lemon and not issuing a recall, requiring the owner to pay for all repairs (rental car included) out of pocket. If you really wanted to be cynical, it’s nearly a planned obsolescence business model…
I don’t know what to say about the “new” product announcement really but demanding $750 for feature-wise: entirely the ability to print 50% faster is a joke. I realize the faster print speed is a product of having a more powerful laser which was a necessary replacement regardless. This is how the printer should have been from the start… and it seems like Formlabs believes that too given that the Form 1+ is being offered at the same price as the “now obsolete” Form 1…
June 10, 2014 09:42 PM
T.
@Colus Havenga, OMG. FIVE replacements?
I guess it won’t make for good financial sense if they do free upgrades for current Form1 owners. Maybe that’s why they called it an upgrade instead of a fix. I don’t get a new car when my car manufacturers releases a new model… But for those users with problem, surely it makes sense to exchange with a Form 1+? As others have said, this is a replacement which makes the current model obsolete.
Financial sense aside, if Formlabs is willing to replace current models at cost and all shipping borne by us users, they won’t be facing so much heat.
June 11, 2014 12:15 AM
M.H.
@T - I guess it won’t make for good financial sense if they do free upgrades for current Form1 owners.
I have to disagree. Good financial sense? Maybe. Good business sense? Absolutely!
What costs less – installing $40 in new parts to a user’s machine or shipping endless refurbished machines back and forth to users? My shipping costs alone for Form 1 have to be over $150 easily (back to formlabs and then returned to me 3x on a very large, heavy package). By actually fixing the issue that causes so many returns, they eliminate the cost of continually repairing and shipping back machines (remember that they “refurbish” the machines as well, so they are already putting in new parts to replace failed lasers, galvos, etc). Plus, by doing so they get a community that starts to actually have printers work, and this printed work gets out in the form of pictures and 3d examples of successful prints, gaining ever more positive buzz for Formlabs.
Conversely, leaving the original Form1 users to rot will only return to the company in the form of angry users and bad press, and user reviews are too powerful in today’s net-connected world for any company to ignore. They simply can’t leave the original hanging helpless. Users will riot. I was not a kickstarter backer. I did not expect to buy a machine that had a failure rate this high. I thought that since they were producing printers en masse that they had worked out any and all kinks (especially if you believe all the hype on the web site). I was wrong. Where on the site does it say, “Take a chance and help us develop this untested printer with $150/liter resin!” ? It doesn’t, because you wouldn’t buy it if you read that.
June 11, 2014 12:30 AM
M.C.
I’m one of the first International KS backers and have used my Form1 lightly for small mechanical components and for the most part I have been a fan of the Form1. But I’ve had to deliberately use it sparingly as it became obvious on the forums it has serious and fundamental design flaws (just a little too much value engineering with some components). I think it was me who encouraged Kevin Holmes to open a support ticket for the issues he had with his first Form1? However my Form1 has now failed with lot’s of frustration and time/resin lost. I’ve now got my ticket to return my Form1 however the Form1+ has now been announced and I await a reply to my question to support “will my replacement Form1 have old or new spec optical components”?
I await the reply.
Formlabs secured multimillion dollar backers based upon two things their vision and hard work AND the faith that the KS backers and early adopters gave to them. Now after a more rigorous FMEA development process a Form1+ is the result, I truly hope the Formlabs team recognises that it is us who initially bank rolled them and additionally provided the marketing impetus the KS campaign gave because the idea behind the Form1 is good but the impimentation not so good.
Ok you’ve a buisness to run and investors to please but at $1000+ with shipping to correct your mistake mmmm.
June 11, 2014 08:27 AM
