Ultimaker² lead time update

[cor-kiekens 0]

Hi Sander.

on the first page if this topic you wrote " Shipments will be on Monday and Tuesday. "

I was wandering if you really meant Tuesday(dinsdag) or Thursday (donderdag)..

[vinay 1]

another Unboxing Ultimaker 2!! Can't wait to get mine!! :eek: :roll: :blink:

Link:

 

[simmonsstummer 0]

Hi Sander.

on the first page if this topic you wrote " Shipments will be on Monday and Tuesday. "

I was wandering if you really meant Tuesday(dinsdag) or Thursday (donderdag)..

I thought that because of the delay they started to ship every day...

 

[hoanggy 0]

Based on what the company said, mine should be shipped tomorrow. I hope its true. I am already so behind on my work.I would have only 4 months of this project left to finish it. I planned to pay some money to print out my models but I thought i would order this machine and get everything printed out for cheaper. Now that I spent $3000 on this machine, I dont have enough money to go out and print stuff. It would cost me about the same as this printer. Plus, I'm going away for Christmas break for 3 weeks so I wont even be at my apartment to sign the delivery. So... Please please please get it here before December 15th.... Please........ Please...

 

[simon-nouws 0]

Based on what the company said, mine should be shipped tomorrow. I hope its true. I am already so behind on my work.I would have only 4 months of this project left to finish it. I planned to pay some money to print out my models but I thought i would order this machine and get everything printed out for cheaper. Now that I spent $3000 on this machine, I dont have enough money to go out and print stuff. It would cost me about the same as this printer. Plus, I'm going away for Christmas break for 3 weeks so I wont even be at my apartment to sign the delivery. So... Please please please get it here before December 15th.... Please........ Please...

 

Hoanggy,

It could be possible this is not going to happen. I called Ultimaker today since they told me last week on the phone the machine would be send to me by the end of the week(which made sense since I ordered on the 4th of October) and I still did not receive any track&trace info. They told me they send me an e-mail(which I did not receive) that they had new supply chain issues and that my order was scheduled for week 50 now. (Which kind of sucks because I HAD some orders to make in the first week of December...)

 

[simmonsstummer 0]

Hoanggy,

It could be possible this is not going to happen. I called Ultimaker today since they told me last week on the phone the machine would be send to me by the end of the week(which made sense since I ordered on the 4th of October) and I still did not receive any track&trace info. They told me they send me an e-mail(which I did not receive) that they had new supply chain issues and that my order was scheduled for week 50 now. (Which kind of sucks because I HAD some orders to make in the first week of December...)

 

I hope you are joking. If what you say is real, this is not a joke, this is a NIGHTMARE. This is exceedingly beyond the conceivable worst case scenario. Whic is the current by the way. This wait is seriously hurting my business plan and for what i see i'm not the only one.

If things continue this way I will be forced to withdraw the order and request a refund.

I hope I do not have to go that far and that the ultimaker will do everything humanly possible to comply with the dates already heavily delayed.

I'm sorry but patience is over.

 

[woofy 12]

I also ordered on 4th Oct and had the email from Sander on Friday explaining the further delay. My own UM2 is now delayed to week 50, it should have been here last week.

I'm quite sure though that Ultimaker are doing their very best, no-one could want this situation. The stress levels there must be through the roof. Try to cut them a little more slack.

 

[geeks 1]

With all due respect I must give you, it is normal to see this:

 

"Wait again ..." Say, you do not think you take us by boat? We paid anyway!

 

Either one has real information, it is ready to be accepted.

Either we do not know and we are right back to us. There is a sale contract between Ultimaker and Clients. It should not be forgotten.

 

After that, I do not think the solution is the Sillence. Even if it is only to make an inventory of discontent.

 

Well, go, let Ultimaker to work solving the problem. But I doubt much more.

 

Please let us know. Thank you.

 

[zolcos 0]

I think I saw a team member post a while ago that anyone whose order is still a long ways out, but needed it now, could call them and get their UM2 order converted into a UM1 order since those are in stock and ready to ship.

Personally I'm willing to wait however long is needed to get my UM2, although given that the timetable at the beginning of this thread is no longer being followed it would at least be nice to get an updated one based on current throughput.

 

[hoanggy 0]

Wow its crazy how dissapointed this is. If the company felt like they couldnt deliver most orders at the release date which is on october 21st, they should have made an announment to postpone the release date so whoever want to order know they are behind and seek for some other solution out there. I think the picture was pretty clear when you have thounsands of orders and a few printers actually made. I dont want to make the team anore stressed but im here worry about the quality of my work at my graduation show in May14 too, which is a huge milestone in my career.

[hoanggy 0]

I would be totally cool if before october 21st they made a public announcement that say "hey, we dont think we could take anymore order at this moment because we are already so behind in production" i would be happy to turn around and find a different printer. At the end Ultimaker is not only a product, its a business. A great product doesnt make a great business. Your timing of release date and production is completely off by months, even by half a year i must say.

[Nicolinux 288]

Hey guys, chill!

Ultimaker is a business not welfare. What do you expect them to do? Stop selling printers because they can't cope with demand temporally? These are good problems to have and I bet every other 3D printing company whishes to be in their shoes. They will ramp up production and they will meet demand. It is only a matter of how they handle this stressful situation in the mean time.

In a few days when you all have received your printers, all will be forgoten and you'll be working with the new machines and never look back. Why make life harder for everyone (including yourself)? They won't build printers faster because you complain on the forums. Or maybe they will, but then quality will suffer and you will complain on the forums...

So let's not have poor Sander grow any more grey hair (or he'll start to look like santa)

 

[mnis 11]

If Ultimaker takes a lot of time to meet the current demand, then that's no problem for me and I'm waiting patiently. But I expect informativity not only in blogs and forums. I do not have time to constantly search/look for obvious things ...

Slowly, it's enough for me. If the old schedule even still valid?

This silence is intolerable and not acceptable in the long run. So you do not treat paying customers. Even the smallest company can seek to customer friendliness. Daily log into my account sucks slowly. I do not buy chocolate chips here. I buy hardware for quite a lot of money. One person of UM surely can ship partially automated emails with status information to all customers. Since October, 21 .. So for more than a month no purchase confirmation?

[cor-kiekens 0]

I think there is a bit more going on than just "problems with one of our suppliers".last Tuesday (Nov 19th) i called to see if the already delayed schedule was still in effect. And they told me that i could still expect my UM2 this week... Four working days later i called again because of the rumours in this post. And they told me that there was a further delay. Reading the posts above the further delay could be around three weeks. Now I'm puzzeld. In just four days they managed to get a three week further delay... This seems a bit of impossible to me. More likely they wanted to address some issues regarding the packaging, wiring of the fans, SD card errors, lose coming rods etc.etc and stopped the production to address these issues. Anyway it would be very nice to hear something like that instead of some bogus story about supply chain issues. Please Ultimaker be an"open source".......

[SandervG 1,521]

Hi Guys,

Thank you all for posting.

I do understand the demand for more information, and if you all read this post, on page 4 I say:

'I have contacted those individuals who needed to be updated about their order.

If you do not hear from me, consider the schedule online to be the actual schedule.

 

When we make large improvements on the lead time I will create a new schedule.

Thank you all for understanding and for any further questions or remarks, please feel free to contact me'

 

To sum things up, I have contacted those through email who needed to be updated about their order status.

If you have not received an email from me, you can consider the schedule online as the one to follow.

I will sent some more customers an email later this afternoon about the delay due to the timing belts.

 

To follow up on Cor; if you have read the email that was sent to you, you read that the pulley belts we received were slightly too long. This means at a certain point in time we were not aware of this defect, and we were under the impression that the schedule could be maintained. On the other hand we also had the packaging that needed to improved, tested and implemented. Once we were aware of the timing belts-defect, and we got a clear overview over the situation we have communicated the delay. It is possible you contacted us right between these periods.

I feel that saying; 'We can not ship your order based on schedule, but I do not know when it will..' would be even a worse message to communicate. Therefore I choose to first get a clear view of the situation, make calculations and communicate the new situation to those affected.

 

Because we are also scaling up I have an idea of what will be sent until a certain point in time, but since this is still in process I am only calculating about a month ahead and make a new calculation again by that time.

 

'But I expect informativity not only in blogs and forums. I do not have time to constantly search/look for obvious things'

For this reason, and because it may vary (speed up) along the way I choose to communicate the schedule over email instead of the forums in this case.

 

If you have any questions or remarks about your order, please feel free to contact our sales team.

They would all be very happy to be of assistance.

 

Thank you for understanding,

 

[simon-nouws 0]

Yesterday I got an e-mail for Sander just as they promised me(so i guess this was just a server issue or something like that). It told me the same as Sander stated above.

I think the choice Ultimaker made, is the best option for a company that is still growing and cares for quality instead of quantity. After I got the explanation by mail that my printer was delayed by 2 weeks due to some extra testing for revisions to the design I was actually quite happy I still did not receive my Ultimaker 2.

Within 2 weeks I will get an even more fine tuned 3d printer than when they shipped me an Ultimaker 2 last week with some quick and dirty fixes.

I am still a bit down since I would love to be already printing a lot of stuff. But I am also very happy the guys at Ultimaker made this decision. Great job guys, I bet this was a hard decision!

 

[cor-kiekens 0]

Thanks Sander....

[geeks 1]

Thank you Sander

 

[zolcos 0]

Ah, it turns out I did get an email about this 4 days ago but it had gone to my spam box (yahoo mail) so I didn't notice it until now.

The mail client indicates the message failed SPF so that might be a contributing factor

 

[gr5 2,167]

I'm kind of guessing here. But when you have a team/factory assembling Ultimaker2's and one part stops arriving because it is defective, and you order a whole bunch of that part (the belts). I assume you can keep going with assembly so that when the belts arrive it is a quick step to attach the belts to all the UM2's that are ready for belts.

Of course you still have to test the printer at this point, but no "man hours" are wasted - it delays a week or two worth of orders but not the order's "farther out" in time. You can even pre-test that the electronics at least light up the display.

This all assumes you have the space to store an extra 2 weeks of UM2's somewhere!

 

[woofy 12]

I think that's what Sander was suggesting, by emailing those of us whose UM2 is due now to inform about the delay but leaving the original schedule for those on later deliveries.

 

[mnis 11]

Hi Sander and all the other Guys.

Certainly sounds from my post the voice of impatience, for that I apologize.

To satisfy unexpectedly high demand is a hard work.

To calm impatient customers is hard work too, but still very important and absolutely necessary.

But if any circumstances have a negative impact on a schedule, then information should be passed on without being asked, so much work is necessary.

For me and some others, it is very important to obtain current information about the purchased items directly.

Initial product defects are of course not good, but not always completely avoidable, I do not think so dramatically. With good support, information, and spare parts, this should be to get a grip somehow.

I visited last Friday iGo3D in Oldenburg / Germany. There I watched the Ultimaker2 directly at work. Now I know that the UM2 is a very good product. The wait for this great printer is heavy, but certainly not in vain.

I think you doing a very good job for all of us and of course I'll wait until it finally is ...

Would you without obligation give some more information?

How many UM2 devices have been pre-ordered and sold?

How many UM2 devices are produced each day?

How many UM2 devices are shipped every week?

How many assemblers produce the UM2 devices directly?

Works temporarily or permanently more staff for the UM2 production?

Markus

[nallath 1,120]

I can't speak for Ultimaker, but I'm pretty sure that details such as how many printers have been ordered/sold won't be given out, as it's sensitive business information.

 

[mnis 11]

@ nallath

Thanks for your answer, you have definitely right. But I just wanted to estimated data, no disclosure of all trade secrets. For example, I am interested in: How long does it take to Ultimaker is still represented in the stock market :smile:

Anyone who has very good products in its portfolio that must not be afraid of the competition, right?

But rather, I am interested in the following:

How long will it take up is the additional UM2 extruder available?

And how exactly is meant functionality with the WiFi? Do I need an optional accessory for it?

[roger-fujii 0]

I'm not sure if I should be upset, or just sad. SavervG's comment of Nov 26 says nothing to anyone ordering after Oct 30, and in some ways is rather insulting to the end user -

I feel that saying; 'We can not ship your order based on schedule, but I do not know when it will..' would be even a worse message to communicate.

Worse message than what? Saying absolutely nothing until it's finished? Have you ever had a car fixed? If it is a couple of hours after when you expected your car back, would you rather hear "a mechanic is looking at your problem right how, but hasn't diagnosed the cause" or hear absolutely nothing until the car is fixed?

Honestly, there are very simple things that can be done to be more honest and transparent to the customer.

1) In My Orders, under Shipment, don't say "Ready" unless the product is ready to ship. Add "Awaiting Production", "Burn-in" and whatever other states you want to stick in so that a user can look up what is up with the order.

2) Add an "Estimated Ship Date" with the order fields. If this changes for any reason, email the user that it has changed.

3) Do not take any orders which won't be delivered in > 5-6 weeks (more on this a little later)

This isn't rocket science. Dell, Amazon and other online vendors do this so you don't have to ask them what's up with an order. There is nothing to be gained by trying to keep your customers in the dark.

Now, as to why cap the waiting time. I as a consumer have a certain time window with payment providers (paypal, credit cards) to dispute charges. This is typically a statement cycle. By having such a large time between the time that you charge and the time that you deliver, you are just asking for people to call their payment provider up and lodge a claim before their time limit on disputes expire. This is a needless headache that you can avoid by not taking orders until you can promptly fill them.

Now, as for scaling, the schedule posted on 29 Oct shows no obvious benefits of scaling - production is pretty much behind 6+ weeks with no gains. If the scaling is only keeping up with increasing new orders, it is rather disingenuous to imply that the current backlog is going to be processed faster.

I do understand growing pains and am usually sympathetic when it looks like the vendor is fixing the issue. However, as I ordered in the early part of Nov, I still have zero clue right now if it's even going to ship in 2013. This is supposed to give people the warm and fuzzies? It's great to have understanding customers, but you have to ask yourselves at what point do the customers have a right to be angry at non-performance.