Changed lead times, poor communication

[tottenham12712 1]

Alright guys, this is where things get a bit frustrating. Ive contacted support a few times and I have gotten incredibly vague responses(ie. "its shipping *soon*"). I ordered my unit on the 21st of October, on the 20th the store page stated it was "in stock" with a 5 day lead time(google cache image will be added below).

As of today the site now says its a 4-6 week lead time.... So what is actually going on here? I will say that I am not going to wait another 2 weeks to a month to get this machine, I've heard good things about it and am somewhat patient but I have absolutely zero issues canceling my order (and I will not wait 1-2 months to get a refund I will simply contact AMEX to pull the charge back) there are other companies producing very comparable machines that do not have a lead time of 4-6 weeks.

I would like an actual date on when my unit will ship, if that cant be provided than I will submit a request to cancel my order as I have projects that need to be completed.

Thanks,

Dylan

 

[gr5 2,172]

I also heard it jumped recently from 2 weeks to 6 weeks. Don't know why but I know they are shipping.

You may have been better off ordering from makerShed since you are in the USA. Their ordering website is much clearer about if they have them in stock or not and you get the same service after you receive it.

 

[tottenham12712 1]

I also heard it jumped recently from 2 weeks to 6 weeks. Don't know why but I know they are shipping.

You may have been better off ordering from makerShed since you are in the USA. Their ordering website is much clearer about if they have them in stock or not and you get the same service after you receive it.

 

I checked makershed before I ordered direct and they were out of stock so I figured it would be faster since the US location opened, unfortunately thats not the case. I just ordered one from makershed so thank you for making me check again!

Ill contact Ultimaker to cancel my current order with them.

As a side note Ultimaker, you guys really need to work on communicating delays to your customers, I shouldnt have to find out by reading fine print on the site, I did just give you 2,500 dollars...

Edit: forgot how to spell properly

 

[tottenham12712 1]

Small update:

My UM2 has been shipped from makershed and should be here early next week.

Ultimaker has also started the refund process for my order, they stated it should take around 10 days to appear on my card statement.

 

[SandervG 1,521]

Hi Tottenham,

Thank you for your post.

I am a little bit late to the party because it seems to be resolved already, and I hope it works out for you well through Makershed.

As an alternative, for any future readers, Dynamism & iMakr are also official resellers in the US.

About the stock, we recently came to learn that due to an unforeseen problem with a supplier we were caught by surprise and were forced to push back the lead time a few weeks. As you understand none of us was happy about it because there is nothing we rather do then shipping out Ultimakers into the world.

We were not the only one caught by surprise.. so were you. And besides you, plenty of other Ultimaker users as well.

As you can imagine this resulted in quite a big workload for our support team answering to everyone and looking for solutions. In your case, I am happy you found a solution with MakerShed and you remain to be a valuable member of our community.

I hope from now on your experience will be much smoother and if you have any questions please feel free to return to these forums. Also if you want to share what you have made with your Ultimaker

Thank you for your time, I hope you have a great day!

 

[tinydancer 0]

In the future for anyone who might be ordering from the US, I suggest to go through Dynamism. Great customer service and I received my printer here in Canada from Chicago in 2 days after shipping. Even had payment issues and they were quickly handled once I got things sorted out on my end.

 

[tottenham12712 1]

Hi Tottenham,

Thank you for your post.

I am a little bit late to the party because it seems to be resolved already, and I hope it works out for you well through Makershed.

As an alternative, for any future readers, Dynamism & iMakr are also official resellers in the US.

About the stock, we recently came to learn that due to an unforeseen problem with a supplier we were caught by surprise and were forced to push back the lead time a few weeks. As you understand none of us was happy about it because there is nothing we rather do then shipping out Ultimakers into the world.

We were not the only one caught by surprise.. so were you. And besides you, plenty of other Ultimaker users as well.

As you can imagine this resulted in quite a big workload for our support team answering to everyone and looking for solutions. In your case, I am happy you found a solution with MakerShed and you remain to be a valuable member of our community.

I hope from now on your experience will be much smoother and if you have any questions please feel free to return to these forums. Also if you want to share what you have made with your Ultimaker

Thank you for your time, I hope you have a great day!

 

SandervG,

Thank you for the response. I think its pretty clear that you guys make a killer product, which is why I did not go anywhere else.

My main issue (and it seems a few others here on the site) is the communication. Instead of saying its shipping "soon" please tell me its going to be delayed due to a supplier or even just say its delayed, honestly anything other than "its shipping soon" would be way better. Make a forum post about it, make a mass update to the orders of everyone from X date to Y date.

I work in IT and I know very well what its like to be understaffed and over whelmed, but a lot of that work load could have been reduced by having a forum post, a notification on the main product page site, email to all orders during a time range etc.

Not trying to be a PITA or anything like that just trying to shed some light on how this situation was handled and maybe how it could be improved in the future.

Thanks,

Dylan

 

[SandervG 1,521]

Hi Dylan,

Thank you for your feedback, it is much appreciated and we need it to improve our methods.

From my personal experience I have learned that making a statement that orders are being delayed without a definitive ETA, will not change the workload for our team. If anything, it may make it worse because users will want to know when their order will arrive.

For that reason we have chosen to add the lead time to the product description, and if I am not mistaken we managed to ship out the Ultimakers to all who ordered it during the normal shipping time, and those who ordered it with the new lead time well.. hopefully they will have some more patience. Of course, there were a few exceptions and we are working hard to find a workable solutions for them.

With that notification we hope to have set the right expectation and put our effort in answering to our users.

Today, I have several job interviews because at the same time we know we need to expand to maintain our normal level of support.

Maybe not all choices work out exactly as we planned, but hopefully this will create some insight in why we handled it like this.

Thanks again and if you have any questions I would be more then happy to answer them.