Makerbot - oops

[yellowshark 153]

Not a good time for Stratasys. One of their shareholders has issued a class action lawsuit against them; their financial projection of $31-24 million loss has turned out to be $129-116 million. The missing $100 million seems to come from an impairment charge arising from the fact that Makerbot is worth somewhat less than the $494 million Stratasys paid for it in 2013.

At the same time it appears that a group of Makerbot customers are organising their own class action against the brand due to their faulty 5th Generation Replicator Smart Extruders (which the company has claimed to since have improved).

 

[3dw 1]

We all have a choice in this Additive Mfg world: to create/be makers of actual widgets, or shuffle share certificates and lawyer paper within public company arenae.

3Dw

 

[Daid 306]

It's these moments where I'm proud that Ultimaker managed to build itself without any investors (except for the 3 founders)

 

[skint 61]

Greed = Failure? Possibly. Ultimaker FTW!! lol

 

[zoev89 73]

Even though it is not Ultimaker I do have mixed feelings. What do the users gain by all these expensive lawsuits. It only brings out the negative in this world, I hate that there is enough suffering in this world. I am glad that Ultimaker tries to be open and the people in the company are very passionate.

 

[yellowshark 153]

Yes I know what you mean ZoeV89. Unlike Big Macs my personal view is that the USA litigious culture was not a good export. I am not convinced that there are lots of class actions in the UK but I do think that people who make products are seriously more scared these days which does nothing to help progress and reasonable risk taking. But in the right scenario I guess it has its positives

 

[tinydancer 0]

Class action suits are sometimes the only way to get a company to change their practices. The bottom line is what matters, especially to large companies like Stratasys that have shareholders and a board of directors. I highly doubt they weren't aware of the large number of problems they would see with their smart extruder right from the get go, and yet they still chose to release it.

While I have no idea if this lawsuit actually has any merit, what other recourse did their consumers have?