Twice today I have customers change an order (specifically layer heights and color) after I have priced and accepted it. I receive no notification from Hubs about these changes to the order, resulting in two incorrect orders. I only receive notification that the customer has paid, and to start printing so I was unaware of these changes until I went back to the order pages and saw what was there is entirely different from what was printed. How is it possible the customer is able to change the order after the Hub has accepted it? Is anyone else experiencing this?
I quote and price based on what is on the order when I accept it, so the pricing is also wrong (although the price automatically generated by Hubs does change). For example, I had an order that was around $20 when I accepted it, but the customer changed settings and paid almost double that unbeknownst to me. If this is a bug, this needs to be fixed immediately. When I accept an order, it can’t just change randomly because the customer changes their mind.
sorry to hear that, that is not how it is supposed to work. We checked one of your orders and saw an automated comment about the changes. This should trigger an email and sms notification for you. Can you double check that you didn’t receive either so we can investigate what exactly went wrong?
Yea… I actually don’t like this feature either… if they have already PAID for the order… should not be able to make changes unless we allow (confirm) them… what happens if were half way thru the print and they totally change it on us? cant even do anything about it…
I had accepted the order at 11:45 or so am, and the customer made the changes an hour later right before he paid for the order. I received no email or SMS notification about those changes, only that the order was paid and to begin printing. Let me be explicitly clear about what happened. I had priced the order for a set layer height, and accepted it. After I accepted it but before payment, the customer changed print settings. This updated the automated price for the print itself, but did not impact pricing for other items like support material. So the customer paid for a different resolution than what I had accepted for printing. Once I accept an order, I plan print runs based on layer height and color. I can not have customers changing settings after I have accepted the order. That removes the whole purpose of having the accept order feature, if customers can just change settings anyway and proceed immediately to payment.
I agree with you. No order should be open to changes from the customer side once it has been paid. If changes are to be made, the customer can communicate them to the Hub, which can update the order from their side. That way the ability to print and pricing is again determined by the Hub before payment has been finalized. I believe that’s how it works now.
Watch out, customers can also use this to manipulate pricing.
I once had a customer submit a design with the units incorrectly set to inches. This made the automatic volume calculation and price wrong.
I changed the units and adjusted the price accordingly befor accepting the order.
The customer then deleted the part, added the same part again with the wrong units and paid a fraction of what the print should have cost.
I didn’t see how little I had earned on the job until after they had picked up the order. 3Dhubs support helped me determine what happened and issued a credit to cover the difference which was really nice.
If an order is accepted and awaiting payment the customer should have no control to change any aspect of it. If they contact the hub asking for an amend - Hub owners or 3D Hubs should be able to edit the order and relevant costs amends updated up until the point of payment. If they have paid for the order, NO AMENDS should be possible by either party.
Imho if an order is changed after it has been accepted, but before paid, not only should the Hub be notified, but also have the order acceptance status reset so that confirmation of the ability to complete the order’s new requirements and the new pricing can be made by the Hub. And the “new” order should not allow payment until it has been re-accepted.
Yeah, that should not be allowed. An “accepted” order should be unchangeable from the customer side. I haven’t run into the issue of the customer making changes directly to their order after acceptance, but I have been contacted by customers to update their order after I’ve accepted it, and my update also caused the system to request additional payment from the customer. Which I think is the correct process.
I have investigated the issue and it is in fact how it works by design. Unfortunately there is no easy fix we would be able to release in the coming days. However it is now up on our radar and I will make sure to prioritize it when we will redesign the order flow.
I agree. If an order has been accepted by the hub then the options for change should be:
Customer contacts hub to discuss.
Customer can cancel the order and start over with any repercussions of that.
There has to be a point where there is no turning back without a safety net for the hub.
Maybe a challenge - response accept. Hub accepts the job then the customer confirms acceptance. Then the discretion of the hub to print or wait for payment to be made.
Any changes at this point is at the full risk/liability of the customer and can only be done by a cancel by customer before payment or in coordination with the hub.
I understand there is a lot going on at 3D Hubs, but this really is something that the developers need to release some kind of solution for immediately. This impacts all Hubs and all customers, so even if it is just piecemeal solution, that is better than nothing. @form2 had a great suggestion which would address the issue well, even if it’s not what Hubs would like to keep around long term.
This issue is not a layout issue or convenience issue that can be corrected as you go, this loophole in the ordering system has the potential to cause a lot of problems and dissatisfaction between customers and Hubs.
This is an interesting topic and I can see how it could be a problem. Just recently I had a customer who originally placed an order for 1 of about 8 different parts, at later height of 0.2. After some discussion with him about what exactly he needed and making sure everything was all set, I accepted the order. The next day when I went to look at the order to see what the status was, the order had jumped to almost 230$ worth in parts. I was baffled, and worried as if it had gone through I had no way that week to print the parts for what was the original deadline. Just to specify what happened, order was placed on a Tuesday, Wednesday it was changed to having quantity of 17 on two parts, 2 on 3 other parts, and the resolution was changed to 0.05mm. That’s like an extra 100hrs of print time, and the customer originally wanted it for the following Saturday (which was a stretch to begin with, to guarantee that with the shipping method he had selected I would have had to ship the order the day before he placed it. And yes, that’s shipped not completed. Unless I can time travel that isn’t going to happen). The fact that I received no notification bothered me. Why is it that whenever I make changes to the order page, a notification is created telling the customer what I have done, and yet they can do just the same without anything? This seems very one sided towards the consumer and it’s frustrating. I understand not everyone running a hub is honest, but not every customer is either (which is really unfortunate…) This definitely needs to be handled sooner rather than later.
We have found the issue that prevented email and sms notifications to be sent to Hubs when customer updated an order. From now on, every time customer changes order parameters you will get notified. We will continue to work on improving the order process so we can introduce a proper fix in the future.
