New Shipping Options

[Brian]

Thanks Jackson, indeed customers have been asking for shipping time and price indications per country, we’re excited to start showing that in the checkout from July onwards.

Brian

[Brian]

Hi @keebie81 thanks for the feedback. Indeed small and light items can often fit in small boxes, and the bulk of prints on our platform fall in that category. At the same time a really heavy print comes with a big price tag, so you could consider offering free shipping as extra service to the customer.

Having said that we’ll collect all the feedback and we’ll evaluate coming week if we want to add more functionality to support pricing by weight and size. For sure we’ll closely monitor how customers and hubs use the feature to continue to improve it.

As for the email notification, we’ve only notified 10% of our Hubs this Friday, so we can catch any technical issues early on. On Monday and Tuesday we’ll be informing the rest of the Hubs.

Shipping time means the time the shipping takes. Let me know if you have other questions or ideas on how to make it better (besides the size and weight pricing).

Brian

[Brian]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for giving your feedback and thinking along Peter! Of course we’re not trying to make it harder for you to run your business, we’re addressing a painpoint that many customers have expressed to us and is keeping them from ordering on 3D Hubs.

Some of the frustrations that customers experience with the current ‘legacy’ shipping is that they are unable to take shipping costs and time into account when choosing a Hub. Essentially they are comparing apples and pears. The fact that the total price of the order changes after they’ve placed their order isn’t the best experience either.

With the new shipping service we’re allowing Hubs to offer multiple shipping options per region. In the first version we’re not taking size and weight into account yet, as most prints are fairly small and light. However based on the feedback from yourself and other Hubs and the strong demand for weight/size based pricing we’ll get back to the drawing board and see if we can incorporate that, either before launch or after once we’ve collected data on how customers and Hubs are using it. Does that sound fair?

Perhaps allowing you to set max width, height, depth measurements and a max weight per option could solve a lot of the issues you’re describing.

Love to hear your ideas to make the shipping feature better, without making is super complex.

Best,

Brian

[PeterMake]

Brian,

I’m sorry but you do not understand shipping cost!

I could send two orders to different customers in the same city.

One order is for $9.00 but is flat and fits in an envelope and cost $3.95 to ship.

The other order is for $9.00 but is short and round, has to go in a box, now the shipping cost $6.95.

It is all about how the part is shaped not about the sale price.

Customers are very sensitive about shipping costs, if they feel that they are over paying they will be angered and cancel their orders!

The only way to offer free shipping is to up our printing rates, again customers are very sensitive on printing cost and usually go to the cheaper Hubs.

You say we will be able to set shipping prices by location, almost every zip code would be a different price.

Do you realize how many zip codes, counties, cities, towns, etc. there are in the United States?

This might work in Europe but not in the U.S.

If you sell on-line with the various e-commerce apps, they will always offer shipping based on size and weight.

In fact, this option is so important to on-stores that some e-commerce sites will charge a premium for the size and weight option for shipping because they know that you need this option to make a profit.

Shipping by price is the biggest mistake in e-commerce and you are forcing us to use the method.

I would like to know how many of the 3D Hubs actually ever ran an e-commerce ship on-line and were happy with charging shipping by sales price.

Your Hubs will end up with a lot of unhappy customers.

Your Hubs may start losing profit.

Why not offer us, your Hubs, a choice!

Why not trust us, your Hubs, with our own decisions.

Your Hubs that are successful is how you, 3D Hubs, earn your money.

If we fail or start to lose money from you policies we will be forced to go else where with our services and you, 3D Hubs, will lose money and perhaps someday fail yourself.

Again, do not force this on us,

Regards,

Peter Zacarelli

PeterMake 3D Hub

[Brian]

Thanks for the feedback Peter, I see and understand the issues you’re describing and we’ll take time to address them! It’s definitely not our intention to force a system on you that makes you lose money or make customers unhappy.

Besides, we’ll still allow you to change the pricing after an order is placed, so we can also think about the wording in the checkout e.g. shipping price estimate.

We’re going to make it work Peter!

[JATMN]

I have never seen this “legacy” shipping option and I have to say this “new” one… is completely worthless to me. As mentioned by others. You can’t have a flat rate shipping for all orders. I have had some that cost only a few dollars to ship “tiny” prints and some prints were significantly larger and had alot of infill. The whole order was around 1.5lbs or plastic. Which cost quite a bit more to ship. Offering a “free shipping” option is insulting to me. As my services are already minimal on margins. Some orders I would take a total loss with free shipping as I accept small order requests. The concept is a start. But I feel it’s horribly executed and honestly most of my customers would hate it too.

[JATMN]

Brian I feel you don’t do very much shipping in general. At least here in the USA I ship all orders USPS as my orders generally don’t need UPS/FedEx handling. Many orders I can ship first-class due to weight and the customer is close enough that first class is still next day service. Some orders weigh too much and I ship them priority mail which is actually also a expedited shipping option. Point is first-class has variable shipping speed and cost varies by the oz. Where priority mail is priced different. Then some orders I can ship flat-rate but it’s not worth the cost unless the order is very heavy, but it’s in a price bracket of its own. All my orders I evaluate for best shipping option for the customer before even accepting the order. While I’m sure there is better ways to do it… the option your showing is not the answer.

[JATMN]

Brian, not to be rude but your completely not listening to Peters concerns at all. Instead your undermining him and I find it quite rude. I echo Peters concerns 500x you need to start listening to your hubs before making changes or your best hubs will be gone. My hub isn’t even a year old and I’m pushing for “Professional” status here in the next month or so. My point I have a very active hub and even self imposed the limits of how many orders come in because I get so many at once at times. If 3Dhubs continues this route with updates. Your going to start loosing hubs and 3Dhubs will be the ones that take the loss not he hubs because the loyal customer will follow the hub. Your changes for address verifications you completely disregarded hub concern’s and it was eventually swept under the rug completely. Pay attention or your going to loose your hubs.

[Brian]

Hi @JATMN you’re right, I’m not very familiar with shipping in the US, thanks for sharing your shipping experience.

I’ll investigate with my team if there is a shipping API we might be able to integrate to make shipping prices dynamic in the US. We looked at existing API’s but there is no service available to has coverage that matches the breadth of our platform (158 countries). Lots of Hubs indicated us that they prefer using local postal solutions over standardized services like UPS as they are often priced more competitively (at least in Europe).

What’s important is that we’re building a foundation that allows us to build additional services on top of and over the coming weeks we’ll learn what it takes to get it right. This is just the first step, and hopefully with the super useful feedback from your guys we’ll make it work.

[JATMN]

USPS.com is the postal service in the USA. They have a API. Also I’m most cases will be the shipping option of choice when orders are simi local. Ups and FedEx are the two primary package carriers in the USA. They both have API as well. Alot of these new *enhancements* like mentioned before. Should be optional for hubs to turn on of off. This is a vast industry with little in place for standards. So you can’t assume you will be able to make a one size fits all. Your dealing on a global scale which is vast. I can’t speak for other countries, but just in the USA is nearly impossible to make the one size fits all glove your trying to impose on us. Your going in the right direction but if you don’t listen to your hubs your going to land face first in the mud and get trampled before you get it right. We’re pointing out where every pot hole is. So avoid them. Stop digging new potholes to fill in others. I have expressed more than once I’m willing to talk one on one with 3dhubs but never got the a single email and response on Facebook leaves much to be desired.

[Brian]

Hey Jatmn, we’ve only informed the first 10% of our Hubs about the shipping update yesterday, in order to catch any bugs or unclarities. We’ve already got over 100 Hubs updating their shipping within one day and it seems to be working alright, so on Monday we’ll inform the remaining 90% of our Hubs.

We’re also going to investigate further features to handle weight and size in a smart way, so stay tuned for that - we might even be able to include something before the July 1st launch based on your feedback.

I’m sorry that the “free shipping” option is insulting to you, you’re absolutely free not to offer it.

[Brian]

Thanks Jatmn for the continued support and for pointing out the pot holes, much appreciated.

Lets plan a call coming week so you can share your further insights, I’ll shoot you an email right now.

[PeterMake]

You might consider an API like Shippo as is has USPS, UPS, FedEx and DHL.

Also they give a discount on shipping rates.

https://goshippo.com/

Peter

[JATMN]

I feel your now upset with me. It’s also my option to shut down my hub and take “my” customer with me. I might be a nobody to you and 3Dhubs. But I challenge you to find people in the industry who do not respect my concerns. I am very put unhappy with your snappy response to me and frankly will make this known.

[JATMN]

I been using stamps.com myself but I dont think they have a API that I’m aware of

[PeterMake]

Shippo is designed for e-commerce to use so it has an API and offer discount rates on the shipping rates for USPS, UPS, Fedex and DHL.

Peter

[Brian]

Thanks @PeterMake3D and @JATMN will check those out coming days!

[Lucika29]

Hi, I’m quite surprised at how violent this thread turned out to be. As I see it, the new update is not an insult but a step forward to a clear pricing in which the client is in control and knows from the beginning what to expect from each Hub. For certain countries like Spain (my own), this system is very useful since our national service Correos, priced by the gram, is shamefully unreliable and big international companies like UPS, FedEX and DHL are too expensive. My choice here is a small company that offers semi flat rates depending on the overall size of the package and urgency of the client, so I can make good use of this method. I’m tired of offering my clients all the options everytime, when they could have known from the beginning.

Peace out,

Lucía

[Tixhyl]

Hi,

For me as well, pretty much all my orders ship at €5 locally. Size doesn’t matter and weight is from 0 to 2KG. So optimal for me to show the customers how much i will charge for shipping. It would be nice though, to include that the size and weight of the print could increase the nominal shipping rate.

Otherwise nice feature, 3DHubs!

Christophe

[Brian]

Hi Pete,

Indeed the biggest challenges seem to be in the US. We’re adding States to the regions right now, so at least you’ll be able to set a estimated price per state so a bit more granular than just on country level.

You can also use the description field to manage the customer expectation, I think that will be very useful in preventing disappointed customers, we’ll make sure to show it to customers in the checkout.

At the same time we’re looking at estimating weight for prints, but that might take some time as we have hundreds of materials in the DB and we would have to estimate packaging materials somehow as well. At the same time predicting parcel size based on print dimensions is going to be tricky and fairly inaccurate as well. If you have time tomorrow it would be great if you can join the call with Jatmn so we can discuss these challenges, I’ll send you the invite so I can hear your ideas.

Brian