New Shipping Options

[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

[PeterMake]

Hi Christophe and others,

Not angry, but frustrated, frustrated that no one at 3D hubs consulted with any of us first before bring on these changes.

I run a hub for profit, it is not a hobby to me.

I have an inpectable reputation with my customers.

I have a profitable hub with many satisfied customers.

I offer a good service and produce excellent 3D printed parts and models.

I try to keep my prices just and fair.

I pay my share of profits to 3D Hubs.

I do all of this with my own hard work.

I will not apologize that I am a frustrated that 3D Hubs is putting a burden on my business with new shipping methods without what I believe, is a full understanding how shipping works where I operate my hub.

The United States and Canada are large countries and trying to determine shipping cost by location is a nightmare.

Most of this is due to the fact that package size, package weight and destination MUST be all determined in order to ship.

The shipping costs could vary greatly because something might weight an ounce more, or the package is a ½ inch wider or even if a package is going to a different zip code within the same city.

It is so difficult to calculate shipping costs that even most APIs used in eCommerce don’t often get it right. It is one of the largest complaints that online stores have with their shopping cart providers, that real time shipping estimates are either not offered or not accurate. Take Shopify for instance, they only offer real time rates if you pay a premium, however, they don’t include the package size as one of the parameters so it is useless because every rate they quote is incorrect so most Shopify store use a third party API instead.

The other issue is that Americans have become very sensitive about shipping costs. The shipping rates in this country keep on going up and up to the point where smaller stores cannot compete with a company like Amazon with it’s vast resources and customer base because they are able to negotiate lower rates with their shippers such at FedEx, UPS and even the USPS. Also they have their own delivery people in large metro areas.

If real time rates are not available most online merchants will try to come up with an average shipping rate perhaps based on region.

This means that you will be losing money on some shipments and over charging customers on others. Brian has said that you could always adjust the shipping costs afterwards, but again, it has been my experience that if a customer thinks that you are trying to inflate shipping costs they will perceive you as a dishonest merchant and won’t even give you the chance to make the adjustment and shop elsewhere.

And most merchants will agree that Flat Rate Shipping or Shipping by Region is a LAST RESORT.

In fact there have been studies done that say customers would rather pay higher product prices than pay for shipping. This is all well and good but this type of pricing model will not work with the services that we sell on 3D Hubs and keep in mine that what we do sell is a service not products per say.

I envy you that you have a much simpler shipping costs approach and still maintain profitability.

What do you do if a $6.00 printed part could cost anywhere from $1.00 to $12.00 to ship depending on location?

Brian said that perhaps we could offer Free Shipping. Free Shipping would only work if you inflate the prices to the extreme for your services and than only if other the hubs also up their prices. You have to be very careful or all your hard work in the past building up your business could go down the drain very quickly.

3D Hubs was designed for the Euro Market and understandable so.

I understand and respect that.

However, there are now so many hubs in North America that perhaps 3D Hubs should think a North American version of the 3D Hubs more in tune with the way business is done in North America.

Certainly eBay does this, they have different eBays for different parts of the world and there is a reason for this.

After all we don’t have VAT here and 3D hubs has not may it easy for our State by State, County by County, Zip Code by Zip Code Sales Tax system that we have to use. In fact we have to do our own calculations for sales tax and add it to the order as an after thought. And certainly hubs in other parts of the world do not understand and could care less about the U.S sales tax system as I personally do not understand the VAT system.

So I say this to all my friends in the European Market, please have a little apathy for us here in the States.

We fear that our hubs might be in jeopardy due to a change that was never talked about until a few weeks prior to implementation.
We are concerned that we will lose profit and have to abandon our hubs and we do not want to do that.

I am sure that 3D Hubs will do their best to try to accommodate hubs in places where shipping has a vast number of variables like in the U.S. so I will no longer speak about this topic again unless 3D hubs has any questions they might want to ask of me.

If I have cause anyone to feel hurt or insulted then I do sincerely apologize, please this was not my intent, it was just the frustration coming out from the fear of the impact on my hub.

Sincerely,

Peter Zacarelli

[JATMN]

Shipping per state does not do anything but make even more headache… I’m not going to sit here and figure out 1000 shipping rates to cover all the region’s of every state…which is still subjective to size and weight. I would advise 3dhubs to not waste the hours paying devs to do this as it’s a waste of even 3dhubs time

[SOC3D]

We have shipping zones (9-10 of them) adding states is a waste of time. Ours and yours.

[Brian]

Hi Pete,

Just wanted to let you know that we’re working on a fix that will allow you to choose between ‘Flat rate’ and ‘Price per Order’. We’ll try to get it built tomorrow, that should allow us to still launch this early July, and learn from customers and Hubs working with the new service. In this way customers can see what shipping services you offer, without you having to predict the price beforehand.

I would still like to chat with you tomorrow, if you’ve got time as I think we indeed have rushed this shipping feature with too little US focus and learning from your experiences will help us make it better.

Best,

Brian

ps. no harm done on my side, better to speak up and be heard than let a issue linger on… hope we’re on track to fixing it with the above change

[Brian]

Hi Perry,

We’re going to add a 3rd option tomorrow that allow you to “Price per Order”, instead of the flat rate or free shipping. That basically allows all Hubs in the US to keep using the ‘legacy’ shipping but still provide more info about what shipping services/delivery times they offer.

Hope that is helpful, as this thread hopefully shows we do listen (although we should have consulted more US hubs upfront) and will make rapid iterations to the feature before it goes live.

Best,

Brian

[SOC3D]

The impression I’m getting from 3D hubs responses thus far is that because they are not an American company and the shipping issue for some reason primarily affects the US, they don’t seem to care at this point.

There is around 10K worth of development work required to build a P2P 3D printing service which would care about and cater to US based hubs. It would really take under 100K up front to get netfabb, cura or simplify, real time shipping, per hub profiles for material type, pricing that makes sense and advertising. If you didn’t waste money on full time lazy devs you could hit 10-20K a month in expenses for the first year.

Making a more sensible pricing model which offers per print fees or monthly volume fees would also draw in more customers who don’t like the massive flat rate surcharge.

I won’t be at all surprised when one of the Anti-US forced options causes new competitors to spring up to fill the void US hubs and customers now have.

I also wouldn’t be surprised to see several US states ban or file suit against 3D hubs over the whole “we collect VAT but not sales tax” issue that could be looming out there.

Hubs are volunteering their time, knowledge, expertise and advice on how to not turn this for profit system into a disaster. So far just looking through this and a few other threads there is a lot of insults and undermining of those hubs from 3D hubs support and admins.

All of this may come off as offensive or direct. I see no reason to beat around the bush here.

Many of us have managed, run, developed or created much larger platforms without running into these issues and many would charge consulting fees in the 5-6 figure range monthly for the kind of free advice being offered to 3D hubs for free and not being well received.