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.