Also, good to know some other folks from 3dhubs are following this. Maybe we can get some results!
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Day 7. On day 6, no response from 3dhubs at all in this thread on this abomination. They do not understand the depth and breadth of what they have done, and how it affects our marketplace, not just on 3dhubs, but with all or our customers. They are vastly underestimating the anger out here.
They continue attempt to redefine FDM printing as low quality prototyping. They continue to have contempt for those hubs who have spoken up here, by ignoring responses and answering questions incompletely or with pure misdirection.
I encourage all hubs who are aware of this, (which is not very many, because most hubs don’t read talk or have tried to create an order…) to PLEASE continue to discuss this here. It is important that 3dhubs is aware of the issue. Also, they are probably praying for this hub to slip past the front page or TALK.
EDITED: I had posted that it appeared that declines were on the rise, based on data that 3dhubs shares with us. I was worried folks were dropping orders in protest, but they said that this was not the case, and it appears with my own tests that this is true, so I removed the post. (people were asking why I deleted the post)
Here is what happened. In lieu of responses from 3dhubs, I will speak for them. I will speak for them every day that they do not participate.
A. Last year, 3dhubs received $7 million US in series B funding. This was presented as an investment that would allow funding for 3dhubs to pay for a greater focus on professional type printers. https://www.startupdelta.org/news/3D-Hubs-secures-7M-series-B-round-to-focus-on-professional-users
B. 3dhubs posts on TALK a request for help in defining guidelines for “customer expectations” for FDM. They ignore hubs that say that is a bad idea. This was actually step 1 in their SECRET plan to denigrate FDM.
C. 3dhubs adds a dialogue when customers put up a model, with a dialogue that says “can we help you choose a material?” which pushes customers to SLS or SLA. Including our customers, our repeat customers, and customers that come from our own websites.
D. 3dhubs adds a “Disclaimer” for those who choose FDM, stating that the prints are not smooth, within tolerances, etc. They are then guided to SLS or SLA. Again, this includes our customers, our repeat customers, and customers that come from our own website.
E. 3dhubs changes the description of FDM to “Protoyping”. All the descriptions for other methods are given better wording, FDM is given negative wording.
F. 3dhubs changes the materials descriptions the customer chooses from “General Purpose Plastics” to Prototyping Plastics.
G. 3dhubs adds a dialogue that appears just before the customer completes the order with a “Disclaimer” that warns the customer that FDM is not the best way to go, and includes links that lets the customer choose SLS or SLA. This outright steals the customer from the FDM hub, and moves the customer to an SLS or SLA hub. This is true for our customers, our repeat customers, customers that we brought to 3dhubs on our own, and customers that arrive via our own websites or Facebook pages.
H. This was done in secret, with no input from the FDM hubs, no warning, and no notice on the changelog. 3dhubs says this is just a test, but we believe it is already a permanent change.
I. After 6 days of input, on day 6 3dhubs fails to respond to any messages, including those who have stated that their orders have declined. Active hubs have shown a direct loss of orders, but 3dhubs ignored the them.