This is a huge PITA- no offence to the other service providers, but as a business owner with an eye on expenses and (more importantly) product development times, once I’ve found a supplier that works well it’s not worth my time and energy to audition others. Is anyone in favor of this change?
Ended up here because the wheels have fallen off at Shapeways and Sculpteo hasn’t been great in terms of turnaround. Don’t know why companies insist on changing what works.
Some of us that were providers have started our own websites or other ways to provide our service. See if the ones you want to work with are listed on the forum post or try to reach out to them. If you can’t find them I may be able to assist, though I may not be local.
Thanks for that. The alternative (which worked for me but is the worst possible approach for everyone involved) is provider roulette: re-submitting the order until your preferred provider is selected.
3dhubs doesnt care. I have emailed them and have had multiple repeat customers also voice their concerns. They think that all hubs will print same. Even though you can order a part from multiple hubs and each one may have a different shade of color used and tolerances vary. They will all be within spec, but if one hub is -0.3mm and another is +0.3mm on part they arent going to work well together.
Marc,
Please do NOT open multiple print orders in an attempt to land a specific provider. All cancelled orders, including customer-cancelled ones, DO have a negative impact on our metrics. In addition, it is frustrating for a Hub to put in the time (i.e. expense) of evaluating a model, only to find out that the customer never intended to order from them in the first place. We also have to manage time on our 3D printers, and we have to reserve time in the queue on our 3D printers for orders like yours.
How would you like it if a customer came to you to price a large order, and after you put in the time and effort of providing a written quote, sourcing materials and setting aside time on your manufacturing equipment, you came to find out that the customer never intended to place the order in the first place? It’s a very inconsiderate thing to do to a provider and is probably the most annoying thing we Hubs have to deal with on here. So please–just don’t.
The canned response we get from 3dhubs is typically is all hubs get about the same cancellations. They dont care. Even though cancelled orders affect the search results and too low can get you removed from program.
In a general sense, it is an understandable metric. Let’s say the average across all hubs is 8 customer cancelled orders per year (I’m making these numbers up). If a particular hub has 25, odds are there is a reason, and it has to do with the hub. Maybe they take forever to review, maybe their feedback is overly nitpicky to the point where it is hard to get an order through, maybe they are rude to the customer in their feedback. Generally, if you are the outlier, it is due to the way you are operating.
With that said, let’s also hypothetically say that you and I get hooked up every time you cycle through orders to find your preferred provider. Then suddenly, as a provider, I am the outlier in cancellations statistically. The negative impact could be real and monetary. I don’t know if a hub gets due process or the chance to plead their case; I just don’t know. Though we may not agree with many decisions they make, I do believe 3DHubs cares about their business & providers, and I try to believe the best that they would consider the scenario. Just like I genuinely believe you have no intention of causing harm to hubs in your search process.
When pressed as to why a customer cancelled order negatively affects our score, I was told
That all Hubs average about the same cancellations, but more importantly from their standpoint,
If there was a cancellation reason that had zero impact, then the system would fall apart because then everyone would choose that reason when declining an order.
It’s basically there so we don’t game the system, because we are the ones that choose the reason any order is declined.
If “customer cancelled” had no impact, then everyone would simply choose that reason whenever they want to decline an order, and the metric would fall apart.
This is the same answer that was provided to me when I asked last year.
I hope that customers continue to express their disappointment to 3D Hubs. Every customer that I served on a regular basis has found me through my advertising and has stopped using 3D Hubs. These are mostly the businesses that 3D Hubs wanted to pursue.
