www.makehub.xyz try this one… see you there.
It looks like the ability to manually choose a hub has now been removed from the order page in the USA. Even though the new system is not implemented yet.
Not only are they shutting us all down they are attempting to stop us from continuing to communicate with long time hub customers that wish to follow the private hub instead of use the “manufacturing partners “ scheme
www.xyzfabs.com is a free alternative too. There are 60 listed there right now. Many cities are not occupied yet
How are they doing that? All past orders are still available and I’m getting contact details from there.
Is this site still active? I have never been able to respond to an open order and everything seems very out dated.
Yes xyzfabs is actively developed and any “outdated” things can be addressed quickly. What are the outdated things?
I was communicating with a customer who is not interested in the new program, tried to give my email adress and they redacted it repeatedly, fortunately my customer got it in the end but they try to stop us
Just stuff like a contest but it supposedly ended in August.
OLCE
172
But trying to prevent your customers to communicate with you (especially your customers from the hub days), and force them to use 3DHubs new platform, comes down to commercial abuse and stealing your customers. That fact on its own can be used to file an official complaint with your national competition regulator, or with the EC in Europe.
It is borderline illegal in most countries to have a practice like this
They are not “your” customers, they are 3dhubs. I am pretty sure this was agreed to in a document you signed off on when joining.
yeah some free lucky draw happens from time to time there. maybe it is good to have another free draw started there today.
Anyway, not a big thing but I have been on there for a while and have never been able to actually get a job.
Either I am not understanding how it works or nothing has come in that I can get.
Probably more signups to cover major areas and that could make ad campaign effective.
A new lucky draw is there now.
I’m in on that!
I have questions on the Open Requests but I’ll take it off line to discuss.
bhudson
178
I have never received an order on XYZFabs either. I am getting 2-3 a week from Treatstock, but nothing from any of the other services I have signed up for.
I just had another customer ask me today how they could place an order with me again. I really hope 3dhubs rethinks the decision of removing the ability for the customer to reorder. I get customers asking often how they can reorder.
I looked over my orders for just this year. Out of 432 I had 335 unique names. 54 customers placed multiple orders. Those 96 extra orders accounted for 1/3rd of my sales(ie 33% of income) . It seems customers will sometimes place small orders at multiple hubs and then place large orders at the one that had the best quality or service.
Even though all hubs agree to the same standards there is always going to be some variation. I could be printing my parts slightly under, but still within tolerance. Now the customer needs more parts to work with previous orders. So he gets a new hub, but that hub is printing parts over but still within tolerance. Now the customer could be stuck with a pile of useless prints they paid for. Or the color variation could be different and they cant sell the product.
Yes there is a lot of orders that the customer doesnt care who prints or if a different person does every time. But the ones that do care are the ones placing the larger orders in my experience.
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I don’t know i this is allowed os not, but one way to work around this is to have some combination of material and colour that no one else on this site is offering and tell your repeat customers about that. That way they can at least be fairly sure that they are ordering from you.
But given the recent developments I guess there is something in the fine print preventing this.
cobnut
181
Hi @keebie81 I’m in a very similar position to you. I have a few customers who’ve repeatedly ordered from my Hub and are disturbed by no longer being able to do so. One in particular I’ve worked with for two years, have visited their premises several times, and we’ve built an understanding over that time; I know their needs, their objectives and what I (3D printing) can do for them. It makes zero sense for them to start ordering from random Hubs, losing all that experience and understanding. Needless to say, their orders will no longer be coming through 3DHubs…
I do have a theory on why 3DHubs have done this, one that makes business sense for them, but it really doesn’t fit well with customers that want that sort of trusted relationship with a particular Hub, especially where that relationship is important to the work they do.
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