Before rejecting a paid customer order, consult with the designer first

Discussion in 'Shapeways Shops' started by Oskar_van_Deventer, Jul 28, 2016.

Should Shapeways just reject customer orders

  1. Yes, Shapeways is acting right

    2.6%
  2. No, they should contact the designer first

    97.4%
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  1. Oskar_van_Deventer
    Oskar_van_Deventer Well-Known Member
    Hi Shapeways,

    Could you please stop throwing my customer's money back into their face?

    I received your message "Help us resolve issues with your customer's order", indicating that a model of mine was unprintable. Such can happen, and I would be happy to resolve the issue and have a happy customer. However, you had already rejected the order and refunded the customer ("We've credited your Shapeways customer for the following ..."). So, there is nothing that I could do anymore to satisfy this customer.

    This has happened before, and I have read the same complaint from other Shapeways Shops owners as well. And I have had several of these incidents before myself.

    Would it not be common courtesy to me as designer and shop owner to give me the opportunity to resolve the issue BEFORE you refund and discourage my Shapeways customer? And would it not make more business sense to Shapeways to maintain the order, and make sure that the customer gets what he wants to have and has already paid for? We are talking about just a few days of delay. I respond to my emails quickly.

    If you insist communicating the problem with my Shapeways customer, could you then formulate positively and customer a choice. For example:
    "Dear [customer][, there seems to be a problem with the model that you have just ordered. We are checking this with the designer right now. Would a five-day delivery delay be acceptable to you? If not, then we shall refund you immediately".

    Please consider this. Thank you!

    Oskar

    ----Origineel Bericht----
    Van : service@shapeways.com
    Datum : 26/07/2016 21:00
    Aan : Oskar van Deventer
    Onderwerp : Help us resolve issues with your customer's order
    Hello Oskar_van_Deventer,

    After taking a closer look, we cannot print part of your customer's order, placed on 07/11/2016, by [Customer]

    We've credited your Shapeways customer for the following:

    • 1x [Model] in White Strong & Flexible
    While we've been able to print this model before, as we continue to produce the model we've noticed that it does not print successfully.

    Despite our best efforts we've only been able to successfully print this model 38% of the time. To continue printing this model we need your help to resolve these issues:
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 7, 2017
  2. stannum
    stannum Well-Known Member
    After so many years of this (and other issues, like the currency one), one has to wonder what is really going on to keep doing it over and over without any explanation.
     
  3. leonoudehand
    leonoudehand Active Member
    Fully agree! What I'm struggling with even more is that it seems to be judged day by day by different people. So it can well be that one day a model passes while the next day the same model is rejected...
     
    crashtestdummy likes this.
  4. tiancode
    tiancode Member
    This is the little secret most e-commerce platforms (ETSY, EBay, Amazon) do not tell you. Just to be clear, these are not your customers but Shapeways' customers. The Customer-Relation stays where the login/checkout process occurred. In this case Shapeways own the customer relationship. The more sales you have, the more customers Shapeways will obtain. So the company valuation will increase (usually it is a multiple of the number of paid customers).

    The only way to make these customers yours is to build your own website and handle the entire customer relationship, which is certainly more work, and more risk.
     
    Last edited: Aug 4, 2016
  5. stannum
    stannum Well-Known Member
    The money was returned before any fix could be made. Maybe the customer got angry so from now on you have someone saying it's a waste of time trying to buy things. There was no sale.
     
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  6. tiancode
    tiancode Member
    I am not suggesting this is normal. It's in Shapeways best interests to serve this customer well and make the sale. However, for some unknown reason they did not do it. Overall the designer and Shapeways have interests aligned, but again, not sure why they choose to handle things this way.

    The point I am trying to make is as designers we do not have full access to every aspects of Shapeways' customer relations. Therefore we can not consider buyers as our customers.
     
  7. stannum
    stannum Well-Known Member
    The problem is that it is the normal SW operation way, reject and then, maybe, you can sell it again if you manage to convice the buyer. Oskar just got feed up and created the poll. But this has been going for years.
    Also that SW suggests shop owners do promotion work or handle the second try, ie customer facing things, makes all the "your/their customers" issue a messy one.
     
  8. railNscale
    railNscale Well-Known Member
    Shapeways really should change their rejection-method. It is a shame SW is keeping this archaic way of working. It is their for many years and it should be revised. Why?
    1. The rejections are in 90% of the cases faulty.
    2. Customers are confronted with technical issues they really do not understand no care about.
    3. It is scaring off potential customers (SW is known for its crazy rejections).
    4. It does influence sales figures negatively. In several cases the cutomer did not want to re-order the product.
    5. It is a very customer-unfriendly method.
    6. It suggests the shop owner is an idiot.
     
  9. Oskar_van_Deventer
    Oskar_van_Deventer Well-Known Member
    I wish somebody of Shapeways would read this thread and respond to it.
    [​IMG]
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    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2017
  10. Oskar_van_Deventer
    Oskar_van_Deventer Well-Known Member
    How can I make any "please try again" promotion when Shapeways only wishes to disclose that the payment was made by "a guest"?
     
  11. he6agon
    he6agon Well-Known Member
    If I have to beef up some thin wires to get a model to no longer be rejected that's pennies worth of material. Take it out of my mark-up instead of running off the customer. I have no chance to explain what went wrong before money is refunded, especially if the customer is a guest. This infuriates most me when a part gets rejected after I've printed it successfully before. How do you explain that to a customer who's buying a product based on a product page and description that features photos of the printed model?
     
  12. pete
    pete Shapeways Employee CEO
    Hey guys,

    we are listening! It is not an unknown problem for us.
    It is, however, a hard problem to fix and therefor it has not been fixed (yet). Let me explain:
    1) initially we did not foresee this to be an issue.
    2) when we started to see the issue emerge, the real problem for the end user experience is the responsiveness of the designer / shop owner. Some of you are online all the time others are not. We have had issues with the manual co-creator where we have had end-user complaints because we could not fulfill in time, due to lack of responsiveness of the shop-owner. This information has made us a bit more apprehensive to involve the designer.
    3) We do not want to require you to print everything you sell. The unknown factor increases this issue to happen.
    4) It is quite an involved process change, especially because of 2).
    We need to take the order, if we cannot make it, send a message to you and the end-user. Message to you to give you 24? 48? hours to fix and to the end-user a heads up there is "an issue" (better wording required). If you do not react or fix, what happens? Still reject? That is worse for the end-user. First wait then still face a rejection. OR you fix it in time and the price changes substantially.. Also we need to inject in some way this new design in the order stream. It's all do-able but quite a bit of complex work and *that* is why we have not come around to fixing this.

    What we will do is:
    1) look at how often this happens, I do suspect it does not happen too often, but let the numbers talk
    2) have a deeper look how we could fix this
    3) based on 1,2 try to get this fixed.

    We will keep you posted, ok?

    Pete
     
    RalphVdB likes this.
  13. Oskar_van_Deventer
    Oskar_van_Deventer Well-Known Member
    Hi Pete,

    Thank you for the open and detailed response.

    I believe the key is in the communication and expectation management. If you are worried that an order may be time critical, then ask this to the buyer. As a buyer, I occasionally receive communication from Shapeways that a print batch failed, so there is some delay. That is the type of communication that I am talking about. Just let the buyer know that you are contacting the designer, and give him/her a choice.

    Also, most rejections are frivolous in my case. Around the time that Shapeways changed its pricing model a couple of years ago, Shapeways also subtly changed its rejection criteria. My older models often had some "break-off pins" of 0.7 mm diameter to meet Shapeways' size requirements. Those pins were added following the advice of Shapeways staff. Apparently, some of the pins (that are supposed to be broken off anyway) are 0.699 mm, which is why I am getting rejections on the older models.

    Looking forward to your further analysis!

    Oskar
     
  14. CybranKNight
    CybranKNight Well-Known Member
    I don't have the time now but I wish to tag this so I won't forget to give some input tomorrow.
     
  15. railNscale
    railNscale Well-Known Member
    Hi Pete,

    It is a very annoying situation that is around for too many years now without any kind of improvement, so thank you for giving some feedback. Although we've experienced only very few rejections, we think that every false rejection is one too many.

    As mentioned before our experience is that the vast majority of the "After taking a closer look, we cannot print part of your customer's order" rejection messages are based on faulty calls from SW. It would help if you would:
    1. train your personnel better (in some cases rejections appeared to be based on a 'check' within some seconds!);
    2. recognize that items were already print before in another constellation or product set;
    3. notice the product is purchased from a designer which has quite a number of successfull prints before or not.

    The latter sounds a bit arrogant, but after selling over 3000 items here and being a 'featured shop', it is a bit ridiculous to be treated like some careless person that happen to throw some 3D geometry over the fence.

    Then as soon SW is calling a rejection the end customer is confronted with a message he really does not understand nor care about. Simply said: customers (or at least our customers, of whom a big portion is not native English speaking, if at all understands that much of this language) just ordered the products and expect the products to be send. Like every other web shop should deliver products they show. Telling them they will not receive their requested product with lots of nerdish 3D blah-blah does not impress them.

    The message also suggests that the product designer is a sort of uncaring person. That's why we need to contact this customer and explain that SW is suffering from some sort of misunderstanding and presumably made a mistake. We noticed that in some cases the annoyed customer posts their frustration on all sorts of internet forums.

    You mentioned that it is difficult to explain customers that their order will be delayed. Well, these kind of messages we sometimes also get from you right away (because you're busy). Is this a problem? Hardly. Cancelling orders and the need to reorder not knowing whether the product will be printed the second time certainly is not the better solution. Btw: we experienced one time a re-rejection based on the same false interpretation of SW! That was a very good example where SW completely messed up things (and had to correct it, so it must have been quite an expensive print job for SW).

    The current rejection phylosophy is not customer- nor designer-friendly. It seems to be entirely focused on SW's internal processes rather than the customer's. It is probably a lot easier to just skip an order than tracing the status of a print and recollect it for shipment. But is this worth it? It is certainly not good for your reputation as a 3D Print Service company. And it definitely does not fit your slogan 'Shaping the future'.

    At least SW should allow some 'repair/communication/discussion time' before it rejects an order. This is particulary the case where the customer is not the designer. This should be at least possible for the designer shops that proved to be active successfully for some time.

    Kind regards,
    Maurice & Joris
    RAILNSCALE
    https://railnscale.com/
     
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  16. robs_mw
    robs_mw Well-Known Member
    Hi,

    I fully agree with original poster and stannum/railNscale.

    Below what I suggested a few months back to customer support regarding this rejection process:

    "
    My suggestions:
    1) allow designer to add some remarks to models that are printed for the first time, so he/she can 'pre-empt' rejections
    2) or whenever you want to reject a model, have a 'freeze' period of 1-2 working days first, in which you do nothing,
    and wait for the designer to reply first (so no canceling of orders, refunds etc.); lets talk first!
    "

    regarding 1), you can think of e.g. 'this model is a variant of model with SPIN xxx, printed successfully many times, changes in the area of xxx only'
    regarding 2), when there's an (perceived) issue, contact the designer only first; an engaged designer will response fast on seeing a rejection email; then you can discuss together on the next steps (inform customer or not etc.)

    BR,
    Robert
     
  17. I am a customer and experiencing this issue right now. My thoughts:

    1) The item was delayed, but no updates or contact was ever made.
    2) After a week, I contacted customer service and got a canned "we are looking into it, and will update you tomorrow".
    3) After no updates, I contacted customer service and got a canned "we are looking into it, and will update you tomorrow".
    4) After no updates, I contacted customer service and got a canned "we are looking into it, and will update you tomorrow".
    5) I am not faulting the creator as I have NO idea what goes into designing and printing.
    6) I am faulting Shapeway for the lack of customer service and follow up.

    I feel like a statistic rather than a customer and as this is my FIRST purchase, my opinions are going downhill from here. From my own view, I am a customer of the creator who is using Shapeway to give life to his creation. Should he choose to print elsewhere, I will become a sheep and follow him. Yep, I just realized how creepy that sounded.

    So yes, I wish they would give the option to the creator, and should the creator not wish to follow up, leave it to Shapeway for the communication.

    ***Please note: *this* post is not a complaint, but honest feedback***
     
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  18. mkroeker
    mkroeker Well-Known Member
    @fbc17a4 canned response and no followup is a bit unusual, I'd make sure that their response(s) did not get dumped in your spam folder. (Though it could be that they need to check with an external production partner, e.g. if you ordered something in one of the metals - but such a delay would normally cause an automatic mail to be sent at or near the expected shipping date.)
    I do note that your issue is a bit different from what was originally discussed here - sounds more like your
    order needed to be redone, but has not failed completely.
     
  19. No spam filter, but the issue is rectified. My response was more to who's customer I am vs. who's customer I feel like. Backing away slowly... :)
     
  20. Sparkshot
    Sparkshot Well-Known Member
    Vote me in for highly disgruntled designer.

    Have lost probably £60-100 on Shapeways cancellations that were NOT re-ordered after the fix.

    This has also made me furiously save up for a 3DP to do some of the work myself...that will mean less money for Shapeways if I do that and more for me if it works out.

    And yes, it makes you as the designer look silly. Highly infuriating when the model has printed several times before or a sprue fails and you have to redesign 50 or more items REPEATEDLY for having the same or similar geometry.

    I've whinged about this so many times and I will continue to do so as the more of us rise up on it the more chance something will be done.

    To Shapeways - so far many GOOD suggestions have been made in this thread already, please consider them.


    EDIT:
    What Robert said:

    "My suggestions:
    1) allow designer to add some remarks to models that are printed for the first time, so he/she can 'pre-empt' rejections
    2) or whenever you want to reject a model, have a 'freeze' period of 1-2 working days first, in which you do nothing,
    and wait for the designer to reply first (so no canceling of orders, refunds etc.); lets talk first!
    "

    regarding 1), you can think of e.g. 'this model is a variant of model with SPIN xxx, printed successfully many times, changes in the area of xxx only"

    This I too have suggested to Lefteri before.

    If we as designers could put notes in the products readable only to print engineers then I'm sure it would help.

    Sometimes a model has printed several times then it fails, or you break it in cleaning and blame us reducing the first to try status or cancelling an order (yes - I know this is true sometimes! Not good) so we redesign the product correcting the apparent error...then you reject it again for a completely different area that wasn't even changed!!! Yes indeed.

    Different people giving checks gives different opinions and that means moving goal posts, especially as sometimes geometry that is bigger than minimum quoted is still rejected in areas. I admit I can't yet see an easy work around for this, maybe have several engineers detailed to several designers? Probably too hard to organise, that I understand.

    Also some rejections are 100% pointless it seems too.

    I had an order of some '12 gas bottles' rejected becasue my escape holes were too thin. I did make them but there would be trapped powder inside so the model was rejected. In reality the modeller would smooth it off and paint them not giving a damn on the internal dimensions of a bottle roughly 1cm x 6mm's.

    So upon redesigning it and telling the customer....no re-order!

    Normal. :(
     
    Last edited: Sep 2, 2016
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