I read this https://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/30524-faster-steel-innovative-process-made-possible.html and I understand from where are so many unreasonable failures. Excellent service ExOne to spit on SW and its sellers and buyers. He needs to minimize his costs. Therefore, he cuts off all that is sparingly contained in himself the risk of non-printing. The best is the enemy of the good we say. You can not do jewelry without skilled manual control. Jeweler is art of handicraft risks Hire remote controllers for jewelry in poor Ukraine, but do not give manual control to an indifferent and soulless producer.
The money should be almost immediately available as shop credit that can be spent without delay. If it is merely a matter of hours, I thought PENDING orders could be merged by the buyer.
I want to second @NimlothCQ in that we (meaning both "management" and our colleagues who don't bear that title) are everyday aware of, extremely concerned about, and actively working on fixing this problem. @IvanGolota and @Model_Monkey - I understand where there could be confusion with the capabilities of our company vs. an eBay or another online retailer, or a desktop printing option. However, to give some context, eBay has about 13,000 full-time employees and another several thousand full-time contractors, and all of the products sold on that platform are manufactured by unrelated companies. Shapeways and our small number of manufacturing partners literally make every object sold. Shapeways has only about 200 people on staff. Nonetheless, we offer makers and shoppers access to top-of-the line industrial 3D printers that are astronomically expensive and difficult to use, the products of which are in a world apart from the kind of desktop machines any of us could bring home. This is an evolving field, with many questions left to answer and challenges to face. But our community is everything to us, and we work around the clock to constantly improve and expand our offerings to the community. I hope you'll bear with us while we keep doing all we can to keep improving.
The complaints I receive indicate that customers don't know that. Perhaps, the farthest they read in the message is that their order has been canceled. Then, boom, irate, disappointed or lost customer. I do absolutely appreciate the hard work that the relatively small group of SW employees puts forth to make SW a truly amazing company and experience. I am also very glad to see that SW does recognize order cancellations (i.e. lost sales, lost credibility and lost customers) are a very serious problem for shop owners who rely on each and every sale to put food on the table. It is always true that it is difficult to appreciate how hard it is do anything the first time - especially with an emerging, rapidly maturing technology such as this. Please keep trying and thanks for what you do. Steve