Cast Metals Price Restructuring

Discussion in 'Official Announcements' started by virginia_gordon, May 15, 2017.

  1. xela
    xela Member
    Me too...
     
  2. Andrewsimonthomas
    Andrewsimonthomas Well-Known Member
    Update: Cast metals pricing has not gone live yet, we'll let you know as soon as it is :)
     
  3. FerretDesigns
    FerretDesigns Well-Known Member
    Is there a problem or was it just designed to go live at a certain time?
     
  4. Ianhenry33
    Ianhenry33 Member
    I've been delaying customer orders for the pricing updates for almost a week now, is this happening tonight still or another day?
     
    FerretDesigns likes this.
  5. FerretDesigns
    FerretDesigns Well-Known Member
    Still nothing and it's the 26th here.
    Teething problems?
     
  6. MitchellJetten
    MitchellJetten Shapeways Employee CS Team
    Looks like there was an issue in the backend system.
    Launch was postponed till today (Friday) PM EST.

    Not sure why this wasn't communicated.
    My apologies for the inconvenience.

    EDIT:
    i’m sorry for the miscommunication, but I was unaware of the deeper back end issues. Stay tuned for an official message soon.
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2017
  7. FerretDesigns
    FerretDesigns Well-Known Member
    Thanks for finding out.
    After the big announcement and all the info they initially did they reeeeeally should be better at telling people there is a problem and launching is delayed.
     
  8. dNello
    dNello Member
    Hi @bobsavage , it is a bronze ring, I added the patina by myself with liver of sulfur, and the piece came as I designed without losing any details. I usually tend to have a heavy hand when I sculpt the details, so they can withstand to the polishing.
     
    bobsavage likes this.
  9. FerretDesigns
    FerretDesigns Well-Known Member
    Hopefully this is fixed by then, really want to be able to get a UK bank holiday sale going :)
     
  10. V_Design_Lab
    V_Design_Lab Member
    Are they new prices effective yet?
    I haven't received a message yet, as stated in your blog post. And I checked a couple of designs and they don't look cheaper to me...even if they are quite simple.
     
  11. FerretDesigns
    FerretDesigns Well-Known Member
    No they failed last night and apparently are due for launch today...this afternoom EST. But they didn't tell us. I asked on this forum (read up) and was told but one of the shapeways forum chaps
     
  12. FerretDesigns
    FerretDesigns Well-Known Member
    See?
     
  13. MitchellJetten
    MitchellJetten Shapeways Employee CS Team
    i’m sorry for the miscommunication, but I was unaware of the deeper back end issues. Stay tuned for an official message soon.
     
  14. virginia_gordon
    virginia_gordon Shapeways Employee Community Team
    UPDATE: It seems that while we were implementing the new pricing in the back end, there were a couple bugs spotted. We are quickly working on resolving these. We want this overhaul to go as smoothly as possible, so we will need to correct these unexpected hiccups before flipping the switch.

    We will have an update on when the restructuring is going live shortly. Thanks for your patience!
     
  15. brianberman
    brianberman Member
    I did my recalculations on May 15th and was shocked. I was off at shows selling my work and came back recently to look for the adjusted prices on May 25th as written in your blog post. Well, I see that the prices are still the same even when I refresh the page so pricing hasn't yet changed. My pricing in polished silver will increase 1.5 on my larger pieces and 1.2 on Polished Brass and Bronze. There is no way I can continue selling my models with these price increases. What is interesting that for the same size models, the 14K gold castings are less costly.

    Is SHAPEWAYS recalculating a better formula for pricing now that you are getting so many negative feedbacks and it is past the May 25th price change date? Please come back to me and others with a better price structure on these larger castings, or somehow you will loose us as customers.
     
    aliciafelber likes this.
  16. brianberman
    brianberman Member
    I guess we were both writing at the same time about this. Finding bugs in your calculations is evident by the same larger part with same surface area in 14k Gold, the price is reduced, yet in silver, brass, and bronze it goes up.

    I hope your intention to reduce casting prices will help all of us who have product lines continue to grow our businesses. Thanks for reworking the pricing structure to accomplish this.
     
    aliciafelber likes this.
  17. FerretDesigns
    FerretDesigns Well-Known Member
    Virginia didn't say a bug in calculations. I suspect she is referring to bugs in the code as she mentions the back end
     
    brianberman likes this.
  18. FerretDesigns
    FerretDesigns Well-Known Member
    Still nothing I assume?
    It's going to be hard for us to do Bank holiday sales at this rate.
     
  19. virginia_gordon
    virginia_gordon Shapeways Employee Community Team
    An update from this morning's post. We have just sent out an email to you about the restructuring and where we stand at this moment. You can check out the email here:

    "As you’ve likely noticed, we got a little ahead of ourselves in setting the anticipated roll-out date for the updates to our cast metals pricing structure. We want to make sure everything works just as it should, so we’re doing some additional testing before rolling out the new prices.

    We’re now optimistically eyeing early next week (hopefully Tuesday, May 30) as the target launch date but will promise to keep you updated, should that change. Thanks for being patient with us!"
     
    brianberman likes this.
  20. brianberman
    brianberman Member
    With so many of us relying on Shapeways for our jewelry casting, getting a price reduction to reflect your cost saving intentions is what we are seeking.

    Though this is another topic, I continue to feel discriminated against as I am not a student with a 15% discount just because I don't have a valid edu email address. The best way to increase our business success is to charge equally and fairly with those of us designers who come back over and over with our orders. Let's have a discussion and action plan about this point. Thanks, Brian