New Terms and Customer Support Texts
I’ve had to sign off on 55 pages of terms on my iPhone twice in the past month and I know that these things are mostly just clicked through. Here at MakerBot Industries, we’re getting to the point of seeing all sorts of scenarios play out, it’s time for us to get professional and have a terms page and an updated customer support page. This is one of those milestones that we’re encountering as a company and before starting MakerBot, I would have scoffed at these documents. At this point, we’ve officially gone too long without having these things being explicit.
Lately the support department has been getting some requests that are, well, interesting and despite our good intentions, can be hard to carry out. We had one where someone who ordered their bot in 2009 was just putting it together and needed parts that we don’t stock anymore. We hooked them up with some stuff from our junk bin of old parts, but that junk bin is not very full these days. For example, we’re out on x and y rods that shipped with the first 200 cupcakes, you can still order from the supplier, but we can’t replace those anymore.
We will always work with folks to help them their bots up and running, but we’ve also had people want to return fully assembled machines, which we just can’t do. Once we’ve shipped a bot and you’ve put it together, we can’t resell it. We need you to check it out and decide that you want it before you buy it. (sounds obvious right?) It also gets difficult when we get requests for support from the person who wasn’t the original purchaser of the machine. Who knows what happened to it as it passes hands? We recommend that you if you tire of your MakerBot or you want to upgrade it, you donate your MakerBot to a school or try and sell it on eBay.
Because of the flurry of odd requests lately, we’ve updated the customer service page and created a terms page. These pages are a mashup of Adafruit’s and Sparkfun’s documentation and are a starting point until we can get our lawyer to look at them. It’s a document that can be updated in the future. For example, I’m still looking for a way of saying, “You’re in charge of your own safety and use your MakerBot at your own risk.” I’ll be getting some help from a lawyer to get that part together, but my point is that there will be revisions.
The goal here isn’t to be annoying, but to get folks to realize that we need you to get your bot together so we can help resolve any issues right away and to put some clear limits on what we can do. We’ll always do our best to help a MakerBot Operator, but these docs add some structure to what we’re can actually do. Check them out. Shake your fist at them and if you have any better examples, point us to them in the comments.
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10 Comments so far
Stefan
Welcome to the real world. Sorry it had to happen so fast.
Dave Durant
I misplaced the big with all the extra M3 bolts that came with my ‘bot. Please send more!
Dave Durant
*bag
Paul
Corporate dribble.
So sad.
Don’t you love all your bots?
Is a used one, like half off?
Broker the deal, take a cut.
Kreiger
Bre, I don’t like the current terms page. It should be replaced with this because the current one is costing me money.
1. Makerbot’s drive is to provide affordable reliable and well manufactured makerbots.
2. We attempt to make all details including assembly requirements known before orders are placed. Makerbot does not guarantee anything other than against manufactured defects in the product not introduced due to assembly.
3. Makerbot will only guarantee stock for parts 90 days after placement of order unless otherwise stated.
4. Makerbot reserves the right to refuse or accept all returns including unopened items on a case by case basis at the will of Makerbot Industries.
5. Makerbot puts these restrictions to maintain an affordable pricing for all customers and not allow individual customers to increase the price through abuse or ignorance.
6. FINIT – THE END
makeme
Hooray! I was wondering when you guys would decide you had something valuable enough to protect. Get the drop on these legal issus before they get the drop on you. It’s all fun and games until you’re big enough to sue, and then someone will find a loophole in your ‘handshake’ agreements. I want Makerbot Industries to survive and prosper, and unfortunately that means bringing lawyers into it sooner rather than later.
Tim
Hey Bre.
I haven’t had a chance to read through the terms yet, but at first glance they look squished! I think it would be more readable if it was a indented, bulleted(numbered) list.
Thanks!
SparkySD
I’m not surprised that MakerBot mgmt had to update the terms & conditions. That’s expected as a company sells more to consumers and less to ‘technology first adopters’.
Note that the typical return rate for consumer electronics is 25% :-
“…a recent survey conducted by 3r.net/2010/12/home-networking-secrets-the-easy-way/” ABI Research, showed one in three consumers reported difficulty in setting up and maintaining their home network. 25% of all wireless devices are returned to the store simply because it was too hard to setup, and not a defective product. This notion is further enforced by Best Buy’s Geek Squad founder Robert Stephens who acknowledged that the complexity of installing a wireless network is evidenced by the fact that return rates on wireless networking devices drop to nearly zero when his installers do it…”
Considering that the average set up time for a consumer electronics product is generally less than 20 minutes compared with 11 hours for a Thing-O-Matic, it’s amazing that more folks don’t give up and try to return their T-O-M.
As MakerBot moves further into the consumer market, I think MakerBot should seriously consider pre-assembling and calibrating the T-O-M and charging for it. The benefit would be the added income and for the customer they could be printing a lot sooner.
MakerBot could also start an approved T-O-M assemblers list with folks who could charge a small fee to help assemble T-O-M’s locally and provide ongoing training and consulting services. This would help during the critical first few weeks of initial operation.
Alternatively, it would be a good idea to assign a local volunteer T-O-M buddy during the assembly period (i.e. Pay-It-Forward).
Hope these ideas help.
Charles Shapiro
Shrug. I don’t see anything here I can’t live with.
Mark Cohen
The support page and terms imply that you can not exchange a defective board because you applied power to it to determine it was defective. Also their does not seem to be any warranty on the products.