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Several of us in my area just got ‘played’ by a customer who submitted the exact same order to three different hubs, and then just chose who to pay after we all ACCEPTED the order. (She actually tried to get some price adjustments as well as underquoting for infill needed too.)

Now two of us are stuck with orders that we accepted, and will eventually maybe show up as cancelled/declined? Does thhis brings us the possibility of potential future customers viewing us negatively in the future?

There is no recourse for us to leave a ‘review’ of the customer.

Ultimately, the ease with which she was able to do this is something that will have to be looked at, especially in larger, more active markets. The ability for customers to shotgun/spam orders will degrade the whole system, reduce quality, and most likely drive away a lot of good hubs who don’t want to play greedy games and participate in the ‘race to the bottom’.

I am very curious to hear others thought and opinions on this, as well as the discussion of ideas to reduce/eliminate this fat loophole.

My own thoughts are that the file upload area should be separated from the Order page. When a customer sets up their account, they would have their own ‘Files Area’, and they could upload their files there. Like a repository. Each file would have a hash/checksum/digital signature assigned to it.

From there, they could just tick boxes to attach already uploaded files to orders, with the limitation that a file would be limited (by checksum) to being used on only one active order at a time. Once that order was completed/declined/cancelled, then the file’s signature would be released again.

This would also have the added benefit of making ordering reprints a LOT easier.

While I am certain there are many other factors to consider, this would at least be a start.

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@BoozeKashi This kind of thing happens all the time. I very rarely get an order that hasn’t been placed on someone else too. I’m not sure the suggested solution is the way to go but you are right, something needs to be done.

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But then you penalize people that want to try multiple hubs with the same file to determine which one had the best quality. Ive had orders like this before where they send to multiples because they want to have quite a few made but want to test the waters first and find the best hub.

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If I understand you correctly, the customer placed several orders on several sites. Then, the customer did not pay but one site.

At this point, you have accepted the print.

Then, POOF, the customer vanishes.

Your next point is how it affects future customers, but I dont follow that point, so if you can help me out, let me know.

If a customer places and order, and then does not pay, how does this hurt the hub?

Customers can’t see canceled/declined orders.

3dhubs will lower a hubs ratings for paid prints, or prints that the hub cancels DEPENDING on the reason.

PS, I currently have an order that was placed on my hub, that I accepted, that the customer has gone POOF. I think based on open orders that the customer did the same to me, so I would like to understand this.

Can you explain further why you think it hurts the hub? I am not being argumentative, I am just honestly asking.

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Hello Kashi,

welcome to the business world. This practice is common.

Not just on 3DHubs. Not just for prints.

But i dont see any problem with this. I think there is no reason to fear this.

In fact that is why i like taking orders through 3DHubs because i only have to start printing, when the order is paid.

And 3D Hubs in the middle gives the customer on the other side a feel of trust.

This helps especially the small business.

If you dont like the order even after you accepted. Just cancel it.

If the customer bargains after you accepted, you have every reason to cancel.

You should look at the other side also. From the customer perspective.

The seem to be many hubs that dont react or react slowly.

Then there is differnt print quality, delivery time, …

Especially when it is necessary to add cost for support and extras, i imagine it frustrating for the customer. Most customers have no idea about printing processes. Then of course the will feel tricked, when the price increases.

That is why i totally understand if the customer sends multiply orders.

In fact i do it the same way if i dont know the Hub i am sending it to yet. (yes sometimes i need a print also)

You can also see the number of open prints under the customer name. If you see more than one open order, you know already…

Another funny thing are those midnight orders. I am a night worker myself, but when i get an order in the middle of the night, i dont expect it to go through any more. too many cancellations before…

People bargain all the time. You can join the game, or you can tell them to go to a different hub. You will see many of them coming back to you. So stay polite! I can tell you, the ones that come back will stay with you.

best regards

Andreas

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Definitely, I see your point and it just happened to me (the ghost client thing) and it’s annoying. Instead of canceling, what I do is tell 3DHubs support to remove it, painlessly. But anyway, as things are set now and in the long term, I can see how these clients will learn to stop misbehaving as they notice the red number under their profile increase. For me it doesn’t necesarily mean they are unreliable, but I may expect some turbulence from that particular order.

Your suggestions are interesting, and I think it encourages returning customers to reprint, or save their favorite designs for a future print instead of forgetting about them. Some way to implement this Client Hub would be great!

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I can understand the frustration but welcome to the business world… that said if nothing was printed then technically your not on the hook for the cost of the print. At my old machine shop job we got in LOTS of jobs to quote and did not get them but hey… that is what happens when you got 30 other people fighting for the job.I have had similar happen and yes it sucks but I also understand that is the price of doing business as they say. As for the order just ask your “support” person to cancel the order and they do the rest…

Other thing to remember is some people may not understand that you need a certain support percentage for a part to finish… to them they see no difference between 5% and 20% other than 20% costs more… their just looking to have a part made for a low price is all :).

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Hi Andreas,

Thanks for the response. I am not sure if you are aware, but cancelling an order after you ‘Accept’ it allows the customer to review you. They can drop a harsh negative on you for no real reason. You do not have a chance to rate the customer at any stage.

I completely understand that some people are just ‘flakey’, but why have a system that allows them to complete multiple orders for the same objects from different hubs? It makes no sense, and I am very unclear as to how/why you consider this normal business. I have never placed orders that I did not intend to purchase, nor have I ordered the same things from different places at the same time. That is far from normal.

There will always be exceptions, but the rule should be to prevent the nonsense, not tacitly endorse it.

BK

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Thanks for reply CWCrawlers, I do understand to a point. I’m not on the hook for anything, and would never start printing an order until payment was made. The quote system on 3D Hubs is right up front however. That is the point. Once a customer has selected a hub they have seen the quotes. What needs to be fixed is the broken part where they can go back and select several other hubs for the exact same order. What is the point of having a ‘Select a Hub’ stage if they can just select all, and we can all ‘Accept’?

I agree on the lack of knowledge on infill/supports/etc and seeking the lowest price, but that is incumbent upon all of us to educate customers, not a flaw in the system. It would be nice if there was a tool to adjust the infill percentage on the quoted prices though without having to manually calculate every single file individually. Adding supports could be very subjective for sure, but Netfabb, used by 3D Hubs, understands infill percentage just fine. Again, something to improve the process and eliminate mistakes and confusion.

People will be always be a bit unpredictable but my point is that we shouldn’t have a system where the system creates the exceptions rather than prevents them.

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Under the current rating system, if a Hub cancels an order AFTER it has been accepted, the Customer then has the opportunity to rate the Hub. This is/can be fixed by your Hub admin after the cancellation is made, but again, something you have to watch for, and again, on your time.

Others can see your cancels/declines if you are also a customer at any point. (One of my favorite customers is also a very strong Hub in his home country.) And as you also pointed out, 3D Hubs can lower you in the rankings/search results depending on the reason, but none of us have any visibility on that process and have no way of really knowing if the ghost customers hurt us or not.

I appreciate your response, and questions. I don’t have all the answers either, I just recognize there is a flaw in the system and it is likeley something better fixed now rather than later. As 3D Hubs grows in popularity along with 3D printing and consumer knowledge in general, we could all see a lot of growth. If issues like this aren’t prevented at the outset of the order process now, when things grow it will become much more of a time suck and a bigger problem.

Others have mentioned ‘Welcome to Business’… I don’t agree with that. I have never once in my life ordered the same item from Amazon, eBay, at Walmart.com at the same time, then tried to haggle a discount and only pay one of them.

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Very good point keebie81, but in that scenario the customer would have the intention to actually pay for all the orders made. An override could easily be added in to auto-pay in that case. A customer who wanted to order multiple test prints that way could verify their legitimate intent by prepayment.

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Thanks for the reply @Steelmans. I don’t know exactly what the best solution is either, but I definitely see it as something in the ordering process that needs to be fixed sooner rather than later.

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Hi. I’m very new to 3d-printing and 3D Hubs, but I recently got 2 orders sent to a hub for printing and the previews came out great. They’re being shipped to me so just waiting to receive my first ever prints. :slight_smile:

As a customer, I think it’s very common to face this issue where the vendor/supplier/service provider (in this case, the hub) gets pitched with a request for quotation (in 3D Hubs, an “order”), but once the quotation/order is processed/accepted and a price quote is given, then customer just does not follow-up on it. As you’ve said, he/she might be doing this to several hubs and picking only one that meets their requirement, then ignore the rest.

It’s rude and bad form, but an all too common practice. The least they could do was to notify the other hubs that they’d like to cancel their order. It’s common courtesy that you don’t find in many social media interactions anymore (welcome to the instant-gratification / Instagram age).

The idea you floated about customers/users having their own file upload section that’s separate from the “Order” page is a no-brainer, I think similar to what Thingiverse is like. However on 3D Hubs, they might need to rethink on how customers interact with hubs if they introduce this feature, and it may mess up the relatively simple single-batch order with single material print-order arrangement they have now. Simple, fast and user-friendly are key strengths for 3D Hubs. I would personally like to see this implemented, so I can avoid having to upload the same files multiple times to order prints from different hubs or with different materials from the same hub, while not requiring multiple orders to track the entire batch. But again as mentioned above, it CAN get complicated and fudge the simplicity offered by the current 3D Hubs system.

As for an improved feedback system, what’s to stop a bad hub from bashing a customer unfairly? Or singling them out because of one poor experience, then proceed to hound one customer for weeks and months? I’ve seen vindictive vendors retaliating against a customer for something viewed as a slight, spilling over to other social media sites. It’s not pretty. Even in moderation, allowing hubs to rate customers may end up causing other hubs to ostracise a customer unfairly, because basically who wants to deal with lousy customers if given a choice, no? Then you’d suddenly see red-rated customers getting their orders rejected, and once it accumulates to a point where it’s unbearable, they abandon the account and create a new one with a new username or under a different name etc. And the cycle continues. When enough users do this, you’d be left with an abundance of ghost accounts that don’t contribute to the community. Just something to think about.

Considering if 3D Hubs do entertain requests from Hubs to remove long-time idle “accepted” orders that do seem to be abandoned for another hub’s order, the arrangement is simple enough to remain effective, so long as 3D Hubs don’t deem this a significant problem (i.e. many reported cases of window-shopping customers intentionally bad-rating hubs/orders they themselves abandoned). It’s gonna be a problem only when orders and the volume start to increase exponentially and go beyond what 3D Hubs’ manpower can handle.

In any case, cheers and hope to see some development on this topic as well. :slight_smile:

-Edmund