Pricing Transparency Update

Don't worry Alan, I'm not optimising or designing a single thing until you lot finish tinkering and publish details about how the various parameters work. At the moment it simply isn't worth risking my time. Any idea when you plan to have the formula revision finished?

Thanks. I was just trying to figure out if I needed to wrap my head around something completely new. I have a decent idea how to find my way based on the fundamental pricing components.

Throughout all of the pricing changes over the last year I've never gotten any email notifications about them in advance. The only way I get notified is if I subscribe to the official announcements forum page and get notified when a new thread is created there (which half the time is still added within half an hour of the pricing updates so there's still no advance warning), or if I logon to order something and realize the price changed. Given the nature of the changes, it just seems like something that should get a dedicated email or something, especially for those who might not have found the forums and subscribed to email notifications about them, at least a day or so before the pricing changes are made so they can compensate. This is especially relevant for people like myself who sell on other platforms like Etsy and need to go through and modify prices every time they're changed here.

Hi Avi! Thanks for your response and the info. Maybe I missed it, but in the materials guide you attached all I see is the production times we now have to pay for. I didn’t see any economy production times listed. When you update the website will it have all the different production times listed? Thanks

Looking at the page for Versatile Plastic, I have to concur with barkingdigger that this seems to be telling me things I already know. In fact, I know more than it's telling me, because I know from experience that the most intuitively compact arrangement might not be the one Shapeways considers to have the least "machine volume."

Specific information that seems to be missing:

How these two are weighted relative to each other, and at least rough guidelines on how "machine volume" works.

What actual difference this makes. (e.g. does a model with two parts cost the same as two separate models?)

Which of these are affected by something the user does. (Obviously the price differences between types of Versatile Plastic fall into this category, but I have no way of knowing if, for instance, larger models cost more to process and/or dye, other than experimentally.)

The base price on some of my items has gone up around $100 after this pricing update. That much of an increase puts me out of the market. Also, a person whose Etsy shop I help to supply cannot sale with that much of a price increase on the part he buys from me. I've read the changes posted here, but how did that much of a difference occur? I've been on Shapeways for years!

I too wonder how come some of items have jumped $100 (sometimes more than 200%). Fortunately, this is just a hobby for me. But when I try to promote my items to my friends, I'm embarrassed to show them the cost...

Over $280 for cufflinks? WTF? Nobody is going to pay that and I didn't mark them up that much...

Signal boosting to ask for an ETA on making earring costs feasible again. Thanks!

Weird... I still subscribe to the marketing emails and never saw any about the pricing updates, but I'm glad that you guys are working on updating that system - seems like that will eliminate a lot of problems.

Haven't had a single sale since the pricing update

Why can't important system/corporate messages be sent directly to our messaging boxes right here on Shapeways? Maybe with an authentication icon sitting next to the direct message so we know it's official? I hardly ever look at the email account tied to my Shapeways account.

@avim @MitchellJetten @gregorykress

Seriously, people? This thread is exactly the opposite of transparency. Transparency would be sharing the actual relationships between x/y-axes, z-axis, material volume, machine space, etc. You've told us nothing and tried to pass it off as transparency, an appallingly Orwellian tactic. We know all those factors will somehow come into play; we need to know specifically how.

I've already lost orders based on outrageously unexpected prices and I can't even tell those customers that I'll be able to fix the prices because I have no idea how other through sheer blind experimentation, something I do not have time for.

This is not transparency. And this is not acceptable.

Will it ever be possible to run more than one shop using the same email address? Maybe I can set up some forwarding for some of my email accounts but until then I pretty much check email once a year. As long as notices are posted in the forum I'll see them here first.

Hey, folks: If you go out to the Official Announcements forum page (https://www.shapeways.com/forum/f/official-announcements.1/), you'll see a tiny bit of text on the right side just above the column of thread/post dates, which says "Watch Forum". You can click on that to set up automatic emails anytime a new thread is posted to the Official Announcements.