sudomod

I'd heard some griping from hub owners in the past, but they've recently rolled out their new "easier to use" format in Canada as well, and as a customer, holy crap is it awful!

Basically, they're trying to streamline everything and make it super, super simple. Upload a file, click buy, wait for your part. Except, that removes pretty much all my ability to precisely spec out my order. Underneath the giant PLACE YOUR ORDER NOW!!!! button is a text bubble explaining their order process, and underneath that, buried at the bottom of the page at literally half the font size is a tiny text link to manually select a different service.

Their default selection is on the other side of the country, even though there are local printers that can print in the same material. Their default selection is more expensive than almost every other option once I figured out how to manually select a service - in fact, most other hubs will do it for 1/2 - 1/3 the price of their default. You can't specify exact materials any more; you can only choose from a handful of generic options (want glow in the dark PLA? Nope. flexibles? Nope. want MakerJuice or Fun-To-Do resin? Nope.). Trying to specify an exact printer yields *very* limited results (apparently there are no Prusa Mk2 printers in my city any more, there are no Duplicator 7 printers anywhere, and all the professional DLPs are gone). And there isn't a single FDM printer on planet earth that can print nylon, apparently.

It's... terrible.

They've buried the ability to do anything other than their chosen default, and their chosen default is mediocre at best. I guess it's okay-ish if you don't really know what you're looking for, but just want to order a 3D print *now* and are willing to pay through the nose for it, but if you're a power user with specific demands, or want something even slightly beyond the basic, or want parts quickly, it's garbage, and borderline unusable.

That's dumb. What they should have done was set up a separate, simple 1-page site "powered by 3dhubs" or something with the dumbed-down version.

I have ordered many prints 4 days ago, i’m based in France, and the process was exactly the same as before. Could choose material, hub, leave additional details.

They're gradually rolling it out across the globe. They implemented the change in the US in October(?) last year, and just rolled it out in Canada and Australia a week ago. Presumably they'll start in Europe next.

There was a huge uproar among US hubs when they rolled it out there last year. They shunted pretty much all the orders to 50 hubs that were selected as "3DHubs Express" printers, so everyone else saw their orders disappear overnight. (literally. every US order went to one of 50 hubs) Which led to a *lot* of angry users, and has probably resulted in a mass exodus since then. Customers were upset because they couldn't order from the people they were used to dealing with, and the streamlined process actually hid who would be printing your order, so the time and expense of shipping was a surprise, and it took longer to actually get your stuff.

I didn't see any of that, though, since I'm in Canada. I just saw the same 3DHubs as always. Until last week. Now it's this:

wermy wrote: ↑

Mon Feb 12, 2018 3:03 pm

That's dumb. What they should have done was set up a separate, simple 1-page site "powered by 3dhubs" or something with the dumbed-down version.

I agree. Make it simple for people who want simplicity, and allow power users the depth they require. But they seem to be fundamentally shifting the business away from "find a local nerd with a printer" to be more of a Shapeways-without-the-overhead-of-actually-running-their-own-printers. What's amazing though, is that they also seem to be going after a more professional customer - they're really pushing CNC, and SLS and DMLS - and you'd imagine those customers absolutely want granular control over every detail of their order. Like, what business orders parts to be CNC'ed, but doesn't care whether they're getting a competitive quote?