BOTMILL is a NIGHTMARE

Dear Reprap community -

I need your help. I am getting screwed so bad by Botmill that I need community support. In a nutshell:

[All documents referred to are attached to this post]

-Placed order for glider on Nov. 21. Note they advertise "Next Day Shipping" everywhere.
-Despite numerous attempts to ask them and request expedited shipping since they were delayed, I didn't receive my printer until Nov. 30.
-Printer arrived in poor condition, loosely assembled, some parts put on backwards, belts loose, not all wires hooked to electronics
-Package was missing a roll of filament that was supposed to be included
-After not getting any prompt support, I decided I just wanted to wash my hands of Botmill and the Glider. Not so easy to do.
-After telling them that I would take my own action (complaint with BBB, posting on here), I received a response from Paul Spoliansky from 3dSystems call center saying they would do an RMA and refund, that it would just take a few days at it had to "be signed by 8 people from upper management"
-I patiently waited for over a week, and then followed up.
-This time, Gil Mayron (the original person I dealt with from Botmill) gave me the runaround, pretending nothing ever happened and trying to put me in contact with technical support.
-I gave them one more chance to simply refund my money and take the printer back (I never even hooked it up) and they simply stopped responding to me
-I filed a complaint with the BBB, SC and FL attorney generals office, and contacted Visa about my charges. Visa said I need to return the package and provide delivery confirmation. So I did.
-Gil Mayron responded to my BBB complaint basically again trying to sound cool and collected, like nothing ever happened
-To date, Botmill/3D systems now has my original package back - 100% the same as when they shipped it, and they STILL HAVE MY $1399!!!

Please, send them an email, make sure nobody buys from them, do something, please!!

Again, all documents are attached for reference and for proof. This company could really really hurt the RepRap/3D printing community by frustrating newbs to the point that they simply give up on the hobby, as I have almost done.

UPDATE 1/8/2011:

Just wanted to update you guys on this - about 5 minutes after I made this initial post on Dec 21, Gil Mayron called me. This is the first time in this entire ordeal that he actually called me. Of course he was concerned about the posting (although it is 100% true), and I simply reminded him that I gave them WEEKS to resolve this before I took this step and they simply did nothing.

Now, a couple weeks later, BOTMILL STILL HAS MY MOMEY. I returned the glider several weeks ago, and they kept telling me that they were "looking for it in receiving". Now I finally get an email from Gil on January 4 saying that he has requested to get me a replacement printer!!! What the @#$%^&*( is this?!!! I DON'T WANT A REPLACEMENT PRINTER I JUST WANT MY MONEY BACK BOTMILL!!!! I ordered this almost 2 months ago!!

You would think with all the activitiy regarding Botmill that they would step and and try to do some damage control, but apparently these guys really just don't have a clue. Botmill took my $1400 and has kept it for nearly 2 months. I sent their merchandise back to them a long time ago. This is just so wrong.....


TAGS: Botmill, Botmill Glider, Caveat Emptor, Buyer Beware, Do not buy from Botmill, Avoid Botmill, Botmill is a scam, Botmill review

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/08/2012 10:12AM by asifjahmed.

Hi asifjahmed,

I have to ask, why did you buy a Botmill Glider?

You started off 22 days ago looking for a place to buy an assembled printer.... Did you not even do one search on this forum for Botmill?

You also seem to have a Rapman 3.2? - You do know they are owned by the same parent company as Botmill? - 3D Systems.
Is that running ok now? - Remind 3D systems you have already spent money with 'them' on a Rapman, that may help you?

I expect you won't want to hear this but - Someone on this forum would have made you a fully built and tested Prusa for less than $1400

This thread may not help you directly, but it may help others that read it, a bad community reputation takes a very, very long time to restore. It would be nice to really see that 3D systems are improving Botmill.... Have you tried to PM or e-mail Adam from 3D Systems, they claim to be resolving all the many problems they had, I'm sure he would want to hear from you.

We had another person with a Botmill issue just yesterday on this forum here - [forums.reprap.org]

Good luck and do let us know how this unfolds, I hope they can turn it around for you.

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[richrap.blogspot.com]

Hi richrap -

Thanks for your reply.

The main reason I bought a Botmill is because I needed a printer quickly, and every other provider has a several week lead time. Botmill has "next day shipping" plastered everywhere.

Thanks for your support.

The sad part is that 9 days is extremely fast for Botmill. My Axis Kit took over a month to get to me with missing parts, then they sent the rest and there was still parts missing. This was back in March, they advertised 10 days back then.

The reviews of them are in the wiki.

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www.Robosprout.com RepRap Mendel parts and accessories.
Message if there is anything you need...I have more than what is listed on my site.
Located in the Spokane, WA / Coeur d'Alene, ID area.
Contact: Robosprout@gmail.com Flickr: [www.flickr.com]

just be thankfull you didnt go with a certain other mendel parts company.
at least those guys sent you something.

Sadly the people from Botmill and 3D Systems do not seem to look at this forum very often.

I would encourage any of them at the very least 'Follow Topic' so they get an E-mail sent directly to them when someone comments on one of their many threads on this forum, but I guess they are not doing that or we would see more pro-active help for their customers.

As of today they have not visited the site for about a month.

3DSbotmill
Last Activity:
12/05/2011 07:03PM
10 posts

Rajeev
Last Activity:
11/25/2011 09:55PM
6 posts

And BotMill
Last Activity:
11/30/2011 01:51PM
30 Posts

Come on Botmill & 3D systems you can do much better than this.

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[richrap.blogspot.com]

Ordered the Glider. We bought a constructed one so we could get our heads around the softwhare instead of putting it together 7/7/2011 5-6 weeks was the lead time quoted. After countless e-mails and a lot of excuses most of which were not believable, I'd had enough and said to Gill I wasn't interested in excuses and just wanted a final delivery date. 5/10/2011 the order shipped, that has been the smoothest part of the process (well done UPS). Get the thing out of the box and going over it first to find not only things promised not there (heated pad thumb drive with instructions and firmwhare) The platform that they had given us was mounted the wrong way round. The Gen 6 electronics was faulty (no boot loader & 23kHz interference on voltage supply rail) We had to order a new one from reprapusa.com because Gill continually skirted the issue by saying it was a firmwhare problem, eventually we just gave up. New one is working fine.
Let's see now there has been so many issues with this I will just put a few in, bolts that were not tight, things put on backwards I think he may be dislectic or something, certainly thats how it appears to be constructed. We are still working on the extruder, as of yet nothing has been produced not even a test print.
I can't in all good conscience recomend this company to anyone. Stay away, far far away from this lot, their nothing but headaches.
Merry Christmas Botmill
Shep & Guido
Australia
PS I guess we should be grateful that it got here at all

Botmill has a bad enough track record that a big warning should be posted on the wiki against doing business with them with links to these forum threads. It seems that nothing has really changed under 3DS.

I suspect 3DS were conned into buying a bogus company the same way customers of Botmill are conned into departing with their money.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

I don't think so nophead. I reckon Gil just thought it was easy money and he started to sell them before he had any idea of what he was doing.
He probably hasn't made the money envisaged and had to sell out to 3DS. Then they stupidly employed him.
Shep

shep135 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> He probably hasn't made the money envisaged and
> had to sell out to 3DS. Then they stupidly
> employed him.
> Shep

Botmill may have just ran low/out of money to expand or improve service and then 'sold' the 'potential' to 3DS based on an active customer list/base (both happy? and not-so happy) along with the general frenzy of this low-end of the market that 3DS wants to get more into, 3DS may have thought they got a really good deal? The deal should have been structured so the original Botmill owners get little cash up-front but have a much longer-term buy-out if the business improves with the funding and resources 3DS would be putting into it. The Botmill owners should have had 'golden handcuffs' to the business for a while, I very much doubt they have made any significant money (yet) out of the sale to 3DS, and now they have a big company 'helping them'...
Botmill now really needs to improve customer service and if a company can't do this when they are working for themselves it's only harder when you have a parent company demanding it.

But they did spend some time and resources making their website festive and doing a Christmas promotion so that's got to be really reassuring to all those past customers?, getting those priorities right and all that... Maybe we can hope for a new year's resolution?

We may be seeing more Botmill customers on these forums asking for help in the coming months...

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[richrap.blogspot.com]

Anybody can make the odd mistake, but constantly shipping machines late, with parts missing and incorrectly assembled must either be deliberate fraud or total incompetence, how else can it be explained?

Other companies have overstretched themselves and get bad press in these forums but they still have a reputation for quality parts when they eventually deliver.

Why would a company like 3DS buy, what surely must be the worst Reprap company in the world, unless they were conned? What did they buy? No IP, no reputation, no manufacturing ability that anybody with a reprap doesn't have.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

I agree, I really don't get it either, They could have simple started a new company themselves, or invested in some good people in the community to invest into the low-end market. It's bonkers how big-businesses think - They (3DS) must want to follow the success of Makerbot in the US. but for that you need a charismatic set of people,care about the customer and a 'cool' company image for people to get behind. From the outside Botmill does not seem to fit that image, maybe 3DS have simple bought a name (with baggage) and plan/want to turn it into a 'cool' company? they have some way to go.

The language on the Botmill website is designed to reassure people that want a easy way into this hobby, no problem with that but you need to deliver all you promise or change your target market. that's always seemed to be the issue with the customers that run into issues with their Botmill machines and desperately seek out help from here or wherever they can, it suddenly starts to be something they never anticipated and a whole lot different to what they thought they were being sold.

We are still some way from simple to use, low cost 3D printers for every consumer, maybe we will always be a little way from that, surely 3DS know enough to see that? Maybe next year will tell us.

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[richrap.blogspot.com]

Everyone:

I ordered a Botmill Glider at the beginning of December. It took 10 working days to get it. I had the machine calibrated and setup within 5 hours. The machine was printing in about 8 hours. My only negative comment is about the three pages of instructions - this was somehow going to get you running. Those 3 pages were not only to setup the machine, but how to connect it to the computer, load the software necessary to run the machine and all the settings.

Needless to say, it was not enough. Also, they ask you to setup the z axis stop within 1 sheet of paper to the table. I did, started to print, nozzle digs into table. Not good. Now I am frustrated trying to look for a replacement nozzle. Botmill (3DS) does not have a link to that component on their website.

The search shall continue.

Dave G




nophead Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Anybody can make the odd mistake, but constantly
> shipping machines late, with parts missing and
> incorrectly assembled must either be deliberate
> fraud or total incompetence, how else can it be
> explained?
>
> Other companies have overstretched themselves and
> get bad press in these forums but they still have
> a reputation for quality parts when they
> eventually deliver.
>
> Why would a company like 3DS buy, what surely must
> be the worst Reprap company in the world, unless
> they were conned? What did they buy? No IP, no
> reputation, no manufacturing ability that anybody
> with a reprap doesn't have.

Quote
DaveG
Needless to say, it was not enough. Also, they ask you to setup the z axis stop within 1 sheet of paper to the table. I did, started to print, nozzle digs into table. Not good. Now I am frustrated trying to look for a replacement nozzle. Botmill (3DS) does not have a link to that component on their website.

Did you set the clearance with a sheet of paper when the nozzle is hot? If you don't, then it explains why it crashed on the bed when you printed due to thermal expansion.

BUMP - Added an update to the original post.

I was just wondering how you were getting on with them... Not any better I see, so much for new year resolutions...

What I don't understand at this point is why Botmill can't just refund you the money, 'very quickly!' and apologise for this mess, Isn't that exactly what you asked for in the BBB complaint? - Don't Botmill or 3DS understand that in this modern age social media can kill a company and not putting the customer completely FIRST will make any company look like an arrogant dinosaur.

Any company that needs 8 people in upper management to authorise a customer refund when they are selling to the general public is not going to last, and things like this will not improve their reputation - Even if this is the company 'policy' why would any sane company tell the customer this?, it just makes things worse. And why send an E-mail to any customer asking them not to post on forums, again just making the problem much worse.

I'm astonished how any company can conduct any business in this manner and how a parent company like 3DS condones it and puts up with it.

I'm still highly hopeful 3DS and maybe even Botmill can provide much benefit to this industry at the consumer level, but they need to sort out a good and friendly customer charter, and start training their people to implement it.

Maybe I was wrong, Maybe the ownder did get a great big payout from 3DS and they just don't need to care about the customer any-more. Empower customer support in your organisation, it's the most Important area of any business.

Fixing things well when problems occur can actually greatly benefit a company in so many ways - we are 'still' trying to help you Botmill, and we are certainly still helping many of your customers, please be professional and acknowledge you care, sort this out, quickly.

asifjahmed and the 3D printing community are still waiting.

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[richrap.blogspot.com]

Thanks for the support RichRap!

Just wanted to bump this thread and say that I STILL HAVE NOT GOTTEN A REFUND!!! According to Gil, they have my machine in their hands, and are just waiting for an RMA to be processed. Well, this is well over a week ago. I will keep you apprised.

That's just shocking customer service. No excuse for such a poor timescales and delays in processing a simple refund.

It only sends a message of buyer beware, what a shame and another missed opportunity by botmill and 3ds. We can only hope they treat the next customer better.

---

[richrap.blogspot.com]

I am also having problems with BotMill. I wish I would have read these opinions before I ordered. Currently I am waiting for instructions on how to build an extruder with the parts they sent in the Axis kit. Seems they have "re-engineered" or "redesigned" or "re-somethinged" the extruder but, for some reason, have been unable to get any information to me.

I think the biggest shock I had was when I opened the box containing the "kit"and discovered there were no instructions of any kind on how to actually build the thing. After a couple of days of e-mails, they suggested that I search the web for instructions.

They have been exceedingly polite in all emails but they simply do not answer questions or provide desperately needed information. Sometimes it seems like they don't speak English as they simply do not answer a simple question.

More will follow when this is all said and done.

Hi Paul,

We have been making a concerted effort to provide our fullest attention to all of our customers requests and needs and with you it has been no different. I am disappointed that you feel otherwise.

With regards to the extruder instructions, we were unable to upload instructions for the updated design we've recently begun to include on our kits and assembled machines as we were under the midst of a parts shortage. The instant the new parts came in, approximately one week ago, we mobilized our staff to build units in an effort to make up lost time. We've since achieved that, and a few days ago we began documenting instructions. Those instructions are now complete, albeit in written form, and are attached in this post. Pictures of extruder construction will follow and we hope to have them available soon. i'd be more than happy to send them to you once they are available.

In recent weeks our Axis customers had begun to receive their kits, equipped with the components for the new extruder. Instructions were not available immediately and we acknowledge the frustration with that. Specifically, we understand your frustration for not being able to complete this however I made it clear that we were aware of the issue and that it would be resolved as soon as possible. We are happy to report written instructions are now available and pictures will follow in the next coming days.

Finally, I've always made myself available for support regarding the construction of the machine and I will continue to do so. If you or anyone has any questions regarding the build, I am more than happy to communicate with you. Rest assured you have my fullest attention and I am here to help, as always.

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--------------------------

Shaan Dholakia
BotMill 3D Printers
[www.BotMill.com]
shaan@botmill.com

asifjahmed,

What's your credit card company say about the progress of the charge back? Since you can show that you've sent the machine back, this would appear to be an easy case for them.

I'm sorry you had issues with BotMill. I haven't purchased from them, and if this is how they treat their customers, I won't spend my money with them.

I, too, had some issues with a supplier, and it appears the demand for the products are so high that they don't care about customer services--and pissed off customers doesn't seem to be affecting sales, so they continue to ignore the problems. These type of business rarely stay in business long term.

I don't understand how hard they can screw this up. I have personally packaged kits, sold them and sent them locally and internationally without one person asking for anything to be replaced. I even offer a lifetime replacement policy on every part.

Get your act together Botmill you are a disgrace.

I am thinking of buying a printer, so I have to do some more lurking around on this thread. However I am definitely thinking twice about the botmill option (leaning against it) you guys make it sound pretty horrific. Ironically they are having a valentine's day sale now too, lol. They are showing the community the love.

Leaning against it?? Do some more research, you should be "running away from it, FAST"!! lol

It would likely turn out to be one of the worst decisions you've ever made.

I have a Rapman 3.2 and really enjoy it. While I have some experience with RepRaps too, and love the open-source aspect of it all, the Rapman is more advanced in its design - especially the electronics.

Either one will require a lot of assembly unless you purchase one assembled (not recommended).

UPDATE

On 2/16/2012, I received a letter from US Bank that my VISA claim had been found in my favor, thus my charge for the Botmill Glider was reversed.

In summary: It took me roughly 3 MONTHS to get my money back from these scam artists, and that is after hundreds of emails on my part. THEY NEVER REFUNDED MY MONEY. Rather, my own action taken with the bank resulted in a successful chargeback of my money.

In summary: I am glad to have this resolved, and finally know that I don't have to eat the $1400. But to any potential buyers: STAY FAR, FAR AWAY FROM BOTMILL!!!!!! EVEN IF THEY HAD A GOOD PRODUCT, THEY HAVE NO CLUE HOW TO RUN A BUSINESS!!!!!

You're lucky. I was strung along for two years. I bought in, took three tries and as many months to get parts that were usable and not horribly disfigured. Haven't gotten a single good print out of it. Plastic constantly leaks out of the nozzle.... I tried calibrating the z axis and had the same trouble as someone else with the nozzle suddenly grinding into the bed. Turns out the damned bed was not remotely flat. I tried contacting Botmill and got no response, so I took it to a machinist and had it decked to within .005 of an inch for $40. After arguing with software, configuration, etc., and my level of fury bouncing up and down, I thought I was finally getting somewhere. Then, two of the controllers for the steppers blew... or something like that. I'm not sure, but the steppers seize up as soon as power is applied to the machine. I'm so mad I just want to find them and leave it on their doorstep so that it can be their problem.

Worst part is that because I've been strung along for so long, I have no chance at a refund.

Chunks

I'm sure there are lots of us willing to help you get it all worked out. From what you described above your not too far off.

Post as much info as you can about your setup (Stepper motor model numbers, RAMPS Version, pictureS of your hotend..some pics of the RAMPS board and the machine.

Do you have a volt meter/ multimeter?

Honestly, I'm not sure I want to deal with it anymore. I'm so flaming mad at Gil Mayron and his whole crew, especially after finding out how they've screwed so many of us over.

I bought the Axis about two years ago. I built it after waiting about four months for good parts, and was extremely giddy to be *almost there!* Then my experience turned to horror, and the condescending attitude of Mr. Mayron in his last email to me has sent me off the deep end. I'm looking into my legal recourse at this point because these guys have run me around for so damned long.

... unless there's someone in Orlando who can sort this out with me, I'm shipping this stupid thing to his door and letting him deal with it.