E3D takes unfair advantage over competition

Hey friends,
I just want to let you know what is happening on the market of selling 3d printer parts and upgrades. Our company is making thermistor assembly glued into a M3 threaded hex stud. Well known upgrade for reprap hotend. We also sell it to BQ and it is used in Witbox and Hephestos / Hephestos 2 3d printers for 2 years in a row. We sold a lot of these parts for 3 years since we start making them. Our thermistor is a good match for E3D V6 or clones, and it is quite successful. Here is the product we are talking about:

[reprapchampion.com]

Recently E3D started selling upgrade for V6 hotends as well as upgraded V6 hotend that uses cartridge thermistor. Their upgrade requires new heater block, kit cost about 18-20 bucks. Our thermistor sold around 9 USD with cable, it does not require special heater block, it uses existing block.
E3D found that they have competition for this upgrade and they closed several our thermistor listings on ebay and blocked thermistor listing on amazon. They claimed "brand name misuse" and marketplaces just closed listing without any investigation.

My question - you guys see anything wrong in selling upgrade for E3D hotend and mention E3D name because of that? Because you can buy on ebay aftermarket LED lamp for Toyota and Toyota somehow does not take very personally. Toyota is not claiming to be open source, E3D does.
If you guys need lower cost alternative for costly E3D parts - say so. We think that E3D is not moving in right direction here.

Thanks
DM
reprapchampion.com

Welcome to the dog eat dog world of capitalism!

It sounds like you need to talk to a lawyer.

---

Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

This kind of sounds like a he said she said situation without being able to read the descriptions of postings that were actually shut down. For all we know, E3D was acting in good faith to protect consumers from junk chinese clones and you just got caught in the middle. They always seemed like good guys to me who I assume would be willing to work with you so that you could sell your thermistors in a way that doesn't "misuse" their name. However, they also seem proud of the new cartridge system and I personally am planning to upgrade in order to use the new silicone socks.

In the short term though, it sounds like you issue might be with market places, not necessarily E3D, who should have given you the opportunity to correct any misunderstandings before shutting you down, end of story.

People may also get confused on your website, you mention e3d in first item listed in hotends then advertise a product like this [reprapchampion.com] which seems to be quite expensive compared to a clone, so people might assume its a genuine one.

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/07/2016 03:43PM by MechaBits.

Before setting up a message like this on a forum, have you considered messaging e3d to see if they have a position on the matter? As others have said you may be caught in the crossfire. I imagine e3d report many listings of fake clones.

==== Link to webstore was not given as advertisement, if we make few bucks on people coming from this listing - we will donate all to animal shelter to save more cats from starvation. ===

After that disclaimer - thanks guys for expressing your opinions. Yes of course we will contact them to ask "why?" I wanted to know what other people are thinking before we talk to them.
We were selling this part for 3 years, nobody was complaining. as soon as E3D rolled our cartridge thermistor upgrade - they knocked down our listings. Something is not right here, that is all I wanted to tell... and see if others will think so.

Lawyer - NO. We will not waste money, we want to make money instead. Yes, our product is not super cheap at the moment, but we will lower production cost and make it more affordable to everybody. We will also make more products to convert china V6 clones to more reliable and serviceable hottends, without buying more expensive original E3D V6.

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/07/2016 07:54PM by reprapchampion.

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reprapchampion
==== Link to webstore was not given as advertisement, if we make few bucks on people coming from this listing - we will donate all to animal shelter to save more cats from starvation. ===

What about dogs

---

Flex3Drive.com

Dogs eat a lot. E3D makes more money, they take care of dogs.

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Mutley3D
What about dogs

To be honest, it just sounds like you want to put down the name of e3d before you have all the facts. I'm not defending what they did, but I'm not a fan of people airing their dirty laundry in public either.

"==== Link to webstore was not given as advertisement, if we make few bucks on people coming from this listing - we will donate all to animal shelter to save more cats from starvation. ==="
post a pic and eat the cat!!! it felt spammy

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2016 05:00AM by jinx.

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reprapchampion
My question - you guys see anything wrong in selling upgrade for E3D hotend and mention E3D name because of that? Because you can buy on ebay aftermarket LED lamp for Toyota and Toyota somehow does not take very personally. Toyota is not claiming to be open source, E3D does.

Selling upgrades to a product and mentioning their name - not a problem.

Selling a clone of the product on the same site where you mention their name - problem.

Your example of the lamp for Toyota is not a good example. The people selling the replacement lamp are not selling a car that looks exactly like a Toyota.

You sound like me, when I'm looking for pitty-s3x

Mimimi

Anyway, you reached your goal and generated some traffic to your website...

Next thing will be the clones moaning about how they are the unique one,


or why does the original designer keep changing the design "we cant keep up"


Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2016 11:01AM by MechaBits.

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o_lampe
Anyway, you reached your goal and generated some traffic to your website...

Then why are you guys are not buying yet? All sales from paid advertisement
I know your mostly friendly negative opinion now, expressed in words and pictures, you guys can start ignoring this thread to avoid any traffic to our store.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2016 05:38PM by reprapchampion.

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reprapchampion

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o_lampe
Anyway, you reached your goal and generated some traffic to your website...

Then why are you guys are not buying yet? All sales from paid advertisement

Because we'd rather buy the genuine E3D hardware.

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PDBeal
Because we'd rather buy the genuine E3D hardware.

I was only asking opinion here about thermistor which is our genuine hardware, not E3D genuine hardware, but seems like people like to talk about clones. I have no problem selling clones - we sell anything that sells good, but we also make and publish our own hardware under GPL license. Thermistor is our own hardware that can be used to upgrade E3D hotend. I only asked if anything wrong with selling it as an upgrade for E3D.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2016 05:57PM by reprapchampion.

Perhaps we think it's a bit underhand to sell clones of another person's design but whatever drives business at the end of the day, right?

Sorry only having a little fun, I actually get your point, if you where the first person to think of putting a nut on the thermistor, and have been happily selling for years, then e3d brought out similar product and forced your product off line...i'd be kicking up a fuss too.

The title of this post is highly inflammatory given that you only want to promote your own product. E3D has a great product and great support. I have several of their hotends, and I will purchase from them when their solutions make sense for my printing needs. This thread appears to be an attempt to troll for business by smearing another company's name. Sorry - no sympathy here.

Right, I should have posted a picture instead of putting a link, which was quicker. When it comes to make money people like to kicks assets for every wrong move, but cats will not be feed today, thanks for you guys protecting E3D and resisting buying our stuff .
My friend dtwrv6 and other friends with cryptic names and readable names, I like you all - believe me... but this post does _nothing_ as an advertisement. The only thing that works is adwords and other direct ways of paid advertisement.
My only intention was to know what people really think about kicking our listing out on amazon. I wanted to know that before making any moves to restore it. "Sorry no sympathy here" is mostly the opinion in this thread as far as I see. I am OKAY with that and you guys can start ignoring thread to avoid any traffic driven to the link ...

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2016 06:51PM by reprapchampion.

No need to feed the cats...they and dogs are the ones on the menu, along with monkey brains and other dishes.
As long you you make sure things are clear, they are compatible with e3d maybe you can carry on using those 3 characters in that order.

Interesting you say paid links seem to work for you, as more and more of the results we are fed thru google/bing's menu seem to be rigged that way.

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2016 08:39PM by MechaBits.

What did you expect with your topic title? I don't own any E3d products so I don't really care what you're selling.

OT:
Feeding stray cats is nonsense and only raises more and more problems.
Catch them; sterilize them and let them free where you caught them. That's the only way to keep the number of stray cats low and stable ( because there will always be friendly people feeding them )
Feeding them only makes YOU feel better.

Sanjay here from E3D - I manage all the things to do with takedowns of clones and the like. Just wanted to clear some things up and make clear our stance on this situation as I feel like there is some misinformation and false accusations being pushed here.

Late June:
We released our new cartridge thermistor sensor and associated bits that go with them.

There are obvious reasons for stud/cartridge based sensors, they are much easier and less fiddly to deal with. We knew people used the stud based thermistors in many cases, and had no problems with that, some of our genuine resellers were stocking them as accessories too - that’s totally fine.

The reason we went with the format we did in the end is not a conspiracy against stud thermistors it was just a sound engineering choice. The cartridge lets us get the sensor into exactly the position we want, as close to the nozzle and in a heater>load>sensor arrangement such that you get a more ideal temperature control loop. It also means we can support other high temp sensors like thermocouples and PT100 sensors that aren’t available in stud format but are as cartridges.

October:
After personally struggling with doing endless takedowns on various platforms taking up an inordinate amount my own time we got in touch with a firm who provide a service to do takedowns on our behalf.

Our target were the blatant clones misusing our trademark, images, and even just verbatim copying of our descriptions. This was all being done in way that led people to mistake fakes with genuine product. We regularly get support requests from people with clones who are having problems.

I would like to personally apologise for the mistaken takedown of your stud thermistor listing. This was an error on behalf of the firm we are working with. I have just gotten off the phone and had a stern word with them about ensuring they are only taking down things that we rightfully should be.

It’s difficult for firms like these to grapple with the alien concepts of open designs and where we draw the line vs where they are used to drawing the line. We do our best, and I’ve made it even more clear to them this morning, but sometimes things slip through the cracks.

This isn’t some great conspiracy to destroy the market of stud thermistors, we’ve got bigger things to be dealing with in the world of clones. We’re hardly threatened by some 9 buck accessory insulated with epoxy and PTFE being sold on eBay. The cartridge thermistors were released many months before any action took place, and we are expressly trying avoid mistakenly taking down things which are not infringing.

What is however a problem is when companies, such as RepRapChampion, do things like make a 1:1 clone of our designs, and steal our brand names to use on your website and listings to promote said clones. It makes it hard for me to sympathise with your cause. It also perhaps explains, to some extent, the reasons why the firm we work with might have confused your stud thermistor for an infringing product.

TL;DR
Sorry not sorry.

Cheers,
Sanjay

P.S, We don't disccriminate between our furry friends. Cats and dogs get equal treatment at E3D.


Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2016 08:23AM by SanjayM.

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SanjayM
We’re hardly threatened by some 9 buck accessory insulated with epoxy and PTFE being sold on eBay. The cartridge thermistors were released many months before any action took place, and we are expressly trying avoid mistakenly taking down things which are not infringing.

What is however a problem is when companies, such as RepRapChampion, do things like make a 1:1 clone of our designs, and steal our brand names to use on your website and listings to promote said clones. It makes it hard for me to sympathise with your cause. It also perhaps explains, to some extent, the reasons why the firm we work with might have confused your stud thermistor for an infringing product.

Uh... if this accessory wasn't a theat, why take down the listings for it? Contradiction.

Personally I'm not bothered about E3D, I've seen plenty of tech companies come and go. Although one compromise might be to allow "E3D compatible", so long as the accessory makes it quite clear WHICH E3D product in particular it is compatible with (because E3D equipment isn't necesarily compatible with other E3D products anyway).

Just trying to suggest a positive course of action here, I'm not trying to pick a fight.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2016 08:57AM by DragonFire.

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Uh... if this accessory wasn't a theat, why take down the listings for it? Contradiction.

If you had bothered reading all of Sanjay's thread, you would have understood that E3D didn't take down the posting, a third party firm did on their behalf. A firm that probably relied upon a generic computer algorithm to find every non-E3D approved use of the term "E3D" and auto-submitted a take down request rather than verifying that it was in violation of E3D's rights.

E3D has since discussed the issue with the firm in question, to ensure they be more diligent in the future. There is no contradiction in E3D's post because it was not their intention to stop third party add-ons, only clones claiming to be originals.

Classy response from Sanjay. I wish all companies were so well engaged and communicative.

Yep, compliments to Sanjay.

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Kurzaa

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Uh... if this accessory wasn't a theat, why take down the listings for it? Contradiction.

If you had bothered reading all of Sanjay's thread, you would have understood that E3D didn't take down the posting, a third party firm did on their behalf. A firm that probably relied upon a generic computer algorithm to find every non-E3D approved use of the term "E3D" and auto-submitted a take down request rather than verifying that it was in violation of E3D's rights.

E3D has since discussed the issue with the firm in question, to ensure they be more diligent in the future. There is no contradiction in E3D's post because it was not their intention to stop third party add-ons, only clones claiming to be originals.

Complete and utter bull.

Both an agent and a director are equally culpable, under UK law. Else all those Nazi concentration camp guards were indeed, "Just Opeying Orders".

In contrast to US Law, which overrode the Nuremberg principle, and found those who committed the My Lai atrocity in Vietnam to be completely innocent, as they were "Just Obeying Orders".

E3D is a UK company. Sanjay can go swivel, and so can you.

EDIT: On this particular point, anyway, you can both go swivel. It's no problem, I have two middle fingers, one on each hand.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/16/2016 10:15AM by DragonFire.

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DragonFire
E3D is a UK company. Sanjay can go swivel, and so can you.

Go back and reread his response and this time try to comprehend what was said...

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SanjayM
I would like to personally apologise for the mistaken takedown of your stud thermistor listing. This was an error on behalf of the firm we are working with. I have just gotten off the phone and had a stern word with them about ensuring they are only taking down things that we rightfully should be.

He admitted that the take down for the stud thermistor was a mistake and action has been taken against the agent that did this so it won't happen again. He took responsibility.