Botmill fiasco

Ok. This is a story two years in the making, and boy am I pissed off.

So, in case you people didn't know, Botmill is not a good company. If there's anyone on here who has the ability to make decision regarding what commercial links are posted on RepRap's site for getting parts or printer kits, please remove anything to do with Botmill from them. I've found so many people on this forum who have run into issues with this company. See:

[forums.reprap.org]
[forums.reprap.org] (Tried to buy one from Botmill, didn't turn out well? Elaboration would be nice)
[forums.reprap.org]
[forums.reprap.org]
[forums.reprap.org]
[forums.reprap.org]

There are more... Just feel free to look 'em up yourselves.

Anyway, to make a really.... really.... really, long story short (or at least short-er), I bought a kit from them two years ago. I had the same troubles with unanswered emails, and late deliveries, and promises of "We'll ship it tomorrow," only tomorrow turned into two weeks later, etc... Worthless parts, excuses, promises to make things better, threats of demanding a refund deftly turned into "We'll fix it, just stick with us!"... Two years on, now, and all I have is a large, non-functional paperweight that has never successfully printed anything worth calling good, or right, or even vaguely the shape it was supposed to be.

I email looking for an address to ship it back, being hopeful for a partial refund since I have a huge train of emails documenting my issues.

Then the manager responds in the most condescending manner possible, blaming *me* for all of my troubles. That makes me mad. I do Google searches, and find all of the links like those above, and it infuriates me... my scalp is burning, I'm so mad.

Now I demand a full refund for the honor of being insulted on top of my other woes, and I'm basically getting blown off... "We'll get on the phone and talk..." No.. We won't. I don't want to hear the sound of your voice ever again... What an ass. Threats of going to the BBB yield nothing. I've filed now. Awaiting a response, and if that doesn't get me some compensation, I'll have to see what I can do in small claims court.

Oh, and if you're lurking Gil, Shaan, or Fred, I gave you all way more chances than you deserved. I gave you two years and a whole hell of a lot of stress on my part. You did nothing for me but take my money and give me a shaft... and then insult me and my intelligence.

Fred lied to me multiple times about my ship date, Shaan told me he pretty much didn't know how to fix the build problems I had, and Gil did nothing but try to placate me and prevent me from making this very post.

Chunks SMASH!

Shady businesses don't care about the BBB because customers will still do business with them even if they don't have the BBB sticker. That's all the enforcement they have.... deny people the use of their logo. When's the last time you or anyone you know said "I won't shop there because they don't have a BBB sticker in the window." ? If you want to get a shady business to act, put the transaction on a credit card and make sure it gets fixed within 30 days or deny the payment through the credit card. Taking their money away provides them with motivation.

As far as Botmill. Yeah, I got a big mess too. I had to overcome it with my own ingenuity. At least the plastic parts were made well (a previous complaint by people). The hotend they gave me didn't go with the extruder they sent me. The extruder I found that it would go on wasn't designed to go on the x-carriage from the kit. I had to buy aluminum L-bar to makeshift something. The end stops they sent weren't set up right. I sent something saying "I think I need to solder these two pads together" and then got a response "No don't solder anything" which came too late because I had already tested it out on one of them. Oh, and now all the endstops were working correctly. One of my motor drivers resets. That's what was causing the random zigzag seen here [forums.reprap.org]. The power supply they sent was underpowered for all the stuff they sent me and kept resetting. I had to buy a new power supply. The heater resistor wasn't included at all. I had to figure out which one to get and order it.

In the end I have some OK prints. I printed a coin-op bottle opener from Thingiverse that actually opened a bottle. YAY! Now I've just been working on getting some consistent prints. Sometimes the plastic sputters a little out of the nozzle when it prints, which can ruin the object. I'm considering ordering a new hotend.

Sorry for your woes. In my dealing I was TOLD to remove my remarks from this forum

As for the BBB, as an acredited biz, its a little bit of a scam, you pay to join, they don't give out the 'sticker' for free.

3DSystems is even a public company, that almost makes sense. I worked for a company that went public, the focus went from keeping the customer happy, to making sure the shareholders are happy (customers took a back seat to the shareholders)

(BTW, my 'order' now has a status of 'On hold' but not canceled after a few months )

I was lucky, after the very first hiccup (I ordered the day they changed their website to include a 'same day shipping' ad, but I didn't hear anything from them for several days) and that prompted me to look on here. I wish I had checked here before that but it was in time to get the transaction cancelled after only a couple of weeks and more than half a dozen e-mails where they tried to placate me, saying it was because of the holiday (July 4th) then because of some other situation beyond their control which I can't remember because it was clearly not true.

I got Botmill to cancel the transaction and ordered a kit from Makerfarm and they shipped the same day I ordered.

Unfortunately they will continue to get people to order from them because they have the 3D Systems name and connection to draw on. Sooner or later though, I think 3DS is going to have to respond to the fact that this arm of their organization is not doing them any favors and it needs to be fixed or cut off.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/31/2012 07:25AM by a_shorething.

What I don't understand is if you go to another 3DS website - alibre.com - and click on Printers you get three printers that are completely different to the Botmill ones. They look like the ones Ed Sells is/was involved with at Bits from Bytes?

It's all very confusing.

Andy