So I’ve been waiting for a good opportunity to purchase a P1S for some time now. Finally pulled the trigger early into the sale on Monday…and spontaneously upgraded to an X1C lol. Of course, my coworker quickly pointed out our friendly neighborhood Microcenter has the X1Cs for the same sale price! Oh well, I like buying direct from manufacturers. Feels more personal and like I’ll have better support. Probably crazy, but whatever.
Well long story short, it’s now Saturday and I don’t have my printer. It hasn’t even shipped yet. As I read all of these horror stories about BL’s shipping and customer service I’m kicking myself for not just driving an hour away to Microcenter and getting one earlier this week.
At this point, should I just go buy one? Will BL let me cancel still or will their support be too slow to respond before it ships? Will it ever ship? If it does deliver, it looks like I have 14 days to return. Has anyone went through that process?
Yeah, good luck with that. But there are possibly some reasons to buy from Bambu - you probably will get a 6 month discount on filament which can amount to a fair savings. Double check, though. I got this deal when I bought mine but I haven’t checked if it’s part of this year’s sale.
As to shipping problems, at least so far I’ve had none. Everything has arrived in good shape and on time for me but others aren’t so lucky and getting things fixed is apparently non-trivial.
But buying from Microcenter might get you some perks too - like in case of infant mortality and shipping damage you can presumably replace it easily. Those that open their boxes to find a whole lot of glass shards can testify I think. Those that buy from Bambu are getting caught up in requests for photos, Bambu wanting to just send replacement parts, etc. These issues are probably fairly rare but stink when it happens to you.
Regarding trying to cancel, there have been reports of not getting a shipping notice until the package was about to be delivered or IIRC, after it was delivered. Or your printer could be sitting somewhere waiting on a label. With unresponsive customer service it’s hard to know.
You may be able to find the package if it has been shipped by logging into the various carriers’ websites. FedEx shows you packages that are headed to your address without having to search using a tracking number. I think UPS does the same.
If there was a Microcenter (or really any local dealer) I would have bought from them rather than direct, simply because of availability of local support. But that said: this depends on the quality of the retailer. I’ve heard great things about Microcenter from friends (first-hand experience is best) and if the machine is DOA they’ll swap it out and deal with Bambu. That is the job of the retailer.
But always check the local dealer’s return policies and such. I found out the hard way that Best Buy has a 15-day returns/exchanges window; any issues with products outside that window are handled by manufacturer warranty service. LG specifically has awful service.
In your case, OP, simply wait for the machine to arrive. Chances are quite good that it will arrive in one piece and work properly. After all, it has to ship from Bambu’s factories to the retailers the same way as it ships to your house, so it is packed properly.
Thanks everyone. At this point, I’m more worried about having to deal with the return process at Bambu and I’d rather not float a loan of $1,200 to them for 4+ weeks while they sort it out. Worst case I’m stuck with two printers and I could barely justify the cost of one. Guess I’ll just be patient.
I did sign up for UPS and FedEx services to track packages coming to my house. Nothing currently so not holding out hope for a surprise delivery. Maybe next week!
Can’t shake the feeling that all these “new” printers that started to pop up lately, like Qidi, Flashforge, Creality, Anycubic, etc, etc, look to me like a copy-paste of either X1 or P1 series. Strange they didn’t think to come up with these designs before bambu’ x1 and p1 models… Does anyone else think the same (or close to it)?
NB: Though print speed is important, i rather want to have a reliable and longlasting printer than a fast one, but always in need of maintenance, repair continuous tinkering and upgrades.
@Kaerous, what he (@MZip) said … 100% behind him… though if you’ll spend a bit more time looking through the forum, you might discover that these things aren’t that “fairly rare” an occurrence, but then again, you might be lucky enough not to get to experience these horror stories first hand.
I’ve spent the last few days browsing this forum, Reddit, the BL discord, and other sites to see what others experiences were like. Based on my findings, I’m expecting a shipment notice early next week, but I do see the occasional 2, 4, 6+ week ordeals although those seem to be more of a carrier not delivering issue.
At this point I was more curious if I should try to cut my loses and go buy one locally, but the return process scares the heck out me.
If money are away, then better wait for a bit… at least until a couple of days prior to the time limit of your bank deadline for charging back… then you could consider the local alternative. My 2 cents.
I purposely used PayPal for the transaction. They offer purchase protection for up to 180 days after the sale. I would recommend it to anyone else finding this thread. It’s saved me on other transactions in the past.
This deal stopped early this year when BL extended those discounts to everyone, filaments have become cheaper since then as well.
Shipping issues, I have had many, some documented here.
Shipping isn’t in your control, as you do not pick the delivery partner BL chooses, and if anything goes wrong they have been known to wash their hands of it entirely and just say "We believe it was shipped’ (it happened to me).
Unfortunately, you can’t cancel their order after 2 hours of placing the order. Why? Because they choose to ignore all local laws that prohibit such behaviour.
You could create a ticket, which will be ignored for days if you are lucky, longer if you are not. There are no guarantees it will be read or even actioned (which takes more time) before the order is shipped.
The good news, when you receive it (fingers crossed) you will love it.
The first post was about saving some money. I also looked at the Flashforge Adventurer 5M Pro, which is pretty damn attractive. The ease of changing the nozzles alone is a real advantage.
A lot of my research on this issue, and others, has given me a great appreciation for those folks in the communities I subscribe to who come back around to follow up on the what/when/where of their specific resolution. Its always frustrating to read through a detailed thread outlining problems from others similar to my own, and then find the OP never took the time to detail how or when exactly it was resolved.
Well, to that end, I was happy to find that my order was shipped tonight (Sunday) at 10:25pm EST. That is slightly more than 6-1/2 calendar days after I placed my order. A couple things I found interesting…
I didn’t expect BL’s shipping warehouse to be working weekends. I’m working under the assumption this wasn’t shipped on Friday and I’m just now receiving the email since both tracking numbers I received showed label creation within minutes of my email from BL.
My order shipped in two separate shipments - one containing my X1C and another with the spare PTFE tubes I thought I might need at some point. Also interesting is that the X1C is coming via FedEx and the tubes are coming via USPS. Apparently it was too much trouble to stuff the tubes into the FedEx box. I’m wondering if the tubes caused some sort of delay at the warehouse…
Also of note, I recently learned from a few folks on Reddit, who ordered X1C/P1S combos later into the Black Friday Sale than I did, have not only seen their orders shipped earlier than mine, but also received them and are happily printing away. Further evidence my order was just some oddball anomaly.
Anyways, here’s hoping for a speedy delivery. I’ll of course record any abnormalities - or lack thereof - on this thread for the next poor sap who has a similar experience and is frantically and anxiously scanning forums looking for threads of hope. The least I can do, I think, to give back a little.
Finally, I hope this thread doesn’t come across as a random disgruntled consumer complaining about or bashing BL. I was simply placing an order for a product with a preconceived expectation of when I was going to receive it (from BL’s website) and found those expectations misplaced. I think most of us anxiously await such a big and exciting item, and my nervousness about the process increased daily. I’ll admit my excitement has waned slightly over the last few days, but here’s to hoping the printer quickly resolves that!
They do an excellent job of packaging the printer. If you bought a combo unit, the AMS is inside the very same box your printer is in, actually inside the build area of the printer.
The unboxing instructions are very easy as well.
They can’t stuff the parts in as that might cause issues with the structural safety of the printer, and the far more expensive part, plus, there is very little room to play around with.
They do tell you they ship separately when you order.
It can cost proportionally more to ship something small with a big box delivery company, it is often cheaper to use the national carrier in each country.
Man, you should read mine.
I love Bambu Lab printers, but, I do not hold back when they screw things up. With customer service, it is almost a 1 to 1 relationship between needing it and then failing to deliver it.
Makes total sense, but I did not read far enough into it initially to realize. No issue for me, but I’m curious if it was part of the reason for my delay. Seems like plenty of folks order a top tier printer combo along with a slew of accessories, spares, and spools, but…
Oh. I did. So much so I actually cited it to my coworkers last night when explaining my (relatively minor) frustrations with my own order. You were one of the ones I had in mind when I thought “I should at least follow through with how my mini saga ends.”
Now excuse me as I’m off to mashing F5 every 3 to 10 minutes on the FedEx tracking site…
Patience, young Padawan, is the supreme virtue when dealing with BL…When you’ll learn to master it (the patience), your rewards will match it… such as (seemingly) always receiving orders spot on time, never to late, never to fast, everything works smoothly and as …(un)expected… and so on, and so forth…
Until Creality came out with Ender 3 was there any similar printer? Only after Ender 3 came out other companies started to copy the design and consumers got overflooded with printers - which meant prices went down and printing became more available for general public. To be honest the quality of those printers was not much to begin with so it was hard to get worse.
True. And personally I don’t complain at all that competitors are copying from each others features, technological improvements, increased quality and reliability, or whatever else they can come up with that ultimately benefits the end users by better printers, lower prices, ease of use.
My previous comment was simply pointing out that more of BL competitors are launching printers that appear to be inspired from BL X1 and P1 series…which isn’t a bad thing in itself. However, I’d like to see them not just copying BL but come up with innovative and creative ideas of their own… Copying someone is viewed as the highest form of praise, but it doesn’t help healthy competition or creative improvements.
My printer finally shipped late Monday night and was successfully delivered on Wednesday, roughly 9-1/2 days from ordering for anyone curious.
Besides a few hiccups, I’m thrilled with this purchase. I had some absolute nightmare prints I had been struggling with on my Ender 3 for weeks and the X1C printed them perfectly on the first try with stock settings. Un-fricken-believable.