For those not intimately involved in the affairs of Shapeways, the on-demand 3D printing service where my storefront is hosted, there has been a pretty contentious controversy over the pricing changes to their Strong & Flexible plastics and Stainless Steel. The details are already laid out well enough that I'm not going to repeat them here, but I'll share the thread where we shop-owners have voiced our discontent with the new pricing model and the extremely short notice that Shapeways gave us of the impending change (specifically, they only gave us 7 days' notice that WSF and Steel prices would be radically different):
"We are ENCOURAGING design freedom and making the pricing scheme more FAIR. ... I look forward to this new permissive era of design and the glorious, unbound creativity these new permissive, fair prices will unleash."
(Yes, someone who works for Shapeways actually said that)
Because of the new pricing formula, multi-part models are severely punished, with some of my items jumping in price as much as 500% or more. Now, I've already voiced enough of my dissent in the above thread, so I'm not going to regurgitate it here (other than my snarky 1984 homage above, because I just couldn't resist a wee bit of snark). Rather, I just want to make my loyal fans aware (yes, all three of you), that if you were planning on purchasing something in WSF and have seen the price jump by an astronomical amount, please be patient. I'm going through all 266 of my models to put multi-part products on sprues so that there is only one per-piece charge for the entire product.
If you have a specific item that you wanted to purchase but now can't or (understandably) won't, please drop me a line and I can push that product up higher in my queue of things which I'm spruing together. I'm already working on one order for a guy who wanted to order one each of my MicroFleet sample packs, and, as you can imagine, he was somewhat taken aback by the price increases (sorry, Andrew!).
So, thank you, in advance, for your patience. Again, I'm working on this as fast as I can (aside from taking time out to find decent 1984 screencaps), and if you are waiting on the spruing to be completed before ordering a specific item, send me a message with that item number or the link to it on my Shapeways store and I'll make it a priority.
Thanks,
Andreas
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