Shapeways

First of all, you have to pay before you even know if they will be able to print your object. If you can not, prepare to receive an email in which they will tell you that you need to change or correct some aspect of the piece.

The problem comes when you place an order for more than one object because if one can be printed it and another can not, then they will send you the one they can print before you can correct the other one. This way you will have to pay the shipping costs again.

On the other hand, in its web it says that they have a "print it anyway" service for some materials. In my case, an object that I wanted in polished brass had too much detail so it would get lost in the polishing process, so I told them to print it in unpolished brass (since this material entered the print it anyways service) and even so they did not keep their word.

Fortunately I have seen that imaterialise guys offer these services so I will try them because in addition to being something cheaper, it seems that they can print in higher quality (at least jewelry).

As a designer, i was very happy with shapeways, from the freedom to price my models, still be the owner of them, shipping wasnt the best but still worked for me, the quality, well i got some really good prints and not many bad, most printed ok for prototypes, so i was happy, then everything changed, they decided suddenly that the already proven and tested minimum requirements for prints were not good, and increased them(completely making unprintable more than a half of my entire store, then the random price increase, with no proper explanation, from 2 to 10 times(yeah some people reported ridiculous price increases with screenshot proof and all, then the worse and worse customer service, they didnt care even if a model was printed succesfully a dozen times without any problem, the new guidelines were the only way to tell if the model was good to go, no real way to tell how much a model would cost, the only thing they improved form before the massive change... was the page layout, did i mention lower quality models in almost all plastic materials? So why the hell did they change the minimum requirements for a model? So i ended up deleting my shop, and they couldnt even get me the descriptions i had in there but i could search for the page form the outside(google) and get them? Yeah, like the entire staff of shapeways was replaced by morons they couldnt even find a cached version of a page on their own... but a google search could.

No phone support, email response delayed until they could say too late to change design. Wasted hundreds. Snarky, uncaring, bad quality. Look elsewhere.

I used to like Shapeways although they were always kind of expensive especially for small objects because of their "per item" set-up charge. No discount on this fee for printing more than one. I started grouping small objects together on a tree/sprue to bring the cost down to a reasonable level when producing multiple small parts.
Many parts went through and came out perfect... but then a new "error" started appearing indicating that my sprued parts could not be properly printed and that I had to separate them and print them individually.
This is a scam to collect higher fees hidden behind a technical pretense. Objects that had printed without problem before can no longer be printed as the program recognizes multiple items on a sprue and rejects them.
If Shapeway would just drop the per item set-up fee on multiple parts or make it a fixed percentage of the material cost this would not be an issue. But on small parts the main cost is the set up fees and the costs quickly become prohibitive. With this new anti-customer policy I will no longer be using Shapeways.

When ordering and item is canceled in the order
It will be adjusted once shipped
Just have to watch they dont charge you again in a second charge for the item cancelled
No good to talk with them they say you just dont understand
Have screen shots sent them but yeah its me thats stupid and do not understand the process
Going back and forth w them is a waste of time
Husband loves the prints
Credit union is alwasy aware of how placed holds on funds
So
Just watch your account
But the products are great but shapeway is the middle printing man

When looking at the web page to get started you select "Designers for Hire" they ask some simple questions using pictures (pictographs, very insulting)
Select make a prototype, select your parts difficulty then whether you have 2D drawings, 3D drawings or just an idea... Select material (professional plastic for instance then this is where they get you ---REAL GOOD! You name your project, describe what it is then upload your files,,,, but before you do this, look at the bottom there is a terms and conditions you should read before you even think of uploading anything.

Those terms and conditions state and I quote from my patent attorney when I questioned a paragraph in the terms
"Regarding the terms, yes that paragraph is disturbing and pretty much grants them rights to do whatever they want to with your design including sell, license, produce, and improve upon it and own the improved versions too.

I would have them delete it. And Also include that ownership of the design and any improvements thereof remains with you. Also, include non-disclosure/confidentiality terms too."

So there you have it, do not submit an idea that could potentially be the next new smart phone, of some other device that would change the world because you will sign over your rights to it. Although my attorney stated the obvious you should take note that there is no way to ask Shape ways to remove those items in the paragraph, you accept the terms by default when you submit your idea or drawings... That is very bad business practices...

I don't know WHAT some of these reviewers are talking about. I love this company. I have placed a half-dozen or so orders with them, of my own nerdy, technical designs and there are delivered in perfect condition. Everything looked great and it all fit together perfectly. Maybe because it was my own design and not someone else's?

And I've had only one "problem" and it was with UPS, NOT Shapeways. It was NOT delivered when it was supposed to have been delivered (I paid for next-day) and we thought it was lost.

Shapeways quickly re-printed it, and sent it out again to me, arriving on time - even though it was NOT there fault.

And the people I have dealt with are always informative and great.

I was considering acquiring my own 3D printer, but because of affordability of Shapeways doing it for me, makes it much more worthwhile to have it done by them. And I then do not have to worry about maintenance and calibration and trouble-shooting and the replenishing of supplies.

Yes, I would HIGHLY recommend them (like I said, I design my own stuff, so I have no idea about purchasing something that was designed by someone else).

They messed up my gold purchase etching it all nasty on the inside. Wouldn't recommend them for jewelry as their polish job was trash too.

Very very good reproduction of an unavailable part for my car.
Ordered on line and arrived in UK within a week.
Brilliant.

I've purchased four Trumpeter Titanic related plastic pieces and each has been delivered in pristine condition and looking fine.

This company is nothing but quality from shipping to there amazing products i recommend them to all.

Angeliki did a great job designing for my 3D print! Communication and timing was fantastic. I look forward to my next project. Thank you!

Count on cleaning your own Parts 80% remain uninspected. Consistency is not likely. They will mail them anyway they feel like it

We (GOTH-3Designs) have been using Shapeways to outsource our 3D printing production and to have an on-demand shop for our customers since 2014.
Overall, we are very satisfied! 5 stars rating

The good:
- Great customer support, both for our business and our customers.
- Printing quality is very good, and if any issues, the support has always been helpful to replace faulty prints.
- Improved over the years some key aspect like allowing shop owners to correct faulty models without impacting customers orders.
- Great management of our Shop Owner account, our Account Manager is always available and listening to our needs.

The less good:
- For several years we had an Account Manager that was very poor at his job, which caused quite some frustrations (which has been corrected, as mentioned above).
- In 2018 / 2019, Shapeways operated changes in branding and pricing, without the proper change management (late notice of price increase, blurry price calculation making it very difficult for shop owners to design cost effective models,... lack of understanding overall toward the strategy related to shop owners...) it caused a lot of frustration back then but this is now past, and would not affect our current review rating (it can explain bad reviews posted during this period though).
- The Shapeways Marketplace is no longer a center of attention for Shapeways. We have spent a lot of time developing our shop there but we know that this marketplace functionalities will not improve as not a priority for Shapeways. It's not much of an issue for a business, as we can develop our own website with API (and Shapeways is supporting us on the change), but nonetheless a pity for smaller shop owners.

Nobody is perfect and we had our issues with Shapeways like others, but today we are very satisfied. We tried other services but Shapeways remains the best 3D printing service for us as business owner.

I placed an order with Shapeways and it was lost in the mail. I contacted them and they replaced my order immediately. Awesome customer service.

My package arrived and the product was slightly damaged from shipping. Emailed shapway and they immediately helped and sent me a new one.

I was looking for a toy for my nephew and stumbled upon a puzzle.

I've visited the website of these guys to buy it - the main page of the product showed a few screenshots and a quick description which gave the impression of the toy.

So far so good - I've purchased it.

A week later when I received it, it appeared that it's only a part of the whole toy and that I have to purchase the rest which doubled the price and was way beyond of what I'd expect.

So I've contacted them for a refund on the same day.

They've refused saying something like "we won't be able to sell it to anyone else as it's a ‘unique assemble' " (wtf? Really? You are selling the same toy on your website to multinple people!)

But they've changed their mind right after I've opened a dispute on PayPal providing the evidences of the misleading selling page of the toy.

Via PayPal they've asked me to return the purchase to get the refund. But the return shipping price was on me!)

I've sent it back (recording a quick video of me packing it back as it already started to look very suspicious)

It was expected to receive the toy by them within a week. But I waited for a bit longer - 4 weeks since then and a complete silence. No evidence of them processing the case further.

After reaching out to them again directly via email the response was - "we don't provide refunds"

WHAT?

And you know what - it appeared that there was no way for me to do anything on PayPal as it was in the "waiting for the seller to confirm the return" state. And they were trying to take advantage of that: it was clear now that they didn't intend to confirm that at all.

This is so ridiculous.

Now they have the toy and my money.

The only way for me to proceed was to contact my bank directly to report fraud as well as to report these guys to all financial institution for what they do.

Only after sending them this warning they've marked the case on PayPal as resolved and refunded all the money.

At the end I've wasted almost 2 months and the money to send the toy back.

Learned one more time - stick to amazon as you never have to mess with stuff like that there. Or at least read the reviews first to prepare yourself.

JUST STAY AWAY FROM THESE FOLKS!