RepRap Kit Store?

Has anyone heard anything from the RepRap Kit Store recently? I ordered a kit on the 28th of December, and have heard nothing since. The kits were due to dispatch on 30th January, so I sent an enquiry using their contact page last Thursday, but haven't had any reply. Their news page is still urging people to beat the price increase on 1st January...

Oh dear, I ordered one in the middle of January and I have been trying to get in touch with them since last Wednesday.

I have had no reply either and am wondering what to do.

I am very careful about buying online and I was persuaded to do so because the company had had positive feedback on this site.

Whether by coincidence or not, I have just received mail saying that my kit has shipped!

Ah yes, me too. Lets see what happens next....

Hi folks !

thereprapkitstore.com, by the looks of things are extremely busy, lol, ive had emails sent back and forth to James, the owner, and from our conversations and also other people on this forum, their store has had nothing but good reviews !

Plus one of the resident experts here, nophead, supplies top quality & the most-finest printed parts to james, so fear not, your all in safe hands there, lol !

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/06/2012 01:00PM by offtherails2010.

Ok, some good news, a kit has arrived just now.

A note from a chap called James says that chemicals can no longer be shipped therefore parts requiring heat paste and high temp silicone have been sub assembled.(Less work for me perhaps?)

Also that they are still awaiting thermistors and Kapton tap and these will be sent in a separate package.

So it seems I can at least start building....

UPDATE - extra bits arrived as promised. The kit is well packaged and great fun to assemble. I'm about half way now and the kids love helping find all the bits in the bags as we build it.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/21/2012 05:23AM by bigvern2.

My kit arrived today too. I will be following Brian's build documentation at [www.reprapelectronics.com] as well as the RepRap Kit Store's own instructions, and will post comments on Brian's blog where I discover differences or problems.

Hello

Just a quick note to update you at things here at the RepRap kit store.

You will be please to know that we are very busy and have just appointed a further team member. I do personal apologies if you feel we have every been slow in responding to your enquirers. If you have an out standing order or enquire please do not hesitate to contact me.

All out standing orders will ship today and tomorrow.

We will shortly be moving from a pre order batch system to a in stock system where orders ship within 5 working days.

Our relocation to a larger work shop in North Yorkshire has provided us with the opportunity to have larger stock holdings and production space.

Once again your custom and a support is greatly appreciated. We are a young and growing business and if you feel you have a genuine suggestion to guide us in our growth please do share it with us.

Kind Regards

James

jameswalsh Wrote:
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>if you feel you have a genuine suggestion to
> guide us in our growth please do share it with
> us.

I would strongly urge you to keep your web site up to date. If you have a news page, it must contain current news, otherwise it looks as if the web site is no longer being maintained! Of course there will be periods where you have no new news, but you need something to indicate that you haven't disappeared. This is especially true when you use payment methods that result in people's credit cards being debited as soon as they order (presumably this is a consequence of using PayPal). I suggest a status page, or an article at the start of the news page, giving current expected shipping dates.

I'm sure you'd rather spend your time developing and producing the kits, rather than putting up web pages about it, and that's good. But a couple of minutes to update your status each day would be worth it to reassure customers.

james,

I agree with ebcdic completely. No information on the web site coupled with the fact that my emails weren't being acknowledged meant I was left to fear the worst. I had to come to this forum to get information.

If you had put your last post on your site, I'd wouldn't have bothered getting in touch for another week or so. I'd have been reassured.

So, I think the lesson is don't ignore customer emails and keep the site more up to date. Customers are more forgiving of bad news if they get a frank honest response and a realistic estimate of when things will happen. Still, I expect you get that now.

Good to see you are growing and adjusting your business model. I want to support innovation in the UK - that's why I gave you my order. I am tired of hearing how we don't make anything in UK. Keep it up.

Hey Folks!

Yup yup, i'm almost done saving the pennies in order to treat myself to a reprap very soon!

The reason ive been intently following the great progress of thereprepkitstore.co.uk and the business direction of James, the owner, is quite frankly-put, the UK, ffs, is a place where we get charged "stupidly-extortionate" prices for either emerging and/or relatively new technologies...

I personally hold James & his company at a very high regard for charging the reasonably LOW price he is charging for the 3D Printers that he is supplying the UK with (Ok - fair play that there has been a little un-easyness over the transitional period where he has just expanded the company...) but the fact still remains that he and thereprapkitstore.co.uk ARE STILL the only company in the UK who are not charging UN-AFFORDABLE prices for us Brit's to owning a 3d printer...

Ive searched the USA and Europe for these Repraps and im sorry to say but NO-ONE is charging such a "Reasonable" price for a 'Full Kit' (Which means You, The Customer, Just needs To 'Bolt It Together' with PRE-Soldered Electronics, where i think the real work is being carried out...) for such a small price and as such being the only albeit young company in the UK to NOT be selling Repraps at the Prices currently being payed in the USA and Europe, which after the currency conversion and shipping amount upto at LEAST £1000+ for kit that you,again, have to bolt together, my own humble opinion is that give the guy a break, lol, and yes i do feel that several un-answered emails to the company does bring ones mind to conclude that something isnt quite as it should be and start to assume the worst, i would do the same, but, just saying, if you folk have been around hunting in the UK for the said technology that you have bought, and have finally got an answer to your enraged un-answered emails, just ask yourselves, would you really have had the owner of this mentioned company to charge the extortionate prices that ARE ALWAYS being charged in the UK (This place aint called "Rip-off-Britain" for nothing...) or are we at least some-what glad that someone on-their own has taken it upon themselves to more-or-less HALVE the cost of owning a 3d Printer ?

After-all, the sheer amount of sourcing for the metal rod, bolts and washers, raw electronics kits(UN-soldered), motors, thick aluminum plates (custom milled,drilled & countersunk holed), hot-end construction, heated bed parts (WHICH DO NOT usually come with a 'Kit' of the price paid for a Longboat-Prusa... Is extremely difficult in my eyes only bcoz i have tried to gather the parts needed for a reprap of my own buy getting all the separate aspects of a 3d printer together without incurring 'obscene' amounts of money-costs, i think that the owner and his company isnt doing too bad, like i mentioned above, you folks that have nipped on here are most-probably the more resourceful of thereprepkitstore.co.uk's customers and found this place to seek their attention, but just know that there are truely bad companies out there where people have paid over £1400 (pounds STERLING) and after 9 months of still being ignored AND NO REFUND, mentioning no companies, atttttchu BOTMILL, why dont u folk read some serious horror stories before tarnishing 'the little guy's name who is trying to do this country a favour ?!!?

Anyhoo i dont mean to prod or be-little anyone out there, just get a little heated round the collar when i personally see a very very small company try to offer revolutionary economical prices in a climate that this country regularily see's as ripping us all off left-right-and-centre the norm of business... And so apologies if this, lets-face-it, speech, is not totally in tune with your full arguments against this company...

lets all help lower the costs of owning such a technology that would plant a Factory on ALL our Desktops and KILL the strong-HOLD monopolizing companies that ARE ripping us off... (and yes i know i should give up the caffiene-induced rants, but (i) that aint gonna happen, so get used to it, lol and (ii) lets help our local businesses succeed and thrive & in all fairness at the least offer a note of thanks for the fella getting back to us all as its just good Karma (Yes, even tho the customer is always right, lol)

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/09/2012 01:17PM by offtherails2010.

jameswalsh Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
[...snip...]
> If you
> have an out standing order or enquire please do
> not hesitate to contact me.

James, what's your preferred way to do that, I've sent several emails over the last few weeks since I ordered and not had any replies to any of them. These have included

* request to clarify if I needed any extra parts (happily, so far the answer is no, but it's not very clear on the site and there are a lot of 'kit' suppliers producing partial 'kits')
* requests for update when the delivery was delayed (eventually there was a generic email to all customers),
* suggestion for communicating to customers about delays and providing a backorder for the last few parts (from my own experience), and
* a request for information about the thermistor supplied with batch 3 which is not the 10K @25C part detailed on the build wiki (fair enough, that was only 24 hours ago, but from the above I'm not optimistic).

As offtherails2010 has noted, hats off to you for producing a Prusa kit that was affordable to buy in the UK (after much saving), and a pleasure to build (15 hours effort from opening the box to having it moving in 3 axes under pronterface, and that was including a couple of hours updating the build wiki).

However, it's a shame I am stuck frustrated doing 'air prints' instead of just posting on here how brilliant it was start to finish, and I presume your other customers are in the same boat (if they're sorted, I hope they update the build wiki with the answer and save you the effort!).

I hope the company does well and can sustain producing Longboat kits, and appreciate this is a period of change, but it's also the time when reputations can be made or lost.

I totally agree with NigeO.
The kit seems fine so far but we are stuck unless someone can confirm the spec of the supplied thermistor.

I have today confirmed the supplied thermistors with Longboat Prusas are 2.2k or 2.5k thermistors and therefore unsuitable for measuring temperatures in the hot end. These thermistors simply don't have enough change in resistance at high temperatures and it is very difficult to get any kind of temperature control to facilitate a stable PLA melting temperature.

another_reprapper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have today confirmed the supplied thermistors
> with Longboat Prusas are 2.2k or 2.5k thermistors
> and therefore unsuitable for measuring
> temperatures in the hot end.

They've sent replacement thermistors.

(Annoyingly, I didn't know about the problem and the replacements arrived the day after I attached the thermistor to the hot end.)

sorry to bump an old thread but dont want people to go through the same thing i am going through at the moment.

this is what happened with my oreder from reprapkit store .

ordered on the 23.10.12 and email several time about shipment as web page sent it was taking orders to ship 25.10.12.
never received a reply so on 30.10.12 as paypal to get me a refund.
got an email from paypal same day saying a refund had been received but needed to wait for it to clear.
today I received an email paypal telling me it had been finished and then later today got another email telling me the funds did not clear from jameswalsh1@live.co.uk paypal account and i have not received paymeny.
have email him again but dose not look good.

from paypal.................

The refund sent by James Walsh ([email protected]) did not clear from the sender's bank. You have not received funds for this payment in your PayPal account. Please contact James Walsh regarding this refund.

my advise is stay well clear of this seller.