Shop Owner Challenge Day 3: Dealing with Rejection

October 3, 2013

Rejection happens… to all of us. It’s a part of life in and out of 3D Modeling and it’s something we can get over together! This adorable cartoon by community member Caret dash Caret captures a feeling we’ve all had as designers at one time or another. Today, Shop Owner and beloved Shapie Beta Tester Stony Smith and I guide you through the rejection email process. We will have more in-depth content on designing for printability in the coming weeks, but this post has some valuable tips you may not have considered.

In the event that you get a model rejection:

• Read it, process the information, and breathe. It’s always disappointing to hear progress has been temporarily stalled on your awesomeness. We can relate, our models get rejected sometimes too. It’s okay, because it’s going to be an even better design now!
• Identify the problem we’ve highlighted and address it.
• Not sure what to do next? Email CS, service@shapeways.com. they’re an amazing team dedicated to helping you with your Shapeways experience and creative process.
• Need extra advice beyond the model at hand? Our forum community is robust and enthusiastic. Many folks are happy to lend a hand and share tips on specific software and modeling challenges.
• If the rejection was on an order placed by one of your customers, CS will email both of you. If it is a co-created product, you can dialogue about the instance using our forums, and if the buyer is private, you can ask CS to email them for you. We keep shoppers and Shop Owners alike abreast of the progress at hand.
• In the case of a rejection, we allow other items in the order to go ahead into production, and we give you Shapeways Store Credit for the purchase price. Our philosophy is that you would want to fix the model and re-order the item. If you would rather receive your money back, contact CS and we will refund your money.

Important note from Savannah: We at Shapeways are humans (yes, there’s more than lasers behind us) and subsequently are capable of making mistakes. We try to limit them, but sometimes in the interest of getting perfect prints out, we’re extra cautious with our application of the rules. Just remember that our amazing CS team is there, and willing to discuss it with you, always.

Pro Tip From Stony: If you have a number of orders going all the time, it may be a good idea to check your Store Credit before completing the checkout – I often forget that I have a credit waiting.

Since Stony was kind enough to share his thoughts in the blog today, I wanted to include a few of his models:

We know this is one of the most dealing with rejections is one of the most difficult processes at Shapeways, and we look forward to working together to get model rejections down to a minimum. If you haven’t checked it out already, be sure and watch Anthony’s tutorial on photo cropping from yesterday!