Just an update on the MakerGeeks box I was subscribed to.
I ended up canceling on 4/25 after receiving the April box. I was already charged on 4/17 for the May box which I assumed I would still receive...but I never got a ship notice and forgot about it. Then this Sunday I was reviewing charges on the card I had used for the subscription and saw that I was still being charged. I had been charged on May 17th and again on June 17th but hadn't got a box since April. I contacted MakerGeeks and after 36 hours didn't hear back - so contacted them again on Tuesday and quickly got a response back apologizing saying they'd take care of it. And a few minutes later I got another notice of a $29.95 refund - which today I confirmed showed up on my account.
When I contacted them I thought I had only been charged for 2 months I didn't receive...but when they only refunded one of the two I drew their attention to I decided I should do a more careful accounting:
charged 11/7/16 - shipped 11/12/16 - received 11/22
charged 11/17/16 - shipped 12/13/16 - received 12/20
charged 12/17/16 - shipped 1/16/17 - received 1/24
charged 1/17/16 - shipped 2/10/17 - received 2/18
charged 2/17/16 - shipped 3/13/17 - received 3/22
charged 3/17/16 - shipped 4/14/17 - received 4/25
charged 4/17/16 -
4/25 - CANCELED
charged 5/17/16 -
charged 6/17/16 - Refunded 6/27
That was when I realized I had actually been charged for 3 boxes I didn't receive. The last box I got was the April box which Included a beautiful Crystal blue PLA I've yet to open, and a full roll of the Crystal green PLA (Which I already had a 2/3 spool of from December - so another repeated color.) The tool for April was a project - a small wind generator:
My daugher got a kick out of it...but it's beyond silly. That blue thing on there is a USB volt/amp meter that wasn't part of the package, I had it on hand already and was using it to see how the generator would work. Holding it out the window of our truck at speeds above 35mph it almost makes enough to trickle charge a cell phone. I can get it to just barely make enough power to start to register on the meter by blowing on it...but I come pretty close to passing out from blowing that hard
I did some googling and it appears that May box included a rather fetching orange PLA and a spool of clear Raptor that would have been great for printing a plane with - the tool/project was apparently some LED throwies...meh.
The June box was apparently yellow and red filament (I'm assuming PLA, but haven't watched the vids close enough to say) and a glue stick and mousepad with specs about MG's filaments on it as the tool.
July of course hasn't shipped yet so don't know what that will/would be.
So...still waiting to hear back from them about the other 2 charges. Fingers crossed that they'll respond quickly again and refund the charges on those. I'd be willing to accept filament instead of a refund...but it's been over 110f every day for the past few weeks and the PLA parts I have in my truck for stress testing have been soft and squishy every day. We've even had a few days that hit or topped 120f! Since the shipping from MG seems to take a bit over a week each time the idea of filament sitting in a brown UPS truck (or even a white USPS truck) for 7-9 days seems like a great way to get pre-annealed filament that will be brittle and not great to print with
(A big part of why I canceled, along with the repeated color choices and the lackluster tool/project inclusions.)