SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20231023-ED9D2-2147344486. Severity: No Incident, No Injury. Product: Glowforge Plus (Glowforge Plus Laser Printer). Incident: I was using my Glowforge machine as normal when the red wire shorted out and melted. I contacted Glowforge to let them know something was wrong and explained the details about what happened. Instead of troubleshooting to try and help me fix my machine, the representative of the company I was speaking to told me they do not have the capability to help me troubleshoot, but that I could send my machine back and pay them $1,500 for a refurbished machine. There was no way I was doing that, so I searched for help on [REDACTED]--turns out several others have also experienced the red wire issue and they had advice on how to fix it. I called my brother-in-law to see if he could help me fix the machine based on the suggestions given on [REDACTED] and he had it fixed in 20 minutes... it was NOT that difficult. The Glowforge representative could have easily walked me through the steps on what to do to fix it. Had I gone along with what the Glowforge representative had advised me to do (because there was apparently no other option), I would have sent my machine back, they would have spent 20 minutes fixing it and cleaning it, and then sold it to the next person with an "unfixable issue" for $1,500, and I would get someone else's previously broken machine that they call "refurbished". They just keep reselling people's broken machines as "refurbished" machines instead of aiding consumers in solving their problems, which quite frankly, for me was a quick and easy fix. Whether this is out of laziness or trying to get more money out of people, I don't know, but it is not right on Glowforge's