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  1. #1

    Angry Lack of Fineline response to its customers

    Respond to your paying customers. It’s not acceptable to take an order, take the money, then disappear.
    You advertise customer support on your website, but have none. You advertise kits in stock and quick
    turn-around for shipping, but have neither. You may be a small business, but even small businesses
    communicate with their customers if they want to keep them. As you can tell I’m not a happy camper.
    I’m out $3500.00 with nothing to show for it, no communication from Fineline and no expectation of delivery.
    My order number is R690381959.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Posts
    1740

    Re: Lack of Fineline response to its customers

    Quote Originally Posted by jrpatter56 View Post
    Respond to your paying customers. It’s not acceptable to take an order, take the money, then disappear.
    You advertise customer support on your website, but have none. You advertise kits in stock and quick
    turn-around for shipping, but have neither. You may be a small business, but even small businesses
    communicate with their customers if they want to keep them. As you can tell I’m not a happy camper.
    I’m out $3500.00 with nothing to show for it, no communication from Fineline and no expectation of delivery.
    My order number is R690381959.
    If you did a little research on here you will find this is normal for FLA. Not right but normal. How long has it been a couple months? BTW No one has ever lost any money dealing with them. If you feel you have been scammed your free to contact your credit card company. I stuck with them and have not had any issues with my machine.
    Retired Master Electrician, HVAC/R Commercial. FLA Saturn 2 4x4 CNC Router Mach4 Kimber 1911 45ACP

  3. #3

    Re: Lack of Fineline response to its customers

    I really do want my order shipped. This was to be an upgrade to my retirement home business and an opportunity to learn new skills. But having been in various customer support environments for 30+ years it’s very frustrating when you get no response from a business after a purchase. It would be different if he would set expectations up front and say I’m a part time business with limited resources and it may take a while to deliver products. But the Fineline website says otherwise. I read the reviews before ordering and talked to Nathan about the order and options. He told me it would be 3-4 days before he could start to fill be order, which was ok. So I figured another week before shipment. Haven’t heard a word since.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Posts
    258
    Quote Originally Posted by jrpatter56 View Post
    I really do want my order shipped. This was to be an upgrade to my retirement home business and an opportunity to learn new skills. But having been in various customer support environments for 30+ years it’s very frustrating when you get no response from a business after a purchase. It would be different if he would set expectations up front and say I’m a part time business with limited resources and it may take a while to deliver products. But the Fineline website says otherwise. I read the reviews before ordering and talked to Nathan about the order and options. He told me it would be 3-4 days before he could start to fill be order, which was ok. So I figured another week before shipment. Haven’t heard a word since.
    I was just about to place an order too.
    Wow. Scary. Keep us posted...

  5. #5

    Re: Lack of Fineline response to its customers

    Ok, finally received a partial shipment on Friday. Received enough to build the base. No hardware kit, no risers. However all the extrusions where there, the steel carriage plates, and all the gear racks. No packing list, no back order list or status. It looks like the carriage plates where made in a rush. See attached photos. This is a brick house of a router, very solid.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Aug 2018
    Posts
    621

    Re: Lack of Fineline response to its customers

    What machine did you get? What is the steel plate for?

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Posts
    1740

    Re: Lack of Fineline response to its customers

    I’m confused, this is for A FLA CNC router??
    What did you order?
    Retired Master Electrician, HVAC/R Commercial. FLA Saturn 2 4x4 CNC Router Mach4 Kimber 1911 45ACP

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Jan 2005
    Posts
    15362

    Re: Lack of Fineline response to its customers

    Quote Originally Posted by jrpatter56 View Post
    Ok, finally received a partial shipment on Friday. Received enough to build the base. No hardware kit, no risers. However all the extrusions where there, the steel carriage plates, and all the gear racks. No packing list, no back order list or status. It looks like the carriage plates where made in a rush. See attached photos. This is a brick house of a router, very solid.
    Looks like very poor workmanship rather than made in a rush
    Mactec54

  9. #9
    ericks Guest

    Re: Lack of Fineline response to its customers

    I agree poor workmanship...

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Aug 2018
    Posts
    621

    Re: Lack of Fineline response to its customers

    You would think that a company that sells CNC machines would use CNC machines to make the CNC machines. I'm really wondering if they just don't care anymore or whats going on.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Apr 2016
    Posts
    841

    Re: Lack of Fineline response to its customers

    Quote Originally Posted by Ntl View Post
    What machine did you get? What is the steel plate for?
    Dan & Bill,

    It looks like the FLA kit machine. It's what I started with. It's similar to the CNC Router Parts Standard kit. The Kit has carriages with skate bearings that run on the steel plates. The plate is trapped between bearing above and below the plate.

    Quality is definitely declining. The steel plates that came with my kit didn't look like the ones in the picture. There was no grinding.

    Gary

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Posts
    258

    Re: Lack of Fineline response to its customers

    If thats the linear rail plate you might as well send that junk back. Worthless.

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Apr 2016
    Posts
    841

    Re: Lack of Fineline response to its customers

    Quote Originally Posted by jrpatter56 View Post
    Ok, finally received a partial shipment on Friday. Received enough to build the base. No hardware kit, no risers. However all the extrusions where there, the steel carriage plates, and all the gear racks. No packing list, no back order list or status. It looks like the carriage plates where made in a rush. See attached photos. This is a brick house of a router, very solid.

    I took a closer look at the plates. Grinding marks are the least of the problems. In the center photo, I can see that the edge is messed up. Had to work at it to make it look so bad. Anyway, it won't work for you. The bearings on your carriages ride on that edge. Your going to get bad binding. If you loosen the bearings to ride over the roughness, your going to get a sloppy fit. Hate to say it, but I agree that the plates, or at least the one in the photo, needs to go back. I had some minor roughness on the edges here and there. I took care of it with some careful filing. Yours appears too far gone to rehabilitate that way. I wouldn't even try.

    Take a look at my build thread, to get an idea what you are up against with the 80/20 extrusions. Many have used the stuff and probably never realized there was misalignment. Nevertheless, the odds are great that your your ends are not square, and the lengths are off to a greater or lesser degree. While I like the tensioning rods (ready bolt) in theory, in practice it makes keeping out-of-square extrusions in alignment very difficult. I ended up adding aluminum angle on both side of each cross beam (where the spoilboard attaches), but that wasn't enough. I used shim stock. A very fussy and time consuming process. Drove me crazy and took 10 times longer to build than it should have. Here's a link to my thread, if you are interested.

    https://www.cnczone.com/forums/diy-c...machinist.html

    One other thing. Those steel risers are not milled and the surfaces are not entirely flat. I fabricated a measuring device with hard stops to ensure that the rails on each side were parallel. Took hours of adjusting. When I took it apart awhile back, I found a few small cuts in the extrusions from bolt threads. That was from forcing and tightening, forcing and tightening. When I was finally done, the machine operated remarkably well. Unfortunately, the path to success was awful. I learned a lot from that build and have worked hard to make sure I wouldn't have to deal with all the deficiencies. Lots of time and work to do it right, but IMO, well worth it.

    Oh, and I hope you didn't go with the stock gantry beam. I wanted a 3060 (3" x 6") gantry. I asked and found that Nate offered it as an option. At the time, I believe the upgrade was $100. Darned well worth it. It is a mystery to me why Nate doesn't let his customers know of the available options. Unfortunately, there is a downside to the 3060 gantry. There is hardly any room to adjust the 4 bolts that go in underneath. It makes mechanically squaring the machine a terrible job. On the plus side, once you have it square, it should stay that way. Just check it periodically to ensure nothing has moved.

    Good luck,

    Gary

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Jan 2017
    Posts
    31

    Re: Lack of Fineline response to its customers

    While I support small business, I am coming to the conclusion that dealing with FineLine Automation may have been a mistake. I ordered a spindle mount back in April. The money was taken from my account soon afterwards. I received an email telling me that my order was confirmed. Now is been almost two months and I have yet to receive the part. I have tried contacting Nate via phone and email. Sadly, the one time he tried calling me, my phone only gave me two rings before it disconnected.
    Nate if you read this please call me.
    Charles

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Posts
    1740

    Re: Lack of Fineline response to its customers

    Quote Originally Posted by cduncan64 View Post
    While I support small business, I am coming to the conclusion that dealing with FineLine Automation may have been a mistake. I ordered a spindle mount back in April. The money was taken from my account soon afterwards. I received an email telling me that my order was confirmed. Now is been almost two months and I have yet to receive the part. I have tried contacting Nate via phone and email. Sadly, the one time he tried calling me, my phone only gave me two rings before it disconnected.
    Nate if you read this please call me.
    Charles
    I hope you used a credit card but it might be too late to do a charge back. Your the first person to post for a long time, everyone including me figured he was out of business. Shame. Because my machine is fine, never an issue.
    Retired Master Electrician, HVAC/R Commercial. FLA Saturn 2 4x4 CNC Router Mach4 Kimber 1911 45ACP

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Apr 2010
    Posts
    109

    Re: Lack of Fineline response to its customers

    Seems to me that as Nate got closer and closer to shutting down, he decided to just send out whatever junk he still had in inventory to whoever hadn't figured out that he is a total scum bag.

  17. #17
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
    Posts
    35538

    Re: Lack of Fineline response to its customers

    Either that, or he received a large batch of very bad frames, and he couldn't recover from the losses.
    Gerry

    UCCNC 2017 Screenset
    http://www.thecncwoodworker.com/2017.html

    Mach3 2010 Screenset
    http://www.thecncwoodworker.com/2010.html

    JointCAM - CNC Dovetails & Box Joints
    http://www.g-forcecnc.com/jointcam.html

    (Note: The opinions expressed in this post are my own and are not necessarily those of CNCzone and its management)

  18. #18
    Join Date
    Nov 2014
    Posts
    729

    Re: Lack of Fineline response to its customers

    The website is still up; is he still open for business?

    David
    David
    Romans 3:23
    Etsy shop opened 12/1/17 - CurlyWoodShop

  19. #19
    Join Date
    Apr 2016
    Posts
    841

    Re: Lack of Fineline response to its customers

    Odd that his website is still up and running, if he's out of business. As of at least a couple of months ago, it looks like he was still taking orders. It's hard to figure out what's going on.

    I agree with Gerry about his probably receiving a large batch of bad frames. I'm not sure it closed him down, given that the website is still taking orders. At the very least, you would think he would take the Saturns off the website. They are still there and the advertising hype hasn't changed a bit.

  20. #20
    Join Date
    Jan 2020
    Posts
    1
    Quote Originally Posted by GME View Post
    Odd that his website is still up and running, if he's out of business. As of at least a couple of months ago, it looks like he was still taking orders. It's hard to figure out what's going on.

    I agree with Gerry about his probably receiving a large batch of bad frames. I'm not sure it closed him down, given that the website is still taking orders. At the very least, you would think he would take the Saturns off the website. They are still there and the advertising hype hasn't changed a bit.
    I think since reading all this I will spend my money with companies that at least act like they want to do the right thing. Now I know why my emails were never answered.

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