So almost exactly 12 months ago I ordered a makibox and a bunch of filament from a company called makible.com.
The printers had a small print volume and needed more than the average tweaking to get to run properly.
BUT the company was past the kickstarter startup phase and printers had been arriving around the world.
They were also very very cheap and - I thought - a good entry into the world of 3d printing.

The printer, 7kg of filament and postage came in at an amazingly low £350

Mine was due to be made in january 2014 and delivered sometime around march 2014.

It never turned up.
Makible kept putting out statements that were blatantly bare faced lies.
The hotends kept failing, the machine just couldn't print pla, and deliveries stopped completely in april.

Over the course of the next 6 months it became clear that makible just hadn't done it's economic homework and had massively undersold the machines and as a consequence run out of money.
A shipment of printers designated for europe was sitting in a warehouse in hongkong somewhere - despite assurances that they'd been shipped.

Throughout this I never recieved a single email from makible. The makible forum was the only means of communication.

I had given the machine up for dead and written it all off as one of those life lessons we all have to learn.

The makible website has been down for a month or so, but I check it every day.
And this morning discovered that not only does my makibox exist, but it's been sold to another hongkong company who have actually shipped the europaen consignment to the uk.
http://www.makiboxclearance.co.uk/

So a printer and filament I've already paid for is now going to be shipped to the uk and sold to someone else.

And as far as I can see there's not a damn thing I can do about it.

The morals of this story are manifold, here's just a few:

1) don't blindly believe anybody on kickstarter - no matter how enthusiastic they might seem - In this case jon buford
2) don't buy the cheapest thing you can find - there's usually a reason for the price, not necessarily a good one
3) Never buy a printer from a startup company unless they can prove economic stability - ie: they've calculated the manufacturing and distribution cost in the price and are shipping regular machines without any issues.

I'm not angry about the machine not turning up, I wasn't even angry at jon for lying to people so much. It was obvious after march that business wise he was in way over his head. These things happen.
I've written the money off, bought a ff creator and am extremely happy with it.

Looking around I see a number of 3d printer companies with similiar stories to makible.
I didn't pre-order from a crowdfunded campaign. I bought a machine that was shipping from a store looking 100% legit.
I will probably never order anything from a crowdfunded site in the future, as a consequence. And most likely wait until a product has been around for 12months before even looking at it.

But that's life's learning curve.

Nope, the only thing in this whole affair that really pisses me off, is that the products I ordered and paid for are now going to be sold to someone else in the uk, and I don't have any legal redress to stop them.

That's not right.