With the latest cutter failure, the Pazzles Inspiration Vue, I woke up this morning realizing I should just give up on this dream. This kind of dream is for people with money and husbands that don’t permanently lose the truck keys. That wouldn’t be me.

I’m up to here with cutters and the lack of customer support that comes with them. If it isn’t the Cricut depending on the internet just to be used, it’s the Silhouette Cameo breaking within a week along with a company that fought tooth and nail not to honor the warranty. I still don’t know if they’re going to honor the warranty, but I do know they charged me to send their faulty equipment in to get it serviced.

And now the Vue. Before diving into this last venture, Pestilence and I read every review we could find. We searched pretty hard because we’re both tired of the bullshit. We found mostly good reviews, and the only bad review we found was mostly complaints about how the person’s office is set up rather than the machine. So we were confident that with this machine that’s reputed to be able to cut aluminum cans we’d have a winner.

48 hours later. That’s two solid days straight of me staying up until dawn trying to get the machine to work. Of me calling technical support hours before they closed for the weekend only to get told they couldn’t help because their system was down, preventing them from invading my privacy by going into my computer via one of those trojan backdoors the companies use. Of my husband figuring out how to get the driver to stop conflicting without having to use a trojan. Of moving the cutter to a different computer, even, when we thought Charlie’s age was the issue. Of realizing it’s not our hardware the way Pazzles tech support seemed to think it was. It’s their drivers. Their machine, their fault.

The Sure Cuts A Lot forum pretty much told me to move along when I posted a plea for help in regards to part of my problem. It involved their software, so I thought I could ask. The company themselves did ask what was going on. I sent them a very detailed reply. I woke up to a refund for their software. So there is that at least.

I found a gentleman in England who loves is Pazzles. He said if you need help with your Pazzles to contact him. 48 hours later….

And that’s pretty much all I’ve gotten for Pazzles technical support.

I’m sure the machine could cut what I need it to cut if it would just work. But it won’t and there’s nothing we can do about it. Sometimes the driver loads properly and I get a couple of cut pages in the fashion that I desire. Then there’s the other 95% of the time when it just won’t work, because the print and cut system is automated thanks to all the programmers out there who think our computers should think FOR us instead of letting our brains do the walking. I like a stick shift engine. I am reminded why.

After being burned three times in a row by three different companies, I’m looking at the cutter I *really* want and am too scared to give it a risk. Not that I can afford it, because I can’t. They’re also out of stock. But I look at the machine, and I sit here with tears in my eyes… because I only wanted to make charms. Nothing big. I didn’t want to take over the charm market. I just wanted to make my own things and attend a convention once a year. I want to stop working 18 hours a day. I want my back to stop hurting all of the time, or to be able to get out of my chair without wincing because sitting down just plain hurts anymore. But I can’t, because what I need runs anywhere from $500 to $1000 and just getting the Pazzles Vue for $100 was painful. I’m very disheartened. I haven’t been this disheartened in years.

The Vue is boxed back up, ready to send back to the company from which it came. However, what I’m expecting is to get a big fight over a refund. I’m willing to bet they’re not going to give it up. But I don’t know because I have to wait another fucking 48 hours for them to open their doors.