Massively Disappointed by Kickstarter
In April 2020 a project was launched on Kickstarter to back a Super Fast SSD Drive. Back then the price was tempting as I needed a new one and it was quite a bit cheaper than what you usually pay. I backed the project with $349 and was waiting for updates. They updated us with messages about copyright issues first etc. and sent the last update in September, after taking our money and asking for shipping details.
Long story short: no updates or notifications since September then. They just sent enough updates to keep the backers feeling safe until most credit card institutes won’t be able (concerning their terms) to claim back the money easily.
Well … all this is one thing and there are arseholes like these who rip off people. Turned out, they did the same on Indigogo.
I now have a lawyer involved, trying to help me. But what disappointed me most is how lame Kickstarter reacted and how less they do to help people with this and after all, that there are no options available to protect their customers – this is what their users are, isn’t it? – when things like this happen. Especially as I heard their are many projects like this.
Last notice I got from Kickstarter was this:
Hi Marc,
Kickstarter takes the privacy of our users very seriously, so we don't provide a creator's information directly to backers.
Kickstarter's Terms of Use outline the responsibilities of backers and creators. This information can serve as a basis for legal recourse if a creator doesn't fulfill their promises.
We hope that backers will consider that option only in cases where they believe that a creator has not made a good faith effort to complete the project and fulfill. If you haven’t yet, you can message a project creator directly. To do this, go to the project page and click on the "Contact me" link under the creator's name in the bio section.
If you believe legal action is appropriate here, please talk to an attorney about how to proceed.
I, again, thought that this is really lousy, that there is no better protection. Like escrow accounts for example. But I also wrote back, that I have a lawyer involved and that they should please tell me how to proceed from now on. I have written them twice. No reaction since December 23rd.
Is this really how you treat your users? I don’t think so and I will never ever back anything on Kickstarter. If it is so easy to set up fake projects and make nearly $500,000 with that, I don’t feel that this is a safe place to back anything.
Really disappointed by how Kickstarter treats cases like this.