Ask HN: Have you ever not received a product from Kickstarter/Indiegogo?
8 comments
I've backed 66 "successful" projects on Kickstarter, and <50% of them shipped.
I'n not terribly upset about most of them. Shit happens, and I feel for folks who try. A couple turned out to be plain old scams, and I deal with it by not thinking about it.
A product would have to be pretty spectacular and the creator would need a great reputation for me to risk crowdfunding these days. I don't mind losing a few pounds on good causes that don't turn out, but technology "purchases" is a big no.
I'n not terribly upset about most of them. Shit happens, and I feel for folks who try. A couple turned out to be plain old scams, and I deal with it by not thinking about it.
A product would have to be pretty spectacular and the creator would need a great reputation for me to risk crowdfunding these days. I don't mind losing a few pounds on good causes that don't turn out, but technology "purchases" is a big no.
Happens all the time. Indiegogo is IMHO even worse than Kickstarter at policing obvious bad cases. Don't think about it as buying.
Things like books/art prints/music releases are typically quite safe, tech products are not (my one failed KS: new iteration of a tech product from a company with previous successes, which now is saying "sorry, corona, didn't work out, we'll send you one of the old ones instead" instead of offering a refund....)
Things like books/art prints/music releases are typically quite safe, tech products are not (my one failed KS: new iteration of a tech product from a company with previous successes, which now is saying "sorry, corona, didn't work out, we'll send you one of the old ones instead" instead of offering a refund....)
The one I came to comment was an obvious bad actor on Indiegogo who had done multiple Raspberry Pi electronics kits... not clear if the person was a fraudster or just very bad at actually finishing projects, but much weeping and gnashing of teeth by contributors who dug into the guy's history and found a pattern of taking funding and never shipping final products to most backers.
I'm still waiting to receive Unobrush which I backed 2 years ago... They promise they will ship but there's no way to receive a reply from them. Sincerely, going back I wouldn't have bought
Yep.
I backed the ZPM Espresso machine, and lost ~$400AUD from memory.
Don’t regret it at all. The guys who ran it were expecting a hundred or two backers, and were one of the early “super over subscribed” Kickstarters. The wheels totally fell off when they tried to scale up their hardware manufacturing on the fly from an expected hundreds of units up to several thousands. From memory they were trying to raise $40k, and were one of the first to blow past a million bucks.
They were fairly open about what was going on and how things were falling apart, and while there was much gnashing of teeth in the forums and Kickstarter comments from people who’d “bought an espresso machine and never got it”, my view (both then, and still now) was that I’d given them some money to try and make their dream a reality, and if it worked out I’d get a cool new espresso machine out of it.
I was more pleasantly surprised when Pebble (smart watches) fell apart (and aquihired themselves to Garmin) and they managed to return the pledges for the 3rd version (I’ve still got Kickstarter versions of the first two Pebble watches in a drawer somewhere. I used the ~$300 refund I got back from that to start my small mechanical Russian watch collection, and haven’t worn a smart watch since).
If you’re going into this thinking “I’m making a purchase”, you might not have thought the actual risk through, and stand a good chance of being disappointed. If you want a zero risk (or at least significantly risk free) “purchase”, buy something that already exists off the shelf from a retailer who’s bound by consumer protection laws using a credit card with good member protection policies. Indegogo is a very different thing to that. Very very different.
There are a lot of risks and horror stories about outcomes other than “never received something” as well. Lots of projects end up months or years behind schedule. Lots of projects deliver something, but not anything close to what people were expecting (either very shoddy versions of what was described, or limited/cut-down versions when reality hits dreams). I backed a Swiss guy making stick on magnetic sliding covers for laptop webcams. He eventually delivered, but well before he did I’d already purchased that exact same thing from Amazon for a lot less money.
“Crowd funding is not e-commerce”, they’re _very_ up front about that.
The other side of that is that it’s quite possible thing thing you want to “purchase” may never exist unless you (and a few hundred/thousand other people) decide to accept the risk of things not working out, and throw down some money anyway. You _could_ be part of something amazing.
(The end result of the ZPM story was a guy bought their IP from them, and offered Kickstarter backers credit against orders of the machine he ended up manufacturing based on that, but in the cold harsh truth of real word manufacturing and global electrical appliance regulation requirements, it’s really a $3000 machine at direct sale pricing, it’d be a $5000+ machine if it ever ended up on the floor of a bricks and mortar retailer. The guys from Atlanta who thought they could get some parts made in China and do the rest of the work out of their garage in Atlanta were totally unaware of the magnitude of the task ahead of them. I hope my $400 helped make that a slightly less painful lesson for them. I’m vaguely tempted to go and LinkedIn stalk them to see if they’ve managed to build careers on top of it...)
I backed the ZPM Espresso machine, and lost ~$400AUD from memory.
Don’t regret it at all. The guys who ran it were expecting a hundred or two backers, and were one of the early “super over subscribed” Kickstarters. The wheels totally fell off when they tried to scale up their hardware manufacturing on the fly from an expected hundreds of units up to several thousands. From memory they were trying to raise $40k, and were one of the first to blow past a million bucks.
They were fairly open about what was going on and how things were falling apart, and while there was much gnashing of teeth in the forums and Kickstarter comments from people who’d “bought an espresso machine and never got it”, my view (both then, and still now) was that I’d given them some money to try and make their dream a reality, and if it worked out I’d get a cool new espresso machine out of it.
I was more pleasantly surprised when Pebble (smart watches) fell apart (and aquihired themselves to Garmin) and they managed to return the pledges for the 3rd version (I’ve still got Kickstarter versions of the first two Pebble watches in a drawer somewhere. I used the ~$300 refund I got back from that to start my small mechanical Russian watch collection, and haven’t worn a smart watch since).
If you’re going into this thinking “I’m making a purchase”, you might not have thought the actual risk through, and stand a good chance of being disappointed. If you want a zero risk (or at least significantly risk free) “purchase”, buy something that already exists off the shelf from a retailer who’s bound by consumer protection laws using a credit card with good member protection policies. Indegogo is a very different thing to that. Very very different.
There are a lot of risks and horror stories about outcomes other than “never received something” as well. Lots of projects end up months or years behind schedule. Lots of projects deliver something, but not anything close to what people were expecting (either very shoddy versions of what was described, or limited/cut-down versions when reality hits dreams). I backed a Swiss guy making stick on magnetic sliding covers for laptop webcams. He eventually delivered, but well before he did I’d already purchased that exact same thing from Amazon for a lot less money.
“Crowd funding is not e-commerce”, they’re _very_ up front about that.
The other side of that is that it’s quite possible thing thing you want to “purchase” may never exist unless you (and a few hundred/thousand other people) decide to accept the risk of things not working out, and throw down some money anyway. You _could_ be part of something amazing.
(The end result of the ZPM story was a guy bought their IP from them, and offered Kickstarter backers credit against orders of the machine he ended up manufacturing based on that, but in the cold harsh truth of real word manufacturing and global electrical appliance regulation requirements, it’s really a $3000 machine at direct sale pricing, it’d be a $5000+ machine if it ever ended up on the floor of a bricks and mortar retailer. The guys from Atlanta who thought they could get some parts made in China and do the rest of the work out of their garage in Atlanta were totally unaware of the magnitude of the task ahead of them. I hope my $400 helped make that a slightly less painful lesson for them. I’m vaguely tempted to go and LinkedIn stalk them to see if they’ve managed to build careers on top of it...)
There’s an overview of the end of the ZPM story here, with a link to a reddit thread filled with both angry “purchasers” as well as disappointed “dreamers” like me:
https://sprudge.com/kickstarters-infamous-zpm-espresso-machi...
(I’d got some number wrong in my memory. They were asking for $20k for about 100 machines , and ended up with $370k and orders for about 1500 machines. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zpmespresso/pid-control... )
https://sprudge.com/kickstarters-infamous-zpm-espresso-machi...
(I’d got some number wrong in my memory. They were asking for $20k for about 100 machines , and ended up with $370k and orders for about 1500 machines. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zpmespresso/pid-control... )
Don't you see the risk that some people could actually steal a lot of money with this mechanism?
Sure. Very real risk. And no doubt it’s happened many times. But it happens in real life too, it’s not a problem unique to crowdfunding. Ponzi schemes and pyramid selling were a thing way before internet crowdfunding was invented.
Don’t bet what you can’t afford to lose. Make sure you evaluate to the best of your ability the risks of the project and the caliber people involved. If you don’t feel you can make those judgements accurately enough for the project your considering and the amount of money involved, keep your money in your pocket. Don’t back it.
But again, I think the phrase “steal a lot of money”, the same as the phrase “making a purchase on Indegogo” reveals a mindset that doesn’t reflect what crowd funding actually is. The reality is you pledge/give them some money, and they promise to try and make the thing you want. No guarantees. Some of the things I see on those sites are obviously impossible. Some, like the espresso machine I backed, turn out to have underpriced the thing by an order of magnitude because the people involved didn’t even know what they didn’t know about making several thousand consumer appliances.
I always consider the money I send to Kickstarter (et al.) as a gift or donation. If the people I gave that money with go and spend it on hookers and blow, that was always a possibility I understood when I sent the money. I _hope_ I’m a good enough judge of projects and the caliber of their people that I never send too much money to a project thats outright fraud (or totally oblivious incompetence). But if I get that wrong, that is my own problem. I won’t hide my failing there behind words like “purchase” or “stealing”, because that’s in my opinion, demonstration that I’d been fooling myself what I was getting into when I sent the money.
Like I said earlier. “Purchase” things from retailers. Throw money at crowdfunding for things you wish you could buy but can’t, and hope that money actually turns I to the thing you want eventually. But don’t throw any more money than you can afford to lose. Because you might lose it.
Don’t bet what you can’t afford to lose. Make sure you evaluate to the best of your ability the risks of the project and the caliber people involved. If you don’t feel you can make those judgements accurately enough for the project your considering and the amount of money involved, keep your money in your pocket. Don’t back it.
But again, I think the phrase “steal a lot of money”, the same as the phrase “making a purchase on Indegogo” reveals a mindset that doesn’t reflect what crowd funding actually is. The reality is you pledge/give them some money, and they promise to try and make the thing you want. No guarantees. Some of the things I see on those sites are obviously impossible. Some, like the espresso machine I backed, turn out to have underpriced the thing by an order of magnitude because the people involved didn’t even know what they didn’t know about making several thousand consumer appliances.
I always consider the money I send to Kickstarter (et al.) as a gift or donation. If the people I gave that money with go and spend it on hookers and blow, that was always a possibility I understood when I sent the money. I _hope_ I’m a good enough judge of projects and the caliber of their people that I never send too much money to a project thats outright fraud (or totally oblivious incompetence). But if I get that wrong, that is my own problem. I won’t hide my failing there behind words like “purchase” or “stealing”, because that’s in my opinion, demonstration that I’d been fooling myself what I was getting into when I sent the money.
Like I said earlier. “Purchase” things from retailers. Throw money at crowdfunding for things you wish you could buy but can’t, and hope that money actually turns I to the thing you want eventually. But don’t throw any more money than you can afford to lose. Because you might lose it.
is there anyone who never received something (the company failed without shipping?)