I'm still a little confused why the story posted the other day fell off the front page so quickly, there was some good discussion and a link to a youtube meta-review that gave a pretty interesting view in to the last few days of the company:
Kanoa won’t ship its $300 earphones to customers who pre-ordered them
21–30 of 65 posts
Re: Kanoa won’t ship its $300 earphones to customers who pre-ordered them
#22You have to know, anything crowdfunded is very high risk. I'm not sure why people even do it if the reward is maybe a product at a discount. I'm amazed some unscrupulous company has't abused it to take money with no intention of ever delivering a product.
I'm amazed some unscrupulous company has't abused it to take money with no intention of ever delivering a product. You'll find a bunch of them in the ICO space, where crowdfunding is even easier.
What does ICO stand for?
Re: Kanoa won’t ship its $300 earphones to customers who pre-ordered them
#23To provide a counter anecdote: I have never been burnt by a KickStarter yet and I've backed about 7 of them. I have had to wait a very long time though. Once almost 2 years. But I am prepared knowing that one day I might back a losing horse. With that said, I'm surprised there is no recourse for the people who bought from the website.
I only got burned on one, which was the NinjaSphere. Unfortunately it was one of the most expensive ones I backed because I went for the developer kit ($500+). Though I did actually receive the developer kit.. became next to useless very quickly.
Other than that I seem to have chosen my kickstarters pretty well and very happy with most of them.
Re: Kanoa won’t ship its $300 earphones to customers who pre-ordered them
#24You have to know, anything crowdfunded is very high risk. I'm not sure why people even do it if the reward is maybe a product at a discount. I'm amazed some unscrupulous company has't abused it to take money with no intention of ever delivering a product.
I'm amazed some unscrupulous company has't abused it to take money with no intention of ever delivering a product. You'll find a bunch of them in the ICO space, where crowdfunding is even easier.
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Re: Kanoa won’t ship its $300 earphones to customers who pre-ordered them
#25With more cases like this popping up, it seems the safer route is: Back product on Kickstarter and set reminders for 2 weeks before chargeback deadline for credit card used. If product is undelivered by that date, then cancel order with maker AND initiate chargeback too, to be on safe side.
Re: Kanoa won’t ship its $300 earphones to customers who pre-ordered them
#26Re: Kanoa won’t ship its $300 earphones to customers who pre-ordered them
#27To provide a counter anecdote: I have never been burnt by a KickStarter yet and I've backed about 7 of them. I have had to wait a very long time though. Once almost 2 years. But I am prepared knowing that one day I might back a losing horse. With that said, I'm surprised there is no recourse for the people who bought from the website.
I really can't imagine that these types of scams are the norm, and not the exception. I've backed 33 campaigns, and I've never been burned (yet). Two turned out to be pretty shitty executions, though - not sure if I should count that, since I did still receive my rewards.
The key is to ask yourself some common sense questions like: * Is this product possible in our current reality? * Does the business exist only for the purposes of this campaign? * Can the product realistically be made with the money raised so far?
The first is obviously a deal breaker, and the second can be a red flag. The third might be hard to gauge, but is probably the best filter. For example, raising $6MM to make 6 million milled titanium wallets obviously isn't going to work, even though it's a lot of money. OTOH, $6MM for pretty much any kind of software product is going to scale fine as long as it's not an ongoing service.
Note that that third point also means you basically can't back any electronics hardware project unless the answer to the question "Will this company make this product anyway, regardless of this Kickstarter?" is an unequivocal 'yes', since hardware development is so damn hard.
Just my 2 cents.
Re: Kanoa won’t ship its $300 earphones to customers who pre-ordered them
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I backed a kickstarter for $20 that I'm pretty positive did exactly that. Communication I had with the project seemed to indicate that they used the money to pay for a move. In retrospect, looking at this Kickstarter, it has got all the warning signs of a project that won't deliver, but then again, it's $20. Luckily it's the only project out of several dozen where I've gotten burned. Still, it's a wonder that Kicksta…
A lot of app developers do that on mobile... "Man, this app sucks and doesn't do what it should. Oh well, it's only $0.99" That's why I am a proponent of easy refunds and/or trial periods on apps. Like: if I uninstall this from my phone within 7 days I don't get charged. As a seasoned KickStarter backer I do a lot of due diligence. and haven't lost money yet But the average project I have backed is $300 so I'd be ver…
Aye, I'm mostly in the same boat as you as far as kickstarter and literally backed this one on a lark. Live and learn.
Re: Kanoa won’t ship its $300 earphones to customers who pre-ordered them
#29The troubling thing is people ordered the headphones on the website too, not just on kickstarter. I'm sure taking an order on your website and not sending anything is some kind of fraud. It's not like kickstarter where you are funding the company and the company promises to make it up to you.
Yes, and if it's fraud then it's also malpractice by the directors and the company structure doesn't protect the them from being sued personally for the missing funds. Someone should really start an action against the directors.
Re: Kanoa won’t ship its $300 earphones to customers who pre-ordered them
#30> "...with the quick turn of events, we are emotionally overwhelmed"
I didn't preorder and have no skin in this.
But, it really irritates me when companies share their feels after screwing people over. I dont care that you're super sad! We're not compadres, and I'm not going to sympathize on a personal level when your professional failure cost me.
Same with touchy-feely status updates when hosted services go down and paying customers are losing money. Github used to do that back in the day. Extended outages and their status log was smiley and cutesy as if we're buddies through all this. We are not.