81–90 of 120 posts
Bitwize is a web design company in Lebanon.[1] Sorry, but I'm not going to be sending money to someone in Lebanon no matter how good the CAD renders look.
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Looks like someone needs to start kickescrow.com
Which will then pivot into kickbitcoin.com
This seems insane that Kickstarter doesn't have a policy on this. Guess all investments have some level of 'risk' to them.
An investment is risk, you are risking losing your money, but at the chance of making lots of money. That's what an investment is, in theory anyway, right?
Kickstarter tech projects, you are risking losing your money... for the chance to get a product that's worth about what you paid for it anyway? Where's the possible reward that's worth the risk?
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>People have been using Kickstarter as a pre-order site which I think is not ideal in many cases. Kickstarter backs this perception. "In just 24 hours, 20,000 people bought an Ouya console — a product they had never heard of before yesterday." - Yancey Strickler - Cofounder/Head of Communications at Kickstarter [0] 0: http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/ouyas-big-day
Kickstarter is trying very hard to NOT back that perception. They have and continue to make changes to make it clear that Kickstarter is not a pre-order site. "Kickstarter is Not a Store" - http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store
There is a simple solution to this problem. Don't allow project creators to offer the project as a reward! It should be ok for people to try and fail with projects on Kickstarter. By preventing creators from offering the product as a reward backers will understand better that it isn't a pre-order system. It's an "I need money for this idea. It might work or it might fail but if you want to help me try, give me money"…
Unfortunately, this project creator hasn't provided any proof that the money was spent working on the product. If there were photos and records of work and progress being attempted, and at least some communication with the backers along the way, I suspect the tone and deposition of the comments would be different. It's a lot to read through, but there's pages of people just asking for transparency to see the status a…
There isn't anything even resembling progress updates.
I'm surprised this isn't a more-common outcome of things on Kickstarter. Seems like the perfect "market" to peddle vaporware without consequence.
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Maybe even only release 50% of the funds initially and hold the rest in escrow until a given set of circumstances are met. That way the users are exposed to less risk knowing they could get half of their funding back. On the downside, if this keeps happening, users aren't going to back as many projects, and fewer projects will be successfully funded (which may or may not actually be a bad thing).
Starting by only giving them the amount of money they said they needed would be nice. 196 000$ of a 12 000$ goal, that's ridiculous, and very tempting to just disappear away with.
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What's interesting about this situation is that if people complain (as some have) to their credit card companies and the charges bounce then kickstarter gets hit with a chargeback fee in addition to the money that was paid in. I've seen chargeback fees of between $25 and $35 per transaction.
Kickstarter doesn't get hit with these fees since Kickstarter isn't processing/receiving the payments. It appears to me that money goes directly to the project owner's Amazon Payments account, so any chargebacks would land there as well. Even if Amazon lays the blame for the chargebacks on Kickstarter, they're probably safe. Since they're still in business, it's pretty safe to assume their overall chargeback rate is…
Interesting I didn't know that.
"Even if Amazon lays the blame for the chargebacks on Kickstarter, they're probably safe."
Given what you have said though what would be the scenario where they could even do that? If someone is setting up (as you've pointed out) an account with amazon payments then where does amazon have standing to do anything with kickstarter?
I'm actually surprised it took this long for someone to "take the money and run". It seemed like one of the major issues with kickstarter, and I'm surprised they don't seem to have given it much thought.
The project has reached a $196K funding while the initial goal was "only" $12K. Maybe Kickstarter should limit the amount of money to this initial goal, or at least to twice the amount of this goal. If a project looks promising, more people are likely to pledge for it. But if Cryptrade thought $12K was enough to develop their project, that's probably all they actually needed. And $12K is both less tempting for Cryptr…
However I am not so sure about a kickstarter imposed maximum, as certain projects (say non physical goods) can grow indefinitely (in terms of the quantity of the product given out) but have a minimum amount before they are able to bring the product to market.
I think it is more useful for the creator of the kickstarter to set a minimum and optional maximum.
I also quite like the idea of holding some amount in escrow until progress has been made (maybe anything over twice the minimum or similar).