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How a PR Agency Stole Our Kickstarter Money

d-cal.com

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Re: How a PR Agency Stole Our Kickstarter Money

#101

Post by slantyyz »

ineedasername wrote: post #90
slantyyz wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> You protect yourself by having the appropriate contractual agreements in place, which the client did here. I disagree. You protect yourself by doing your necessary homework before you even sign the contracts. Contracts are helpful, but in the real world, getting a resolution can be very messy. Lawsuits are stressful, expensive and time consuming. If you've been through a lawsuit, you'll know that being right is of…

And in that hypothetical reality no one ever needs recourse to a legal system for contractual disputes. I've been through lawsuits, specifically for fraudulent representations made by a vendor. (We won, easily. Good record keeping and contracts saved the day) In that example and this one, it doesnt appear that additional research on the vendor would have revealed a show stopping issue ahead of time. Of course the vic…

>> And in that hypothetical reality no one ever needs recourse to a legal system for contractual disputes

I'm not saying that. But in practice, the legal system favors those who can afford the time and money to go through the process. That's why a lot of cases are settled instead of going to trial. If the case isn't particularly clear cut, it's an expensive proposition for the individual or small business, especially if you can't find a lawyer who thinks your case is worth his/her while.

>> I've been through lawsuits

You or your company? Did you pay any of the legal fees out of your own pocket?

For this specific case, we're talking about $35K being a significant chunk of money for the OP. He had to close two bank accounts because they "hit negative balance".

How much do you think they can afford to spend to fight this case before it becomes a money pit? A good lawyer requires an up-front retainer, and is easily 150/hr, those billable hours add up very quickly.

Sure the contracts might be enforceable, but he's probably going to have to borrow money to even have a chance to squeeze money out of the PR company.

You might not need to go as far as hiring a PI, but some common sense would have gone a long way. Letting someone with whom you don't have a longstanding relationship hold your money for you is generally a bad idea. I have to wonder if they even checked with the PR company's "Australian client" to see if they were legit about doing wire transfers.

Re: How a PR Agency Stole Our Kickstarter Money

#102

Post by late2part »

spelunker wrote: post #17
pavel_lishin wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The simple way to solve this is to take them to court. Is there anything more to the story than you trusted them with your money and they kept it? It seems like the point of the post is to publicize what happened, and make sure other people are aware of the dangers of working with this agency: > If we don’t tell people what happened, it could happen to someone else. > We are cutting our losses and doing what we can…

Or possibly damaging a reputation of a company unreasonably because we're only hearing one side of the story: https://twitter.com/Woodshedagency/status/943508162002513923 I mean there's a reason why the "court of public opinion" isn't the best way to resolve issues... edit: well, looks like Woodshead Agency protected their twitter account so you can't see the tweet now. That's not great.

seems like a reasonable explanation to me - noone's blameless but noone's twirling mustaches either...

https://medium.com/@jeff_52578/how-a-failed-kickstarter-camp...

Re: How a PR Agency Stole Our Kickstarter Money

#103

Post by late2part »

otakucode wrote: post #64
late2part wrote: post #2

There are a few things about this I don’t understand. How much money was it? Were they supposed to get a percentage of money raised, or did they get paid a fee and then get a percentage on top? Do I understand correctly that they’re having money problems so they kept your money to solve their money problems? The simple way to solve this is to take them to court. Is there anything more to the story than you trusted th…

It certainly should go to court... but that would be an international lawsuit, which is far from cheap. And the people who were wronged are the ones who would be ponying up the cash for a long, long time before they might see any restitution... I can't understand going public, and really I'm glad they did. I'm sure the other side will whine about 'libel', but in order for it to be libel you have to prove that it is f…

I don't know what "international lawsuit" means. The plaintiff would sue the defendant local region.

It's implicitly an "international" transaction, so why would rectifying the problem be considered unfairly burdensome when they entered into the relationship.

Re: How a PR Agency Stole Our Kickstarter Money

#104

Post by rasz »

LaundroMat wrote: post #48

I can imagine one scenario where Woodshed was in dire financial straits and calculated that the brand damage resulting from keeping the game developer's money was worth it.

or wanted a new car.

Afair https://hackaday.com/2014/03/07/soap-the-home-automation-rou... dude(or was it two guys) running this scam just bought new car with crowdfunded money and posted pictures on instagram.

Re: How a PR Agency Stole Our Kickstarter Money

#106

Post by valuearb »

true_religion wrote: post #49
pavel_lishin wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To form a response to Upstart, yes - but not to form a response to this blog post. (Which, to be fair, as a PR company they should have known was coming, and should have had contingency planning to deal with this.)

If you have no response, it's acceptable to write "We are deeply concerned about this situation regarding our former client, and will prepare a more comprehensive response to be publicized later".

You’d have to be a PR agency to be able to write something like that quickly, er, wait...

Re: How a PR Agency Stole Our Kickstarter Money

#107

Post by slazaro »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #52
stablemap wrote: post #8

https://twitter.com/Woodshedagency/status/943508162002513923

"These Tweets are protected Only approved followers can see @Woodshedagency's Tweets. To request access, click Follow. Learn more." This does not exactly make them look like innocent above board victims of libel.

They've now posted their response, and if true, everything on their side makes sense, and makes this situation a good example of not 100% trusting one sided accusations without having the other side's version first.

Re: How a PR Agency Stole Our Kickstarter Money

#109

Post by otakucode »

late2part wrote: post #103
otakucode wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly should go to court... but that would be an international lawsuit, which is far from cheap. And the people who were wronged are the ones who would be ponying up the cash for a long, long time before they might see any restitution... I can't understand going public, and really I'm glad they did. I'm sure the other side will whine about 'libel', but in order for it to be libel you have to prove that it is f…

I don't know what "international lawsuit" means. The plaintiff would sue the defendant local region. It's implicitly an "international" transaction, so why would rectifying the problem be considered unfairly burdensome when they entered into the relationship.

If I understood the article correctly, the PR company is in the United States and the Kickstarted company is in another country. If they tried to bring a suit in their country, the court might not have jurisdiction. Even if they did say they had jurisdiction, the likelihood of them being able to compel US citizens to suffer penalties levied by a court in another country is extremely slim. So most likely, they would need to hire a lawyer in the US to bring the suit in a US court. That requires finding a lawyer who is familiar with the intracacies of international contract law, the details involved in establishing jurisdiction, etc, and they would need to travel to the US many times (possibly very many if the opposition thinks they can drag the case out and make it too burdensome for the plaintiff to continue) for various hearings.

Then there's the issue of finding a lawyer who won't start off by asking 'and what is a kickstarter?' which is harder than you might expect. Also, I just thought, Kickstarter might have some kind of standing in this which might also require the case to occur in a US court. Not sure about that.

Re: How a PR Agency Stole Our Kickstarter Money

#110

Post by user15672 »

kbenson wrote: post #46
kjrose wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a feeling this may be a crossed wires problem where someone spent the money raised before they sent it because of bad accounting or whatever. Regardless, if the statement “we received none of the money” is true. There is definitely something bad going on here.

If it's been 7 months, that should be plenty of time to replace the money. If the money was too much to replace in that period of time, I'm not sure how I can believe it was of an amount that could be accidentally spent in this way. If I had an extra $1,000 in my account, I might accidentally spend it, but I could replace it eventually. If I had an extra $50,000 in my account, that would be much harder to replace, bu…

Looks like replacing the money isn't the issue, it's whether or not D-Cal have screwed over the agency. Over half of the KS pledges were made fraudulently by D-Cal themselves, meaning the money doesn't actually exist and their campaign was a failure. This puts the agency on the hook for any and all refunds if the people who actually put their money into pledges ask for a refund (the agency account is tied to the campaign now). D-Cal have apparently not come up with a proper solution to repay the money if this happens, so Woodshed are not happy about releasing the funds until this is resolved (on their accountants advice). I'd suggest that all D-Cal have to do is finish setting up an account that can be used on KS and the account could be switched and funds deposited. Either that or put enough cash to cover the agencies costs into some sort of escrow.

(https://medium.com/@jeff_52578/how-a-failed-kickstarter-camp...)

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