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Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

plastc.com

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Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#111

Post by Karunamon »

anona wrote: post #102
hkdobrev wrote: post #2

Does anyone have any information whether they'd refund people who have pre-ordered?

If you paid via a credit card you could try doing a chargeback with the bank that issued your card. If plastic is unable to refund you, their payment processor will likely be on the hook instead.

That's what I did the moment the "lol sorry preorderers are screwed" email came in. As far as I'm concerned, this was fraud, and I'm hoping I get my preorder (not "investment", not "bootstrap", not "kickstarter") money back.

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#112

Post by vosper »

dboreham wrote: post #108
moeadham wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chip + Sign reduces 80% of classic fraud. Chip + PIN reduces ~98% (last I heard in 2016). Someone I spoke to at capital one said that Visa/MS decided to do Chip+Sign in the US due to the increased support costs of forgotten PINs.

Also people in US are in the habit of handing their card over to family members to use, which works with signature because the POS operator never checks the signature, but won't work with PIN because PINs are supposed to be super-secret. Hence requiring PIN would reduce the spend on credit cards (no lending and spending), hence fewer smaller boats for credit card executives.

Huh? Someone trusts their family member to spend responsibly with their credit card, and is happy for that person to forge their signature, but wouldn't tell them the PIN code because it's "supposed to be super-secret"? That doesn't make sense to me.

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#113

Post by ithinkinstereo »

mattes wrote: post #36

CEO and founder Ryan Marquis deleted his Twitter? https://twitter.com/ry_marquis

I get that he wants to keep a low profile and avoid the vitriol and trolls, but what a cowardly thing to do.

If you can't face the music when times are bad, you don't deserve the rewards during the good times. People trusted Ryan to the tune of $9MM in pre-orders and he rewards them by spending all the money and disappearing?

No entrepreneur should ever desert their customers and backers like this.

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#114

Post by DonHopkins »

throwanem wrote: post #9

dang, sctb, et al: Please update the title to reflect the correct name of this (former) company, which is "Plastc" (no 'i'). Thanks!

It should have been obvious they were doomed to fail when they couldn't afford to buy a penultimate vowel for their name.

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#115

Post by jessaustin »

defen wrote: post #85
thaumasiotes wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having many credit cards is a complete pain to manage, because for each card you need to [...] change the address when you move Why? I did that once, and it was a huge pain. But the cards work just as well no matter what they think your address of record is. Now I just don't change it.

So you use your old address as your billing address? Aren't you worried about the new resident of your old address receiving official communications intended for you?

In USA, you can file change of address forms with USPS. Any and all financial firms will get that change within a few months, and over that period USPS will forward automatically.

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#116

Post by jessaustin »

xiaodown wrote: post #11
hkdobrev wrote: post #2

Does anyone have any information whether they'd refund people who have pre-ordered?

From the website: > What This Means For Backers: > It’s been a long road with a lot of obstacles. The support of our amazing backers has been incredible, which makes this announcement even harder. We were so incredibly ready for production in order to hit our deadlines but without capital it is impossible for us to move forward and we will not be able to fulfill any pre-orders. soooo... no.

They really went out of their way there, to add insult to injury.

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#117

Post by NamTaf »

abalone wrote: post #16
xiaodown wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't going to be so much that, as a card that you could put multiple credit cards on, but that still functioned entirely like a credit card - meaning it could be swiped in vending machines, by waitresses, and everywhere that accepts cards, without the need for an apple pay or google pay or whatever NFC payment hardware. It's for people that keep multiple cards in their wallet.

> everywhere that accepts cards Given the shift to chip-and-PIN, which can't be emulated like this -- Plastc claimed they could but never demonstrated it (because it's impossible) -- they were way too late to market with this idea even 3 years ago. And if merchants are going to roll out new POS hardware they might as well jump to NFC as it leapfrogs cards on convenience. And security, if your device implements tokeni…

Yeh, this always seemed doomed outside the US, which in general appears to be ahead of the US for card security. Especially in AU, I don't even really go to bars with cash any more, I just use contactless payment with my card literally everywhere. Coffee, lunch, bars, etc. - pretty much everywhere has paypass/paywave now and has for years.

Even three years ago, the writing was surely on the wall that they were exploiting weaknesses in old tech to pull off their product, so there was an obvious sunset on their ability to operate their core product. Why would they invest in something that already has an end date on it?

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#118

Post by aianus »

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #33
thomnottom wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like that the first comment points out that they would be useless once the chip and pin switch takes place "in a year or so".

Chip & Pin is an interesting beast. Canada went straight to Chip & Pin, skipping over Chip & Sign. Since credit cards generally didn't have PINs at the time, there was a little work on the part of the issuing banks to assign PINs. One of my cards came with a letter that said "Use the same PIN as you use with your regular bank card", another came with one that said "Here's your new PIN, you can change it at any of our…

I definitely had chip and sign for a few months in Canada before they added a pin to my card. Circa 2011.

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#119

Post by voltagex_ »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #77
Cpoll wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's nice to have one card as a backup, and some hardcore churners / points collectors are going to want 5 or 6 cards and use different cards for different categories... but they're real niches, it's not something that a mainstream, mass market consumer is going to want to manage. I don't think this is the case. I think the average person has several credit cards (and is probably in the red on all of them). On the…

> one that waives the foreign currency conversion fee I have a credit card for precisely this purpose (it's also general-purpose cash back). It's not as useful as you might expect -- most places in China that accept foreign credit cards do so only through an agreement with a chinese bank that imposes a ridiculously disadvantageous exchange rate. (But there's no "conversion fee" -- the bank generously bills you in USD…

>my debit card from the same bank that also has no foreign currency conversion fee

I'm assuming they're making money on the exchange rate, then?

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#120

Post by jdeibele »

vosper wrote: post #112
dboreham wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also people in US are in the habit of handing their card over to family members to use, which works with signature because the POS operator never checks the signature, but won't work with PIN because PINs are supposed to be super-secret. Hence requiring PIN would reduce the spend on credit cards (no lending and spending), hence fewer smaller boats for credit card executives.

Huh? Someone trusts their family member to spend responsibly with their credit card, and is happy for that person to forge their signature, but wouldn't tell them the PIN code because it's "supposed to be super-secret"? That doesn't make sense to me.

I agree with you. I think it's more likely that people would forget somebody else's PIN more easily.
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