Kickstarter

Avoid this app at all costs! You will wait many months, if not years just for a POTENTIAL product. If anything goes wrong, Kickstarter will ignore you completely. This app is rotten to the core and support staff try to talk 'terms of use' to avoid accountability and action or support. Kickstarter terms do NOT trump your rights under consumer… Read more

law. So ignore their excuses.

Should you proceed anyway, know that a bank chargeback is your ONLY way out.

I've backed a bunch of projects, and while some fail to deliver despite successful backing...that I don't mind. That's life, some projects just fail when creators try to scale up production. My problem with Kickstarter is their customer service (and their Pay Over Time option) The last project I backed, I stupidly opted for the Pay Over Time… Read more

option. When the backing period was over and it was time to make the first of 3 payments, it said there was an error with the payment, but I tried again, and it went through.

The second payment, it again said that it was an errored payment. I checked my bank statement and saw that payment had gone through successfully, so I contacted Kickstarter to let them know there was an issue with their system (that they successfully received my money, but it was showing up as errored).

The initial response came relatively quickly...my ticket got moved to different departments twice, then the communication stopped.

It has now been over a month since they have been "investigating" (2 months since my initial email) with zero follow up, and no responses to my request for updates.

Since then, my pledge has been wrongfully cancelled because of this falsely errored payment.

I would give their customer service a zero if I could

Looks like its becoming the place for companies that never deliver anything beyond fiction and promises - untrustworthy and no protection to pledgers beyond empty words and shedding any responsibility

Anyone can set up a scam project on Kickstarter. A recent project’s creator has been in the media for 2 other scam projects on other platforms and Kickstarter allowed them to set one on theirs.

Increasing number of scams on Kickstarter. They vanish once the money hits their accounts. Kickstarter does nothing and just cites their rules which basically say it’s not an issue for them.

Kickstarter used to be decent in their management of new tech offerings, I had about 80% success rate with new developers. Recently it’s a 100% fail rate, and even on expensive offerings like flux keyboard or haloasis speaker kickstarter is doing nothing to ensure proper communication or delivery of product. It’s such a shame that a great platform… Read more

has sold out and lets developers rip off customers with zero transparency and support. Any reports to kickstarter are met with total silence and a refusal to engage with developers.

Dont Do It – I have funded four projects, roughly at the same time, and only 2 have delivered products, with the other 2 taking my money. You have no protection or guarantees that you will receive the product or get your money back. Kickstarter take their cut with no responsibility. They are just as bad as the scammers they host. Dont get sucked in by the hype, you will only get ripped off. Run for the hills. Dont do it.

Scam, stay away – My Son is a keen Stellaris player. He wanted the Stellaris board game for his birthday so I pledged $250 in 2022. Two and a half years later we've had and heard nothing. I know there is always a risk with startups, however there has been zero communications on any progress or explanations for the delay. I think now that it's just a scam and… Read more

kickstarter are complicit in these scams for their share by demonstrating zero oversight and accountability.

Basically letting people commit fraud – Over 200K raised. No evidence that they actually began making the items. Yet dragged on for a year with broken promises. Kickstarter allows them to do this.

Scam - no support – Project was said to be from Texas - turned out to be a scam from China. Project creators disappeared with money and no response from Kickstarter at all https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1688635537/heisenberg-lawnmeister-all-in-one-robot-mower-with-vision-ai

No fraud protection or concern whatsoever – Usually works fine, but if a project they host turns out to be fraudulent, Kickstarter do NOTHING and will not communicate with the backers. Sad - could be great if they fixed this...

Scam - A Perfect Example – These type of crowd funding websites just are a podium to start a scam. The product owners dont supply the products and kickstarter earned their commission and they walk away leaving us with no help to get the product ordered. Nor do they take any responsibility. Avoid ordering from here.

Just a scam website – Random creator making fake project, ask for money and never send anything in return. Crowd funding and Kickstarter website are all scams, I thought it was legitimate at first since it is well known. But is not.

Dockmule 17 in 1 Kickstarter project - Most likely a Kickstarter Scam – What started out as a very promising product, appears to be the subject of a very elaborate Scam on Kickstarter (Pledgebox). So far close to a $1,000,000 AU has been raised, however, the creator has blamed Production Issues etc. Buyer Beware!

Great crowdfunding platform when it works, but Kickstarter offers no protection against fraud – I've been active on Kickstarter since 2013 and have had many, if not mostly, positive experiences with projects I backed. It felt good to support and fund creative ideas and see often young inventors, designers, engineers and artists, who would likely not have been able to secure funding from traditional sources, to bring their projects to life. … Read more

HOWEVER, any positive experience quickly fades and makes way for a lot of disappointment and frustration when projects turn out to be fraudulent enterprises. It's important to point out that not every project necessarily sees the light of day and makes it to market, which is a fact that Kickstarter is quite transparent and upfront about. Also, the advertised timelines for when creators state they want to deliver the pledged for items or services by, are rarely accurate. This too is a fact that simply has to be expected when dealing with these types of crowdfunded projects. I have had to wait many years for some of the projects I backed to be completed. But it is generally exciting and rewarding to read regular status updates from a campaign's creators that document the milestones, hurdles, setbacks and how these have ultimately been overcome until you finally hold the so-called pledge-rewards in your hands.

Sadly, Kickstarter harbours and protects an altogether different type of entrepreneurial spirit of a rather criminal nature. On two occasions I have pledged for items that were advertised in very well presented campaigns, sounded like genuinely great products and came with comprehensive plans outlining the projected course of the project, but after many years of waiting, I have given up all hope of ever receiving the paid for rewards. Both of these projects were successfully funded, meaning they attracted sufficient pledged funding from like-minded backers, and Kickstarter collected the money, withheld whatever share it is they get to keep and paid out the rest of the funds to the project owners. Unlike the aforementioned cases where projects simply don't make it, due to adverse changes in the market, inexperience and overly optimistic planning etc, both of these projects were completed and led to products that are now available for sale on the open market.

The first of these two projects was a relatively low cost item, and after numerous failed attempts at communicating with the creators via Kickstarter in hopes of either getting a refund or receiving the paid for item, I was prepared to lick my wounds and move on. The more recent case, a project to deliver a digital art display that was successfully funded in August 2018, was the straw that finally broke the camels back and has put me off the Kickstarter idea for life. The project seemed to track nicely along the roadmap advertised as part of its campaign, with regular updates, videos and photos, and as of well over a year ago the so-called Canvia frames are now available on the creator's public website and even on the Amazon US. There is an open forum on Kickstarter's campaign page where countless backers like me have shared their equally bad experience of not having received the items we each paid hundreds of dollars for, of not being able to get a response from the project owners and IMO worst of all, not being able to get any support from Kickstarter when turning to them for help. I too have tried to contact Palacio Inc, the company behind the Canvia frame, many times and through many different channels, Kickstarter, email via their B2C website, social media etc, but I have not received the item. On the rare occasion that I actually did get a reply from the project owners, it was to tell me that the item could not be shipped to Australia where I live, but only to the US, Canada or Europe. Of course there are other backers on Kickstarter who are from those parts of the world and also didn't receive their orders, so it came as little surprise that when I offered to change the delivery address to my sister who lives in Germany or to refund the money I paid, the communication immediately went silent yet again.

I have tried to reach out to Kickstarter, who in my view, having acted as a kind of escrow service and facilitator of the exchange of funds, have a care of duty to the people that ultimately pay their bills. However, Kickstarter offers absolutely no support to backers in these situations, and all I got was pre-fabricated snippets of emails copied and pasted from some "support" manual, telling me to try and contact the project creators. I am quite frankly appalled by this lack of interest in fraudulent dealings taking place on their platform.

This is a SCAM! – [Name Removed] conned me when she first pledged for her magnetic eyelash (HiLashes). They were fake, cheap and a lot of people never received their product after paying. Now she is trying to scam again with this tooth brush that she bought for $1 from China. Do not believe anything she or her company promises. BUYER BEWARE!!!!!!!!!!

Poor guidelines, confused guidance, waste of time – We took a lot of time and energy creating our campaign draft. The draft was declined without specific reasons and we were given a generic, form email of 'reasons'. In response to their request for more information, we pointed out another campaign that had been approved that was very similar to ours. We received no feedback other than 'still declined'. Waste of energy and not worth the effort.