Kickstarter

Approximately FIVE years waiting for an item I invested in. I have notified Kickstarter that I have NEVER received item. The first 2 request were greeted with a call they made to the "group" conducting it. The guys called me back with apologies and said they have a special run made for supporters... TWICE! Never recieved Anything.
Get back a response together that they NOW they don't have any record of the transaction. Again that is after THEY notified the merchant TWICE.
NOW they are lying because they don't want to follow through looking for transaction. But they have MY money. No accountability! Stall! Lies!.
Their brilliant technique is to lie/delay and than to punish you with requesting ALL necessary documentation.
I do think they are criminals. NEVER AGAIN! Its all bull$#*!!

I made a pledge on a project some time ago, and while I was waiting for it to be completed I realised I was no longer receiving update emails.

When I tried to login, my login email address was no longer recognised by the Kickstarter website. As such I can no longer receive the product that I backed.

I have raised this issue with kickstarter support, who requested (and received) all of the information about the pledge (date pledged, amazon transaction number, all my details etc) they then told me they can't help, and are no longer replying to my emails.

Kickstarter will effectively steal your pledge money and then refuse to reply to you, even if you have proof of your email address used to pledge and the transaction where you pledged. Whether this is through incompetence or maliciousness I'm not sure, but I will never use Kickstarter again, for fear that this will happen again.

The truth is: it depends on if you are lucky and the project you are backing up is produced or if the project owner/company just runs of with the money.
No matter what, if kickstarter gets its 5% for successful funding, they don't give a sh*t.
So keep in mind, kickstarter is neither responsible nor willing to help you in case of problems or if your money is gone.
Conculsion: kickstarter is like gambling, but the odds are worse.

Kickstarter is great in theory especially if you want to promote a project, not follow through and keep the money. I funded a successful project $100.00 and the "artist" Kayla Oberlin raised over $5,000 and never followed through with the project. When I contacted Kickstarter several times over the year they told me to contact the "artist" directly. They offered no refund, or any penalty that I'm aware of to Kayla Oberlin for not following through with the project.

I love the concept of crowdfunding and have pledged money on several projects. BUT, I've now been scammed on two Kickstarter projects I've backed losing about $100 in the process. Kickstarter actively promotes projects with "staff picks" which would lead you to believe they've properly vetted the project and creator. Kickstarter is more than happy to collect their fees, which are never refunded, despite no product ever being delivered. If you have a concern all you'll get from Kickstarter is some legalese which states that the dispute is between you and the creator. Interestingly, Kickstarter won't divulge any information regarding any creator so you can't get ahold of them. Stay away from Kickstarter!

These people are very biased and I believe not very inclusive of all walks of people. I am a veteran and own a brewery and they turned me down after trying to upgrade our brewery to make it better. Maybe I should have told them im LGBT or binary or another color. Eitherway, I hope they fail and acknowledge their failures to real people with real ambitions.

I backed a project from Watermelon games called Paprium which was supposed to be a fund raise for Watermelon games to port Paprium to the consales. I ordered 3 collectors editions and a specialized joystick. Fast forward a year later past the deadline which was at December 2022 I still never received it. I tried disputing the charge, but Kickstarter "validated" it while pretending they are a "legitimate" business. Worse is that a tweet was made on December 25th which I never noticed at the time, but a backer on Facebook saved it prior to the tweet being deleted. It showed that the developers were admitting to their backers that the project was a scam(see photos for details). This site should be seized by the FBI.

Kickstarter gets 5% of every transaction on the site, so they (and those who reached their funding goals) are probably the only ones happy.

This video from The Onion (news parody site) hits the nail on the head:
http://www.theonion.com/video/internet-scam-alert-most-kickstarter-projects-just-*******

It is in the best interest of those raising funds to have a great looking page and words to entice investment. Once the funds are raised, Kickstarter considers the project a "success" and YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN if you are dealing with someone dishonest! Legal recourse is hard because it is difficult to prove intent.

The good news is, the FTC is coming after Kickstarter scammers, as evidenced by this article:
http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/06/feds-take-first-action-against-a-failed-kickstarter-with-112k-judgment/

Stay away!

Completely unethical business that will not act against even the most dishonest/deceitful project creators. The only things that ever do get pulled are ones that cause a PR $#*!storm - irrespective of whether the project actually violates ToS. Otherwise, they refuse to act even in case of clear ToS violations.

Will not censure project even creators that have repeatedly scammed backers by delivering product not of the promised quality and way late.

Would deserve a -5 star rating.

I've backed 8 campaigns in Kickstarter and 3 of them were shady cases - all backers incl.me lost their money. I posted them questions numerous times but nobody cared to answer neither campaign owners nor Kickstarter.
Definitely Kickstarter has to monitor the campaign and when something goes wrong should step in and clarify. No, they're just collecting money from campaigns and don't invest efforts to filter scammers. These are scam-cases just within last 6 months: CXBER, UGAST and SYINNO.