Kickstarter

Rejected my project and for those who get their projects "accepted" they don't let you receive your money unless you reach your goal. So in other words, you could be 5 dollars short of your 500 dollar goal and you don't get any of it. Try Rockethub instead! They are not biased against projects and let you keep whatever people are willing to give you.

First of all I'm only writing this in response to the other reviews of this site, mainly concerning what people are saying about Diaspora. I am in no way affiliated with kickstarter or diaspora.

I am here to say that if you are wondering about kick starter do not rely on the information that the people above me submitted. If they had even taken the 5 minutes to understand what Diaspora is about they wouldn't be calling it a facebook clone. Diaspora is not like a tradition social networking "site" because you run it on your computers, and it connects to other computers such as a p2p network would. If you can't even take the time to figure that out, then why you're writing reviews on it is absolutely mind boggling to me.

I a have had one good and one okay experience and the rest were much worse. From late deliveries to out right scams claiming their finances were stolen, Kickstarter has gone down the toilet. Great idea if they could eep the criminals out, maybe someone could make that a project.

I heard about kickstarter by word of mouth. I have contributed to 3 projects to date that have met their fulfillment goals. Each of these 3 projects to date has fully met their stated goals and I have been very satisfied with the final products.
I can understand a new site needing to get their name out there, so asking for assistance from those promoting their products/ideas on their site does not seem unreasonable.

Kickstarter takes zero responsibility for their customers being ripped off. I wrote five times to get help. I bought 2 units for our Navy Veterans with PTSD Suicide Prevention boat restoration project Facebook.com/NavyDayzTim

I was filling out my form and there is this live chat window. I simply ask why are they asking for my credit card for the second time. The lady on the other end used vulgar language on me and informing me that I am giving them a hard time. Immediately offered me a refund. I fine and ask of my email address.

I am not sure if this is a scam. I don't know if I will have my refund back or not or how long will it take.

Be careful people. I will not advice you to sign up on their investment offer.

I have been making soft plastic baits for a few years when I decided to go on kickstarter to try to expand and hire a disabled vet to help the response I got was o.oo money pledges. 1 guy that would get my message out there for a price. I am a vet trying to get by and thought if I could help a disabled vet along the way that would be a worthy cause. I guess people don't care about vets or disabled vets. Don't waist your time here.

Avoid Kickstarter.
I invested in a project.
The Creator has failed to communicate since early August, now it is almost November and the project is 4 months late. Kickstarter basically takes the investors money and absolves itself of any and all responsibility to ensure the creator even talks to their investors let deliver on their promise. The project I backed has over 1200 comments - the vast majority are negative along the lines of "at least talk to us" or "where is my xxx", a few are "I have received it but it does not work".
I have rattled Kickstarters cage a few times asking them to do something - they steadfastly refuse and just say read our Terms and Conditions.
In my opinion it is tantamount to fraud.
They take our money and run.
To make matters worse the Creator is seeking funding on another project. Despite their failures on the other one Kickstarter has allowed it.
HOW CAN THAT BE RIGHT.

I get as many users scammed, we claim and complain to Kickstarter several times. Customer Support do not give us refunds as gofundme that protect users and refund users if you get scammed. We ended up sad and after a year a lot of banks refuse to give us refund so we lost our money and also any hope to get help from this guys.
Stay away from Kickstarter they are OK with scams.

I am shocked by the amount of reviewers complaining that the project they backed was delayed. Get real. Kickstarter is not a store, you know. You are not buying a product, you are investing in a project. You are taking a risk. Some projects can be delayed or even fail, because their founders failed to predict all the complexities of bringing an innovative product to the market - and there are many. It may or may not be the fault of the project creators, but in any case it's not Kickstarter's fault. Kickstarter is a great place to fund great ideas, just understand what you are doing.

Meh... ok...

Spent the better part of 3 to 4 days getting the entire thing written, putting it together, etc... for it just to be lost in a huge pile of other kickstarter projects. I did what I could to network and advertise via social networking sites 'n' such & read up on some of their "tips" for making the most out of their site. I basically ended up no further along than where I was to begin with. I even emailed their support for tips & advise, just to blatantly be ignored... The site seems to be useful tool but it's impossible to benefit from unless you excessively advertise the hell out of your project anywhere you can without being flagged for spam & relentless self-promotion. They should have an area for 'newly' uploaded projects to help newbies get exposure. Overall... frustrated & annoyed I wasted my time with it.

I've funded Loona, the pet bot and everything happened as expected. Now my 5y daughter has a new robot friend. We are still waiting for the charging dock. The site is very transparent and straight forward.

I have at present (jan 2016) a KS project, which started out ok, but after a few days, I got no pledges, and am way too far from my goal which is heart breaking. I have worked so hard on my artwork and writing for my own tarot deck. That's 78 pieces of art! I looked at other tarot projects that have raised dollars, that is to say American, but I am in UK and feel the other side of the pond has more backers for locals. Disapppointed, but will get it published, even if I have to save up for one single deck for meeee.

The requirement they have on the website to start a project is misleading. I tried to run a software project on their website and they kept asking for more information. I needed money to run the project to attract customers and run an alpha site at a company. I already had a working prototype. If they need excessive amount of information on the project such as a video of the project or how many years of experience someone has doing a particular type of a job then why not put that on the website and make it a requirement? By the way if I need to jump over so many hoops to get the project approved on their website I would rather go to traditional investors and demo my product! It was a total waste of an afternoon!

The most compelling and candid account of someone's experience during a Kickstarter project is the one posted about the Man Greater Than Money font.

The complete email exchanges between the project creator and Kickstarter are posted.

You should definitely read it before you start a fundraising project.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/*******177/man-greater-than-money/posts/*******

Kickstarter supports known scams. They allow companies to run 2nd and 3rd campaigns knowing they have not fulfilled their first campaign. I cannot urge anyone looking at Kickstarter to JUST WAIT! Most of these companies do NOT finish their product. The ones that do always just charge the same amount for the finished product as they did on Kickstarter, which is supposed to be a discount. At least if you wait you won't lose your money. Please don't use kickstarter folks.

Personally I have backed 26 projects as of this review. About 90% of the projects that were backed have been fulfilled in the time frame that the project promised. I have not had a bad experience yet. A couple projects that I have backed were pulled, but I have not paid into a project that has stole my money. I am personally on this website daily and love all of the new projects. It so exciting to see what people come up with, and even more exciting when you a able to open up a personal reward that you made happen. This is a truly rewarding website.

Nice idea. It sadly has been adopted by SCAM merchants. Lack of support from kickstarter means merchants have free hand to do whatever they want. You have no recourse and no support from Kickstarter itself.

I would NEVER put money in a Kickstarter project again. Scott Crider of Watchdogs scammed everyone who gave him money and Kickstarter's response is "oh, well, you got scammed, not our problem." No accountability. I would have been better off throwing my money in the toilet. Then I would know where it went.

I've been waiting a year to be refunded on an investment I made through Kickstarter. The project went belly-up and Kickstarter did nothing to help the investors to be refunded.
I'm disappointed in Kickstarter and wish I'd never trusted them.

I bought a new smart suitcase from a company in kickstarter and I have now used it for over 1 year.

It has a charger for my devices in a battery I charge at home and it also have a tracker.

Best feature is all the organiser rooms and I have to say the process through kickstarter was smooth.

It was actually so good I plan to start my own kickstarter campaign.

I backed six projects and three of them never delivered the product. Only two comic book projects delved a solid product. A USB cable immediately broke and the lifetime guarantee doesn't mean anything. The other two products never delivered anything, they just took the money and that was that.

Complete waste of time. Unless you want to get bombarded with spam and fake pledges to get you to pay. I got a minimum of 3 messages per day trying to get my money. Unless you have a network of rich friends willing to help your wasting your time.