Kickstarter makes things clear: we’re not an online store
After the criticism, the most popular crowdfunding platform in the US has issued new guidelines to clarify its policy and make people understand that crowdfunding is not about being an online store
di Staff
It took several complaints by the community and some strong on criticism from the New York Times to make US most popular crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter decided to make some changes. Last week, the company announced new guidelines in order to increase project transparency and prevent the website from becoming an online store selling finished products.
According to the New York Times, “getting the money is sometimes the easy part” for designers and creators using the crowdfunding platform to raise funds for their projects. What is not so easy is making the projects a reality, while there’s a crowd of people who invested in them, keeping an eye on their work.
Things get more and more difficult when the projects are very successful, as in the case of the “Elevation Dock”, a sleek aluminum charging dock for the I-Phone, which raised close to 1.5 million Dollars, through Kickstarter last December. Most “backers” donated money to pre-order the product and the demand was so unexpectedly high that it has caused troubles and delays in the production process, leaving 19 thousand people waiting an extremely long time for the product they’d paid for. In the meantime I-Phone 5 came out and the “Elevation Dock” is not compatible with this new model. However the creators have reassured their customers saying that they have designed an adapter for those who want to use their product with the IPhone5 and that they are about to ship the last of their per-ordered docks.
“Today we’re introducing a number of changes to reinforce that Kickstarter isn’t a store”, wrote Kickstarter founders Charles Adler, Perry Chen and Yancey Strickler in a blog post. “The best rule of thumb: under-promise and over-deliver”, they stated.
However something hasn’t change and that is Kickstarter policy of not holding successfully funded projects accountable for delivering rewards to backers.
