Kickstarter Buyer Beware

Posted by admin on Dec 19, 2013 in Consumer Reviews, Cool stuff, Personal Insights | 1 comment

Kickstarter is a cool concept – contribute to a project or idea that might not otherwise get off the ground. In appreciation for your support, developers offer rewards.  I’m not sure if it was intentional when they started it, but it’s spawned a new type of startup company. One that, if a company can entice enough consumers to “buy into” their idea, they should have enough money to make that idea happen. Your reward then becomes the finished product.

I was very intrigued by this new business model, and was very impressed with the creativity and innovation of many of the ideas. One that caught my eye last year was the “iExpander.” It promised an extra battery, much better camera flash, and an expandable memory slot for a microUSB, solving the major issues I was having with my iPhone 4S – bad battery life, bad pictures in low light, and not enough memory. The video they showed was impressive, and the fact that they already had several working prototypes built (and language on the site) lead me to believe I’d be receiving mine less than a month and a half after the campaign ended – ready for Christmas 2012.

More than a year later, I’m still waiting for my iExpander, and it’s not going to function nearly as I thought it would. They’ve hit snags with Apple, engineering, and manufacturing. The battery doesn’t tie in nearly as seamlessly as it was supposed to and the expandable memory is now a proprietary removable module. In the meantime, I’ve also upgraded to an iPhone 5S, which now has a better flash than was planned. Technology moves fast, and while iExpander has been working out it’s issues for more than a year, my need for the product has disappeared (I also upgraded to a 64GB memory in my new phone).

What I didn’t realize, was how common this is. CNN published a list of Kickstarter’s top 50 projects, and when they shipped. So, I share my story, just to say “buyer beware” if you choose to look at Kickstarter (or Indiegogo, or any other crowdsourced sites) as a way to buy some cutting edge new projects.

Don’t get me wrong, they’re not all bad. In fact, one of the most successful campaigns, the Pebble smartwatch, encouraged me to try it again. This time, I was very impressed with the prototype videos of the Kreyos Meteor smartwatch. It appears to be way more advanced than the Pebble, and does more of what I want a smartwatch to do. I took a chance as an “early adopter” and signed up for one.

Again, the Kreyos smartwatch prototypes looked so promising, and they appeared to have it all together, also promising to have them completed within a couple months of the campaign ending. Well, the Kreyos Meteor smartwatch was supposed to be shipped at the end of November, and that date has obviously come and gone. The most recent update said they hope to have it finished by mid-February. This is exactly how the  iExpander started out and I’m still waiting for that one over a year later.  I’m not going to hold my breath.