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Texas
1 review
5 helpful votes
Follow Arun I.
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Please stay away
January 10, 2021

As of writing, almost 70% of the projects are over priced, but you will come to know only when you get your product on hand you will realize this is not worth the hype. And there are scammers to. In our case, almost 5K people invested in this project called Lumonitor display monitor and they are delaying the shipping for the 4th month now with no proper commitments. They are not ready to refund the frustrated backers also.

Date of experience: January 10, 2021
California
1 review
3 helpful votes
Follow Laura D.
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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.

Date of experience: September 19, 2012
California
1 review
2 helpful votes
Follow Jon H.
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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.

Date of experience: February 2, 2011
Virginia
1 review
9 helpful votes
Follow Orval W.
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Too many scams
April 16, 2017

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.

Date of experience: April 16, 2017
Ohio
3 reviews
1 helpful vote
Follow Gina L.
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This place is the biggest ripoff out here we paid 6,000.00 dollars for a video and that is all we got. They told us it was a great ideas which I'm sure they tell everybody to get their money. We are very disappointed and out of a lot of money they sell people dreams to get their money it's sad how so many companies can take peoples money and keep on taking peoples money with our a refund and left with nothing but a video what can we do with a video nothing and they know that. Don't loose your money by trusting in this company to help get your product out it's not going happen. I really believe they are prejudice and took advantage of 2 BLACK women trying to be successful with a idea they said was great and we believe in it but watch a white person with money will steal our idea like so many others have with different companies. We thought we really had a chance with this company but sad to say we are out of a lot of money 6,000.00 to be exact. Don't trust these people if someone could help us we would appreciate it we only trying to have a great idea on the market.

Date of experience: July 19, 2023
Virginia
1 review
2 helpful votes
Follow Steve s.
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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.

Date of experience: June 17, 2011
Canada
1 review
6 helpful votes
Follow Mannie P.
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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.

Date of experience: November 23, 2015
Wisconsin
1 review
2 helpful votes
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Soft plastics
July 24, 2016

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.

Date of experience: July 24, 2016
GB
1 review
1 helpful vote
Follow Tony D.
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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.

Date of experience: October 28, 2018
GB
31 reviews
73 helpful votes
Follow Max L.
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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.

Date of experience: February 21, 2018
Ukraine
2 reviews
22 helpful votes
Follow Leonid Z.
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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.

Date of experience: May 22, 2016
Virginia
1 review
1 helpful vote
Follow Crystal M.
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Meh...
May 3, 2012

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.

Date of experience: May 2, 2012
Portugal
1 review
2 helpful votes
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Dont use this site
January 7, 2024

Of 45 projects i backed over 50% never arrived.

Over 20% was crappy product. For the remaining 30% it doesnt make sense. Use it and lose it (your money)

Date of experience: January 7, 2024
Turkey
1 review
1 helpful vote
Follow Tina N.
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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.

Date of experience: January 27, 2016
California
2 reviews
4 helpful votes
Follow kevin n.
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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!

Date of experience: May 20, 2014
Florida
1 review
1 helpful vote
Follow Sandy s.
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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/*******

Date of experience: April 2, 2012
California
2 reviews
6 helpful votes
Follow Benjamin B.
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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.

Date of experience: August 30, 2018
Michigan
6 reviews
14 helpful votes
Follow Calvin R.
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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.

Date of experience: January 1, 2014
Texas
1 review
6 helpful votes
Follow Haje A.
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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.

Date of experience: March 6, 2015
California
1 review
7 helpful votes
Follow L W.
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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.

Date of experience: October 27, 2014

Overview

Kickstarter has a rating of 1.6 stars from 209 reviews, indicating that most customers are generally dissatisfied with their purchases. Reviewers dissatisfied with Kickstarter most frequently mention customer service, project creators and great idea. Kickstarter ranks 19th among Crowd Funding sites.

service
52
value
52
shipping
13
returns
13
quality
47