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Kickstart scammers


mikem91
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I wonder if it would help if KS charged high backers a portion right away. Someone pledging that high, rarely backs out anyways. They could still conceivably reverse the charges, which is ugly to say the least, but it might prevent their credit from doing a lot at once...

 

Someone pledges $500, they actually have to put in $250 of that. Someone pledges $5,000, they are billed $2500 right away. "Locked in" like Indiegogo.

 

It will also send up red flags faster to credit card companies if they keep disputing charges - but shouldn't KS have a record of the same credit card/user doing charge backs?

 

KS also keeping their % is sleazy.

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Credit Card companies don't red flag you for disputing over and over and over. An unscrupulous person could do a zillion normal charges, then buy a huge TV, dispute it. wait a month. Buy a huge computer setup. dispute it. etc. Do normal use int he meantime, gas, food, small purchases, etc.

 

The CC company will simply assume that you're sloppy with your security and keep getting compromised - and I'm sure there are legitimately people out there that actually do get compromised repeatedly. People that don't learn form their mistakes. For them the system protects them better than they can protect themselves, for good or for ill.

 

What for us was a few backers jimmying totals for fun and chaos is for a project that only needs $1000 to succeed absolute hell. These poor creators that had enough funding chargedback or pulled out to mean they literally no longer have enough money to do what they are now legally obligated to do...

 

It's sickening.

 

the only recourse a creator has is honesty, and to rely on the goodwill of the KS backer that they hopefully secured initially to pull them through.

 

But HERE:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6844538

 

if you read the whole thing there's even people suggesting that the creators did this to themselves for the attention. Or that the backer who removed his $10,000 was himself a victim...

 

Sickening again.

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Actually, this is really bugging me guys.

 

Really.

 

I'm so steamed over this Crimson Rhen "lee" [expletive] that I'm going to back this KS and I literally do not want the product. But I'm going to ask every single one of you to please go in and donate something to these people - they went from $15,000 funded to $5,000 funded because of one A-hole. Yeah, maybe they never would have made it before, who can say. But I want to see them make it now.

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It is definitely angering that this kind of sabotage exists, and the real damage it causes makes it far more than mischief.

 

But I continue to feel just as angry at Kickstarter and Amazon for refusing to deal with it. I would understand their refusal to take liability, except that they know this crap is going on and are happy to actually profit from these crimes and keep their portion of the funding.

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I'm too tapped to help. I felt bad during Bones II because I was wavering between want and need, and my estimation of volatile resources turned out to be wrong. So it was up, then down, then up again, and finally a lot less than I had planned on (to be sure it successfully came off the card). It wasn't a huge amount in variance, certainly not for Reaper's end total, but I hated doing it all the same. KS 2 caught me at a bad time, leaving me enthusiastic but poor - and some unhatched hopeful chickens didn't crack out of their eggs in time for me to go all in.

 

While this may be circumstantially reasonable in my case, the whole business of pledge trolls left me with miserable feelings about it.

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Well clearly startups need to be able to cap individual pledges, or have them subject to approval. The system begs for abuse, since it permits it on any scale but offers no recourse or even basic preventative measures to one party, and full protection to the other. Why would any of the roughly 30% of humanity that need to be beaten with a hose NOT troll KS? It's cheap, fun, and offers the opportunity to do real material damage with no risk of real material penalty.

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