Kickstart scammers

[SIGIL]

Ok so this person disputed a charge after receiving the product? THAT is incredibly crappy....Can't say that it has nto happened to me in the course of normal business. $10,000.00 worth fo charge as well........ Well the upside is that you WOULD have the person's name and address and credit card info so there is that......

 

I suppose the only way to combat this problem is to withhold delivery until the dispute period has passed and then deliver the product.....Of course NO ONE ( including the creators ) will like that arrangement.

[greyhaze]

You'd figure if they had tracking and did a charge back, they'd be looking at a criminal offense for taking the product and then charging the company back. (kind of read that as a question)

[Dontfear]

Technically you could make the case for obtaining property under false pretense, a felony here in NC but try to find a prosecutor who wants to go after it.

[Gatt]

 

 

Reaperbryan, on 06 Dec 2013 - 3:00 PM, said:

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.

I'm in, I'm right there with you on the PledgeTrolls Bryan. Not cool, Kickstarter has the potential to revolutionize product development and business, it can allow small businesses to expand their sales significantly, reach new customers who never would have heard of them, and fund an amazing array of ideas that never would've seen fruition.

I'm going to have to think about this a bit, I think algorithms can be developed that would trap and kill this kind of behavior.

-Obviously, watching someone's pledge patterns could easily kill most PledgeTrolls. It would be trivial to datamine them out, just keep a log of a person's pledges, and watch for a pattern of fluctuations.

-The bigger challenge is to kill the PledgeTrolls ability to assume a new identity and continue. That's the one I have to think about. IP address is useless due to proxies, using physical address is problematic...

The only thing I can think of so far that would kill PledgeTrolls is to institute an encrypted key policy for pledging, and the client key is based on hardware identifiers (Many components will internally identify their serial number on command). So basically a specific computer would generate a unique key that never changes. This would dramatically reduce the number of repeat offenders, since you could at that point ban the computer. I doubt PledgeTrolls would continue when each time they're caught they'd need to buy new hardware. You'd also have to cap pledges from a smartphone to a certain number, like say $100 or $200, but that is simple to do. Sure, a *really* dedicated PledgeTroll could spoof the key, but I sincerely doubt there are that many people with Computer Science degrees, and Cryptography knowledge, that would be trying to troll kickstarters.

The only question is if this can be done from a browser, my gut feeling is that it is possible.

[Inarah]

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.

 

And I think that is the issue right there. They do it because they can, and because they get away with it. It won't stop until there's a real threat of punishment.

[Dr.Bedlam]

You know, when Kickstarter began to become a serious thing, I pondered the possibility of this... but in a competitive sort of thing, existing companies playing dirty tricks to interfere with each other. As in "I am founding Doc Bedlam Miniatures Company, and therefore I will pledge huge to Reaper, and then withdraw my pledge in order to interfere with Reaper and waste their resources and cost them money." While still a dirty trick, at least that would make some sort of sense.

It irks me considerable to think that some [expletive redacted] would do this for FUN.

[Darsc Zacal]

As a person who uses their smartphone for Internet access I can tell you that capping pledges from such devices would be very detrimental to kickstarters I back.

 

As for blocking hardware, there'd still be public libraries and Internet cafes for the offender to work out of.

[Dr.Bedlam]

As a person who uses their smartphone for Internet access I can tell you that capping pledges from such devices would be very detrimental to kickstarters I back.

 

As for blocking hardware, there'd still be public libraries and Internet cafes for the offender to work out of.

 

Yeah. Anyone willing to be a [expletive redacted] to complete strangers for no real reason is, no doubt, prepared to go to great lengths to do it.

[Wren]

At the very least I think Kickstarter needs to allow a creator to set caps on pledges for a campaign. At least one of these stories sounded like it wasn't a big spender donor level, just someone upping their pledge. Some campaigns are run in a way that people need to be able to add on quite a bit to their base pledge (like Reaper's), but others are not constructed that way, and being able to cap the over-pledge limit might help the risk factor for these smaller campaigns.

 

Though the cynical side of me supposes Kickstarter/Amazon does have a motivation not to do that. True benefactors would likely be more motivated to work out a private donation with the campaign, and KS would miss out on its cut.

[Last Knight]

At the very least I think Kickstarter needs to allow a creator to set caps on pledges for a campaign. At least one of these stories sounded like it wasn't a big spender donor level, just someone upping their pledge. Some campaigns are run in a way that people need to be able to add on quite a bit to their base pledge (like Reaper's), but others are not constructed that way, and being able to cap the over-pledge limit might help the risk factor for these smaller campaigns.

 

Though the cynical side of me supposes Kickstarter/Amazon does have a motivation not to do that. True benefactors would likely be more motivated to work out a private donation with the campaign, and KS would miss out on its cut.

Being able to cap pledges would also help with the "too much success" problem, where you plan for a small turnout and find yourself buried under a mountain of interest. Could be handy for creators, but I don't see Kickstarter wanting to cap the money geyser - they don't much care if the creator gets buried and can't fulfill, they've already got their cut.

[MatrissaTheEnchantress]

Sorry to drag this back into the limelight, but I'm just catching up on my followed threads for the first time since late November-ish.

 

I think the thing that ticks me off the absolute most is Amazon Payments and Kickstarter both keeping their fee when something get's reversed. Especially Amazon Payments as I don't think PayPal does that - at least, if you purposely refund a payment within 60 days they will return their fee back to the account.... Does anyone know if their behaviour is different if the "refund" was caused by a chargeback? (Of course, that doesn't really help if the chargeback/refund happens more than two months out, but still, it's better than always keeping the fees!)

[Reaperbryan]

Sorry to drag this back into the limelight, but I'm just catching up on my followed threads for the first time since late November-ish.

 

I think the thing that ticks me off the absolute most is Amazon Payments and Kickstarter both keeping their fee when something get's reversed. Especially Amazon Payments as I don't think PayPal does that - at least, if you purposely refund a payment within 60 days they will return their fee back to the account.... Does anyone know if their behaviour is different if the "refund" was caused by a chargeback? (Of course, that doesn't really help if the chargeback/refund happens more than two months out, but still, it's better than always keeping the fees!)

To the best of my knowledge, the fees are not refunded whether it was a chargeback or not.

[MatrissaTheEnchantress]

 

... I don't think PayPal does that - at least, if you purposely refund a payment within 60 days they will return their fee back to the account.... Does anyone know if their behaviour is different if the "refund" was caused by a chargeback? (Of course, that doesn't really help if the chargeback/refund happens more than two months out, but still, it's better than always keeping the fees!)

To the best of my knowledge, the fees are not refunded whether it was a chargeback or not.

 

 

Well, because I've done it for a volunteer organization I work for, I know that PayPal DOES return their fees when you go through their "refund" process to return a payment to someone. PayPal also returns their fees when someone uses an option like "electronic cheque" that is never cleared by the bank or if a credit card transaction is declined within just a few days. That said, 60 days after the payment is posted you are no longer able to use their formal refund process. Instead, you can only refund someone by "sending" them the money you owe them so at that point it's the same - you've lost the income you were expecting as well as the fee that was charged.

 

Regardless, it all just stinks. :-P