Hmm, interesting. I will admit I missed that (as it was halfway through the FAQ, and I've got to say: passive aggressive). That said, they make it sound like you get charged up front when you back, and will get a refund if it fails to fully fund. This is a pretty significant departure from traditional crowdfund platforms (ks, igg) where you're charged when the campaign ends, only if it succeeds. Adding an extra two months of lockup to your money and "we promise we'll refund" just feels ... sketchy.
I mean: I like what the purism people are doing, don't get me wrong. I'm a fan of their librem stuff, ever since the crowdsupply days. But like: is there a reason they're not doing this on crowdsupply? Again, it just feels like a dark pattern to use these visual cues to suggest kickstarter while not adhering to standard crowdfund policy.
Giving them the benefit of the doubt, they may have started with crowd supply so they didn't have to worry about certain things (credit card, shipping) that crwod supply took care of, but took a portion of the proceeds. Now that they have done kickstarting a few times, they understand better how it works, or they are large enough that crowd supply no longer makes sense.
Thanks! I guess I must have never noticed the charges when the campaigns have ended so I'd always assumed it was in the beginning. That's good to know!
that's never happened to me - I know this because I've had several times when my credit card info changed between pledge and completion, and I had to update my cc info because the card was rejected at completion.
they confirm payment when you back, but the charge doesn't happen until successful completion, at least on KS.
Oh I see, so do they not even put a temporary hold? Otherwise doesn't that mean they might not be able to get a significant portion of their pledged funding (e.g. if people don't bother to update their cards)?
that is correct - some percentage of every KS campaign fails to collect due to rejected CC charges / chargebacks etc. According to this older (2015) article [0], in 2014 KS had $529 MM in pledges, but only collected $444 MM. So: that's like 83% successful charges? Then again, that might have included failed campaigns (since those would be pledges that didn't collect as well).
I mean: I like what the purism people are doing, don't get me wrong. I'm a fan of their librem stuff, ever since the crowdsupply days. But like: is there a reason they're not doing this on crowdsupply? Again, it just feels like a dark pattern to use these visual cues to suggest kickstarter while not adhering to standard crowdfund policy.