- the product shipped on time
- the product worked as advertised
- the founding team didn't go overboard
In all the Kickstarters I've seen, it seems like the founders lose interest in actually delivering a product after they get the money. They run up against the challenges of support and manufacturing, and they seem to just skip on to the next thing because that's what they enjoyed in the first place - having a cool idea and getting it funded. Sometimes the next cool idea is just scope creep for the current product ("Sorry we're 3 months behind on shipping, but now it can also mine Bitcoins and chop salads!").
My point being, I don't think KS will ever work for technology, because the funding comes at exactly the point where the project stops being fun. Besides the guilt of providing a product to backers, there's not a ton of incentive for a small team to keep building after they get funded, so they'll just delay and peter out, or punt on key objectives and move on.
I think the more ambitious the project is, and the less actual production experience the founders have, the more likely they are to run into problems. So that should be a big consideration when backing a project.
It's all added complication, though.
Paragraph 2: If it's NOT your fault, stop whining about the shipping costs. Do you know how expensive it is for us to pay for that stuff?
Paragraph 3: If we made stuff that didn't break we wouldn't make money. So we make stuff that breaks.
Paragraph 4: We've ditched this anyhow. Why are we still talking about it?
OK, maybe "NFC ubiquity" is crazy hard, but so, apparently, is customer service.
I'm not sure I would've worded it this way. There is a lot of negative connotation is those two sentences, and some of it is in reference to the character of the company founders.
Good luck, and I hope you have less customers inserting their batteries wrong in the future.
charging for subsequent postage for the (hopefully) <1% of people who have a problem and who need your love and attention is a really bad idea.
because - even ignoring the terrible PR from forcing someone to spend cash because of your product issues - you lose the best friend you have: a backer with a problem who's WILLING AND HAPPY to actually work through this problem with you and help you fix it.
I feel Kickstarter backers of hardware projects should have a certain sense of tolerance. If they are expecting "commercial grade" products they should stick to buying retail as we're angling to test a concept and knock out the kinks with early backers.
Also, software people developing hardware seem not to have realised that it's much harder to fix problems after shipping, which sadly makes good quality small run hardware very rare.
