05-22-2016, 12:54 PM
Hey bud - you're obviously upset, and that's valid. PINE is a kickstarter tho, not a retail outlet (or at least not yet). Hard deadlines just don't happen when a whole manufacturer business is being spun up from scratch. PINE's been working pretty hard to push out orders, and they've obviously making more than a token effort and have kept up as best they can with far more to deliver than they imagined they would be. They're making good on it, and it's happening, but bringing expectations of a polished direct from the manufacturer sales model to a just funded kickstarter is bound to disappoint.
I've funded six kickstarters myself, and exactly none of them shipped product by their expected date (and one never made good at all, dammit). Frankly, I'm in awe at how much PINE has managed to get done starting from nothing to fulfil such a huge number of orders, and that they are indeed on track to deliver exactly the goods they promised (tho obviously not on the promised timeline). Those folks have MAD skillz!!! I'm pretty sure most other kickstarters would have busted under the pressure and failed. IMO PINE is doing an amazing job getting everything together and getting product into the hands of backers.
On a more practical note, your bank is not going to do a chargeback. Kickstarter's policies are pretty clear, and when you pay your money what you're doing isn't buying a product - it's investing in an idea. Basically Kickstarters are crowd sourced venture capitalism; think of it like buying stock in a company, and the product is the dividend. If you bought a stock and for whatever reason you weren't happy with the company's performance or the value of the stock later on, your bank wouldn't do a chargeback on that basis either. Same difference here.
I've funded six kickstarters myself, and exactly none of them shipped product by their expected date (and one never made good at all, dammit). Frankly, I'm in awe at how much PINE has managed to get done starting from nothing to fulfil such a huge number of orders, and that they are indeed on track to deliver exactly the goods they promised (tho obviously not on the promised timeline). Those folks have MAD skillz!!! I'm pretty sure most other kickstarters would have busted under the pressure and failed. IMO PINE is doing an amazing job getting everything together and getting product into the hands of backers.
On a more practical note, your bank is not going to do a chargeback. Kickstarter's policies are pretty clear, and when you pay your money what you're doing isn't buying a product - it's investing in an idea. Basically Kickstarters are crowd sourced venture capitalism; think of it like buying stock in a company, and the product is the dividend. If you bought a stock and for whatever reason you weren't happy with the company's performance or the value of the stock later on, your bank wouldn't do a chargeback on that basis either. Same difference here.
