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This isn't even remotely true - Kickstarter protection for the buyer is almost non-existent which means if the project fails, the company keeps the money and the backers get nothing. There may some cases where it's been an outright fraud and Kickstarter have refunded but that's the exception rather than the rule, there have been large and small scale projects that have failed to deliver any product and buyers have been out of pocket with one of the biggest ones being the Zano drone:
Probe into Zano drone scandal released
This project failed the Kickstarter rules from the start as there was no functioning prototype (CG was used with a mock up) and there was scepticism from several sites that the drone was anywhere near capable of the claims being made. Despite that and the large sums it raised, no-one at Kickstarter stepped in, they pocketed their cut Zano kept theirs and all buyers were out of pocket. Even if the product had been shipped it would have been near useless and inferior to retail drones in that price range.
Then on the small scale, you have the likes of Console OS - the author of the project was offering to polish up open source Android projects on Intel X86 hardware and raised $80,000. Then due to having no technical ability and no staff, failed to deliver anything at all yet he could still mark the project as complete and Kickstarter themselves refunded no-one:
Console OS: Dual-Boot Android, Remastered for The PC
Some of the vocal backers were refunded to stop them posting on Kickstarter but it also highlights the lack of any consumer protection.
It's very wrong to claim the protection exceeds a credit card as it's far weaker and many don't realise going into it that if the project fails for whatever reason, they likely won't get their money back. If you use a standard pre-order for an item bought conventionally and you use your credit card, you have very strong protection as you have legal rights whereas with Kickstarter you don't even when using a credit card due to the way Kickstarter handle payments.
This isn't a criticism of crowdfunding, it's just to be clear about the risks taken when backing. |
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