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Comment by dingo_bat | Hacker News Reader

The troubling thing is people ordered the headphones on the website too, not just on kickstarter. I'm sure taking an order on your website and not sending anything is some kind of fraud. It's not like kickstarter where you are funding the company and the company promises to make it up to you.

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That's really the thing to read into here. Too many people will blow this off and say "yep dumb kickstarters" but bottom line, they took people's money for purchases and didn't deliver on them. These purchasers should all be covered via chargebacks on their credit cards though.

Credit card charge backs are generally only possible within six months of the purchase date.

Maybe different in the UK but my card issuer has returned funds from up to 2 years ago when I was being unnecessarily charged for something.

Also, those that ordered with debit cards are more or less out of luck depending on their bank. Some will do an investigation for you and credit you the purchase amount while they do it; others aren't so lucky.

A merchant only allowed to settle transactions within I believe 24 hours of fulfillment (for physical products this means shipment) - prior to that it's an authorization only, which basically reserves the money on the card ("pending transaction") but doesn't show up on the customer's statement. Unless they violated this rule, no one direct ordering from their website should have actually been charged.

Kickstarter is entirely different, because you are purchasing a "promise" and not a shipping product, so technically the order is fulfilled once the campaign closes successfully.

Yes, and if it's fraud then it's also malpractice by the directors and the company structure doesn't protect the them from being sued personally for the missing funds. Someone should really start an action against the directors.

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