Back in 2014, the Coolest, a cooler with built-in speakers and a blender, crushed the record for the most-funded Kickstarter project along with lots of ice for frozen margaritas. The problem, though, was that the cooler’s creator charged early backers $165 for something that would eventually retail for $400, and running out of cash made some production snags even worse. Now they have a new proposal for backers: pay an extra $97 to jump the line and get their coolers next.
Backers who were hoping for an awesome daiquiri party this summer are disappointed, and the update to backers with the $97 proposal has only riled them up more.
“Who is to blame?” one disappointed backer wrote to Consumerist even before the $97 proposal hit her mailbox. “Us dummies for sending money when the project looked huge? Or this guy for not cutting off the funding at a reasonable volume?”
As the number of backers grew, the creator of the Coolest kept adding features to the product: let that serve as a cautionary tale to aspiring crowdfunders: promising features once the total reaches certain amounts isn’t going to make your backers any happier two years later.
The controversial coolers available through Amazon are in Amazon’s warehouse, not sitting around Coolest HQ waiting to taunt backers. At least the price has fallen to only $400 from the initial $500, though.
The Coolest remains the second-biggest Kickstarter project ever funded, with the #1 and #3 spots taken by different generations of the Pebble smartwatch. While backers complained that the company shipped units off to Best Buy instead of shipping to them first, they did all get watches eventually.
Let’s remember: Kickstarter is still not a store, even if a majority of backers of the Coolest are first-time Kickstarter users, who may have thought that coverage of the product on mainstream media meant that it was legitimate.
Backer Comments [Kickstarter]
Kickstarter’s Biggest Shitshow Somehow Got Even Messier [Motherboard]
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
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