[potatolicious]

And here lies my greatest frustration with hardware Kickstarters.

Despite Kickstarter's protestations, hardware kickstarters have been de facto preorders. The expectations here are vastly different than "I've never done this before, help me do this".

Kickstarter introduced the "risks and challenges" section after some particularly infamous failures. This section is still routinely glossed over, and project owners continue to project authority and confidence, even if in reality the "I have no idea what I'm doing" meme dog is more appropriate.

I do not back hardware kickstarters as a rule. I backed Pebble because I knew the founder, and knew that he has a track record delivering hardware - and for the most part this has held true. Hardware Kickstarters that are later or failing to deliver anything resembling the original pitch are depressingly common.

Pebble can't be fairly singled out here, this is a huge problem with crowdfunding hardware projects in general.

> "And, as you mentioned, they've been surprisingly open about all their problems throughout the process."

The bulk of the process complaints here have been from color backers (I was one, until I switched to black), and that's telling. The Pebble team was extremely on top of the ball prior to the black watches shipping out. Lots of detailed updates about where they are and what the expected schedule is.

Personally I was completely nonplussed by the various delays because of how transparent they were.

Then the black watches shipped out and the color backers were forgotten. There was a vague "after the black watches", and a lot of silence. There was more silence until the color backers suddenly found out that color Pebbles were in trouble and there was an option to switch.

A lot of color backers - and from this thread I'm obviously not the only one - were left in the lurch. There was no timeline for anything except "late" - and in the mean time there were big announcements about the SDK, RunKeeper, and other software stack progress, with nothing for other backers.

I have zero doubt that Pebble is working as hard as they can to fulfill the rest of their orders, but looking in from the outside, it's hard for color backers to feel anything but forgotten. The frustration at the Best Buy news I don't think comes from some entitled "I should get it before everyone else" mentality, but rather annoyance at every piece of news from the company, for months on end, not address their chief concern ("where is my watch").

If the updates on color manufacturing was even half as frequent and detailed as the pre-launch updates, this whole thing would be a non-issue, even if color backers still don't have their watches.

[wvenable]

It seems like their biggest failure was offering multiple colors. It seems like for a kickstarter they should be working on the minimum viable product. In this case, that should be just a black version.

[Amadou]

I wish they had used an interchangeable faceplate system. Then I could remove the black face and paint it any color I wanted.

[jasonlotito]

> Despite Kickstarter's protestations, hardware kickstarters have been de facto preorders.

I hear this all the time, but from day one on KickStarter, it's made it clear what it was about (and this was before the Pebble KS). So, I keep hearing this, but I can't find any sympathy for the backers that complain about it.

> This section is still routinely glossed over,

I imagine most of it is glossed over by the backers. =)

[potatolicious]

> "I imagine most of it is glossed over by the backers. =)"

I disagree heavily. There's never any honesty in this section - the thought that maybe, just maybe, this project can't be delivered at all, is never brought up.

This section is the Kickstarter equivalent of "what's your greatest weakness", where project owners do their best to downplay actual risks or not mention them at all. It's the place where you admit to your most softball, most mitigable risk and leave everything else behind the curtain.

If there were any honesty in this section at all, "none of us have manufactured anything before" would be top, in bold, in many of them.

> "but from day one on KickStarter, it's made it clear what it was about"

Who's making it clear though? It's obvious that Kickstarter themselves would rather be a funding machine than a preorder machine - but look at hardware kickstarters. Project owners routinely position their campaigns as presales or preorders, not simple crowdfunding.

The difference is more stark if you look at arts category kickstarters, where the reward tiers, as well as the language used, is much more obviously "support us and get a gift in return". Hardware kickstarters are, almost without fail, "come buy this thing".

In the hardware category at least, project owners have an opposing conflict of interest with Kickstarter.

[jasonlotito]

> the thought that maybe, just maybe, this project can't be delivered at all, is never brought up.

That's the inherent nature of KS. Does it really need to be brought up time and time again?

> Who's making it clear though?

KickStarter. The wording they use (pledges), funding, and even the warning on their payment page. Even on the main project pages, even the rewards aren't a promise. Hell, even the date isn't a promise.

So, what more can they do?

Hell, even you assert that the backers read through everything!

> I disagree heavily.

If this were the case, then people wouldn't be confused about what KickStarter is.

Sorry, but every time I see a complain like this come out, it's always based on fantasies and delusions. Not reality.

[mongol]

They have not been particularily open at all