From PC World: Crowdfunding is usually understood as a “spend your money, take your chances” proposal. But more and more reputable companies are using it as a platform to launch regular products, making the crowdfunding campaign more of a PR move than an actual necessity for raising funds. Indiegogo, no stranger to these campaigns, is offering a more solid guarantee to backers that they’ll have a refund option.
Indiegogo’s Shipping Guarantee Program is a higher standard than your garden variety crowdfunding campaign, and it won’t be available to everyone. In order to qualify you have to “have a proven track record of successful crowdfunding on Indiegogo” and your product must be “in the final manufacturing stages.” So yeah, this is designed for companies that are using Indiegogo as a promotional tool, not as a means of getting necessary funds for making a device.
You might say these standards are probably out of the reach of anyone who considers themselves an “indie.” The Lofree Edge in the header image is from a reputable company, it did ship to backers, and you can buy it outside of Indiegogo right now.
But those campaigns that apply and qualify will get the Shipping Guarantee badge to place on their Indiegogo pages. That’ll tell backers that they can get a full refund of their pledge money if the product doesn’t ship on time. The UI for campaigns that are accepted into the program tells backers right on the page, “Ships by [date] or your money back.”
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