Requests for Refunds to Contributions made at Indiegogo.com .

A personal note from Amy & Seymour Segnit

Please read this page in full.

Indiegogo.com is a site where people like us (Seymour and Amy, who invented thingCHARGER in our basement) bring ideas to the public and ask for help bringing them to market.

Indiegogo is not an e-commerce site where an order is placed for a product. It is a site dedicated entirely to voluntary contributions.

You contributed to our campaign with a promise from us that when the product is made we will send you one or more thingCHARGERs (depending on your contribution level) as a thank-you for your gracious support.

This contribution model is incredibly important to the whole idea of crowdfunding and the success of campaigns like ours. The idea of refunds is so foreign that Indiegogo doesn’t even provide us a way of reversing transactions.

During the process of contributing there were repeated alerts that a contribution was being made, not a purchase or pre-order:

First, to get started you clicked on a ‘Contribute Now’ button:

Next you were asked to enter how much you would like to contribute and whether or not you would like a thank-you gift or ‘perk’ in due course:

Indiegogo then included a specific warning that you were not making a purchase but making a contribution, and agreeing to Indiegogo’s terms of use, which include no refunds:

As you can see, every effort was made to communicate clearly what was going on.

Why a refund wouldn’t be fair to others

A campaign like this is built on the support of its contributors. In order to successfully fulfill its promises, we have to manage the contributions made to maximize the chance of success. There’s inherent risk for everyone and if individuals were to pull money out after making the commitment it increases the risk to others that the project won’t work out, or will be delayed.

In summary

To launch this project we deliberately requested contributions, rather than offering pre-orders or orders, because that was the right way to get this project off the ground and is the hallmark of the “crowdfunding” model which Indiegogo supports and promoted . Please trust that we are working incredibly hard to deliver on our promise to you – and please honor the original contribution you made.

We promise, you’re going to love your thingCHARGER(s).

Amy & Seymour Segnit
Co-Founders & Inventors.