Sunday, December 30, 2012

Attention all RPG Kickstarter Publishers

If you are going to chage for shipping make it CLEAR in your Pledge Description in addition to the front page verbiage. Also mention it frequently and abundantly in your update emails about estimated delivery.

Better yet just factor it into the pledge levels and if you think the freebies from the stretch goals is going to blow your shipping budget then learn to factor that in as well.

Nothing more will sour a kickstarter then having to make a second payment to get the items you been patiently and generously, waiting for.

And I am not naming names as the company in question has done outstanding work in all other aspects.

Note that the shipping payment is NOT automatic. In my case it was an email requesting that I pay via PayPal. So if you have an issue you will have some time to respond rather than seeing money out of your account.


Paul said...

the company in question has done outstanding work in all other aspects

Well, I went in for the one book, based on a promise in the Kickstarter pitch of a cover by a certain artist. They decided to use an artist of lesser quality instead.

So, not outstanding in all other aspects as far as I'm concerned.

Rushputin said...

The separate shipping charge shouldn't have been a surprise: I certainly knew it was coming.

I'm not thrilled about it, mind you, because yeah: they really should have just rolled it into the pledge levels, etc, but they really did try to make it clear that they'd be charging for shipping separately.

Joseph Bloch said...

Not sure which KS you're specifically addressing here, but one nice thing that Kickstarter now does is allows you to put in automatic upcharges for overseas rewards.

So in my case, I factored the shipping into the pledge levels, and added something to cushion the foreign shipping costs, if applicable. It's quite handy-- wish they had had that feature when I did my first one!

Anonymous said...

It happened to me with a popular old school Kickstarter, where $5 for international postage morphed into a plea after the fact for a "donation" to cover the badly underestimated postal costs - like around $45 extra underestimated. While it was made clear that it wasn't compulsory, it was a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Don't pay the extra and you'd feel like an arsehole. Do pay the extra and you feel like you were taken for a ride (especially given that you made the pledge based on the original price including postage). The newly calculated total costs basically doubled the price of the original Kickstarter.

As far as I see it, the moral of the story here is for the publisher, not the customer. Do your bloody homework properly before you launch your crowdfunding project, otherwise you run the risk of pissing off your customers and may even turn them off purchasing any future product from you again. Better to overestimate the costs and chuck in a bonus afterward than hike up the costs or send out a begging letter once the Kickstarter has ended.

Steven Dolges said...

I also pledged the same KS project you were referencing and knew the shipping invoice was coming since day one. Not sure how I knew that but this came as no surprise...