Over a year ago, I supported an Indiegogo campaign. It was an ultra-light, portable tripod.
I have yet to get it.
The initial send date was sometime in April of 2018. They updated people at that time to let them know that there was a problem in the manufacturing and that there would be a delay by a month or so. Annoying, but understandable, they’ve never done this before and are just learning. A month went by, people are commenting constantly wondering what’s happening. No response.
Finally, a month and a half later they post an update, mostly full of excuses and blaming the factory for problems. “Tripod not ready, next month we’ll for sure have it out.” This continues month after month. Every month, they would have a new goal date, and then that goal date would pass and they would set a new one. I can’t tell you how many “holiday’s” the Chinese people must have for the rate at which this company blames them for taking off of work. They also conveniently pulled the “family emergency” card.
Disclaimer: it may have been completely legit, but they were very vague about it and I hate the family emergency excuse because it is a convenient “get out of jail free” card. No one dares question you if you claim a family emergency because you might have actually had one, but no one believes you. It’s just a stupid excuse. You don’t have to be that specific to give people the information they need to understand and believe you.
There are constantly people commenting in the comments board asking question and wondering next steps. Here’s a sample:
People ask questions and then the company posts these big updates every couple of months that, first of all, don’t apologize at all for their huge delay, but instead tell backers to “be patient.”
This has killed my trust in them and their credibility to ever support them in the future. If they had been posting updates every week of “here’s the work we’re putting in right now to hopefully help speed our process up as much as possible” I would be way more understanding. Of course, I would still be frustrated, but knowing that they were doing everything they could, I would have a little peace of mind. However, with less than 10 updates in the past year, it’s hard to actually believe that they are making this project a priority.
This project gained over half a million dollars, and now it’s been over a year since the expected delivery date. Not getting the product that I was hoping for is obviously annoying, but the absolute biggest annoyance is the lack of communication and lack of listening on the part of the company. No matter how many people comment, ask questions, etc, they don’t respond. It is a helpless feeling.
If they even put out short blog posts, one every week, explaining what they did that week to add toward their goal, that would be huge. They wouldn’t have all these angry people commenting up their walls because they’d be meeting them privately from their inboxes, answering questions before they’re asked.
Good communication goes a long way, and bad communication goes a long way too, but in the wrong direction. Wherever you are in your company, make good communication one of your top priorities and you’ll be amazed where you and go!