over 7 years ago from Mark Jenkins, Designer
14 emails deep and I'm no further towards getting a refund. I can't be sure if I am speaking to a person or a bot. They just keep begging for me to stay.
Has anyone managed to get a refund yet?
If it's too good to be true, it probably is.
^ This.
If only you could upvote comments.
^ This.
For what it's worth, I was recruited by the people behind The Grid and it is very real. The technology behind it is great, and it is applied in fantastic and intelligent ways, but that says nothing about why they haven't released yet. It has been far too long, obviously, and there is no excuse for the way it was handled.
I ended up signing an offer at Dollar Shave Club instead.
In case you haven't realized yet, "The Grid" is just a scam. I could have bought sketch or a prototyping tool with that money. Shame on them...
eh, calling it a scam is a bit harsh. they seemingly had the best intentions, but over-promised and under-delivered.
Outside of tech bubble land, when somebody takes money from customers and then doesn't deliver on their promises, most would call it fraud.
We're not talking about VC's who put money into this company with the hopes that one day it might deliver. We're talking about the normal people like you and I just paying upfront for a service we were promised. Customers do not assume the same burden of risk as investors. It's why we have laws against deceptive advertising practices.
Whether or not the founders had "good intentions" (delusions of actually making their fantasy a reality) is irrelevant. The end result is the same. Customers were lied to.
no? crowdfunding is an investment, not a pre-order.
Crowdfunding is NOT an investment. It's basically gifting a company money.
Their AI algorithm on how don't refund people is learning very quickly.
I'm sure they spent more time on that feature than any other.
Have you threatened to issue a chargeback? That may be a trigger word that will get them to pay attention.
Chargebacks from customers can be very problematic for companies that accept credit cards. If it happens often enough it becomes more expensive to accept credit cards.
If that still doesn't get their attention contact your credit card issuer and explain the situation and see if they actually can issue a chargeback. Since you've made a genuine and extensive attempt at obtaining a refund for a product that is not being delivered it is perfectly reasonable for you to do this.
I didn't threaten anything as such, made requests, it just got ridiculous. They responded on Twitter earlier, so will wait and see.
If not, will call the card issuer and get them to do the chargeback for me – good shout!
I received one a few months ago after my first attempt. I was pretty forceful in my email by being clear that they had not fulfilled their end, as the product was well over a year behind the initial promised release date, and still not even a beta test invite on the horizon for me. I think I was one of the first 5000 founding members. I basically said that I had lost all interest in using The Grid even if access was suddenly granted.
Anyways Mark, I got the initial idea of how to form my cancellation email from this thread.
Hope it works out for you bud!
Thanks Mike. I did go the same route too, pretty forceful and just kept reiterating I wasn't interested in what was going to 'come' or what I could be doing.
I've emailed again to get confirmation. It's one thing to take all the money, then not deliver all that well. At least, could have given reasoning (which I know the founder did in some way in a post).
However, making it so difficult to get a refund seems totally off. It should be easy, just do it.
Hey Mark, I originally initiated the thread Mike is referring to after they initially refused my refund - in the end, I got my money back.
However, this was before anybody would get their hands on The Grid, since you have been using it already, it mighy be more difficult now.
Best of luck!
I could see where the Grid was headed and asked for a refund about 6 months after it was supposed to launch--spring of last year, I think? Anway, when I asked, the guy that's running it asked if I'd stay on if he'd promise to bump me up in the beta queue, which just made me laugh. These guys got in over their heads, and then became a study in escalation of commitment. I don't think it was meant to be a scam, but these guys didn't know what they were doing at all, as far as launching a product and running a business and managing projects, and it spun out of control, which they wouldn't admit. But they didn't put up too much of a fight when I asked for a refund.
HAHAHAHA. Wow, what a bust The Grid ended up being.
What's interesting to me is how the founder was here pimping it and respected people like Petty were pumping it up. It makes me wonder... did they move too slow to really compete with more "dumb" solutions like Squarespace? Did they get in their own way and constantly second guess themselves to the point where nothing released?
In the end, the user of these things buys into a look. This is an area where Squarespace excels. They (user) don't care if it's AI driven or not... they just like the end result.
My problem is that if you watch their marketing video- their "pump up reel" -then use the product they launched, you wonder what the hell they were thinking. And it was a year late? I am disappointed.
Side note in Squarespace. I have recommended a few friends to use it and each one abandoned it for WIX because it was too complicated for them. I couldn't believe it.
Actually that doesn't surprise me. Squarespace, while easy to use, gets INCREDIBLY painful if you want to deviate one tiny bit off of a template.
For example, I was working on a site in it and there are are no h-tags past h3. So, to add in one more font size, you've got to write this crazy css injection code an then place additional stuff in each page header.
Of course, you could go into full-on developer mode and get to all the code, but they scare you hardcore by saying that once you do it, you can't go back. The average user is not gonna do that.
Followup to this, i just got an email saying that my refund would be processed in the next 5 days. requested the day this post went up, confirmed i would be cancelled/refunded a couple of days later.
I got a refund in the end, but only because I hounded them again and again – don't think they would have given to me if I hadn't kept that up
Isn't this what crowdfunding is? You're not paying for a product. You're paying to try and help a product/business get going. If the product fails or doesn't even get going, that's just the nature of investment.
HOWEVER... I do agree that you should have at least seen something from them, an update on how it's going, a business plan etc.
Also, I had never heard of the grid before this discussion. So just going on what I have learnt about it in the past 5 mins.
Just take it as a lesson for future investments.
Not sure what your billable is, but I assume you're probably spending more time than the refund is even worth. And if it's for the principle and/or justice: they already know they fucked up, and they already know people think they're shit.. (whether or not they actually are. I'm not advocating any position)
I bet this is a case of VC's trying to push the product to market too early. If it's taking this long to develop, clearly the team new that they shouldn't have done such a strong marketing push so early on.
The product is probably great. But by setting expectations, they've just managed to piss of all their potential customer base.
All told, this is simply a lesson in shipping. Your great idea means nothing if no one is using it; and in using it, your idea becomes greater than it ever could be on its own. Get your stuff out there, folks.
Or, don't have a marketing push for something that isn't ready to ship.
Login to Comment
You'll need to log in before you can leave a comment.
LoginRegister Today
New accounts can leave comments immediately, and gain full permissions after one week.
Register now