It doesn’t.

You can rip someone off with the best of intentions, merely by negligently ignoring seven months’ worth of “Where is my money, which you are keeping under false pretenses?” calls and emails.

Which, by your account, is exactly what you did.

The fact that you held Mary’s money for half a year until she embarrassed you in public doesn’t mean that you didn’t “rip her off.” It meant that you ripped her off by failing to exercise your lawful and moral duty of care to your customers and users, rather than by setting out to deceive her. And then, once you’d been embarrassed in public, you made good on that duty.

I can’t imagine why you think it reflects well on you that you formed the intent to finally exercise your lawful and ethical duty once she embarrassed you on her moderately trafficked blog, and why you want it known that a moderate embarrassment is all that is required to spur you to action, rather than a large one.

The fact that someone from the NYT wrote to you is interesting, but not germane. This isn’t the Times (and frankly, given that you’d spent the past seven months *not answering email* suggested that it would be a waste of time).

I have been kind enough to do that because I’m happy to let you speak for yourself. For instance, the “bomb” I dropped on the internet is to post an account of what I experienced.

I would kindly ask that you not put things in quotes and attribute them to me unless they are my actual words. My actual email to johnpratt@fundable.com and contact@fundable.com was:

“Dear Mr. Pratt,

“I thought you would like to see my blog post. I waited for months before posting it, but since I still have not heard from anyone at Fundable, I thought the time was past to do it.”

Please do not mistake the fact that I have been restrained with thinking that I am not inclined to anger.

You were personally going to take care of this issue? Really? And when would that have been? If you couldn’t have taken care of it in January, then how about February? Or March? April? May? June? July? We’re to believe you would have taken care of it in August, had not you and your company been properly embarrassed online about your lack of responsiveness for several months, in which Ms. Kowal repeatedly attempted to resolve the situation, privately?

The facts of the matter and previous behavior of the company in dealing with her suggest rather strongly that had you not felt the need to counter a wave of embarrassing publicity regarding your company, Ms. Kowal would still be waiting to have her situation resolved.

Mr. Pratt, just how long should one be required to wait for a company to address a basic customer relations snafu before one may reasonably suggest one is getting ripped off? May I suggest to you that this amount of time is considerably less than half a year?

If you don’t want to be accused of ripping people off, don’t act in a manner that suggests that, in fact, that is exactly what you are doing.

How about openly answering some of the questions that have been posed here?

Also, #2, I should admit that we did pay off the credit card debt from buying a computer with the signing check for my first novel. My Hugo-nomination was for a short story. Thank you for your indignation on my behalf, though. I wish I could make a living writing short fiction.

I admit this.

However, I because did not write the payment backend that caused these glitches and I could not get my business partner to fix them, I have taken moves to close Fundable against his wishes, even though the site was making money.

Frankly, the content on the site was disgusting to me. I don’t want to run a site helping people fund surgeries for their nearly-dead pets when there are plenty of people suffering from hideous diseases who are more conscious of their pain than animals.

This Boing Boing article was thankfully the moment I saw clearly that my business partner is a sloppy programmer who has no drive for excellence.

I make plenty of business mistakes but I try to own up to them, even if it is embarrassing in public.

I always loved the idea of fundable, but I was saddened that the idea (which was brilliant) didn’t catch on. People seemed to have trouble with the concept, and instead of using it for collective purchases, which was the intention, they just used it for begging. It’s telling that the FAQ had a question for “I didn’t reach my goal, give me the collected money anyway!” All those pet surgery fundraisers, they saddened me, too. And whoever wrote on the fundable blog seemed perfectly content about their site being used 99% for begging – that was another disappointment. I wondered how many of those auctions were scams :-(

His explanation also sounds plausible. He is certainly not the first idealistic net merchant who has been put into deep trouble by credit card scammers, as we Magnatune buyers should know. If the scammers all acted like aggrieved legitimate customers when their deals got stopped (and why wouldn’t they?), it’s sad, but not surprising that Mary’s mails got lost in the storm. This is not just an excuse: Pratt is right that fundable has been going on for many years, on word of mouth alone, with virtually no negative feedback before recently. Mary herself confirms this on her blog; she did her due dilligence and googled for previous bad experiences with fundable, finding none.

The technical side I can also believe, although blaming the developer might be overly harsh (why was there only one of them, for one thing?) although Fundable was never very sophisticated technically.

In a way, it’s some comfort that the originator of fundable turned out to share my disappointment at what it had become. That fundable.org stops is nonetheless a tragedy. In between all the vet bill begging, it has been used to fund things like open RPG supplements, precisely the way it needs to be done in a world without draconian copyright enforcement regimes.

I hope you will make another attempt some day, Mr. Pratt.

I’d like to pick a nit with the commenters on Mary’s blog, though, who say (in effect) “He made a mistake to screw with someone of her stature.” No, treating any of his customers (regardless of stature) in this fashion is not only a mistake, it’s probably criminal.

What can I say? You have refused to include my last comment in the body of your post.

Anyone who stumbles across this post now or in the distant future may e-mail me about what happened at johnpratt@fundable.com and I will openly answer any questions.

best,

John Pratt
Fundable.com

Without any investigation, Cory slaps a headline in front of millions(?) of viewers that accuses us of “ripping off” a customer.

In reality, our site relies almost entirely on word-of-mouth. If we regularly or intentionally ripped customers off, our site would not survive.

I won’t go into too much financial detail, but we could not operate Fundable if we weren’t motivated by the interesting projects that take place. That is for sure.

I am working with Mary personally to make sure that all of her contributions are refunded.

Quoth Mr. Pratt:

“Without any investigation, Cory slaps a headline in front of millions(?) of viewers that accuses us of “ripping off” a customer.”

Hear, hear.

Yes, you are working with her NOW, several months after she initially sent in queries and complaints regarding her interaction with your company and with you, and after she publicly aired her complaints, and those complaints have begun to be linked to online.

Mr. Pratt, if you give every indication of moving to address a fairly egregious customer service issue only as the result of bad publicity, then the suggestion that you were ripping off a customer is not entirely out of line or undeserved.

As to you being distressed regarding this post, well, good. Maybe the next time your site falls down on the job of performing as it advertises, it won’t take a series of posts “distressing” to you to motivate you to do the right thing by one of your customers.

It’s been seven months. Apparently, you’re not working hard enough.

Googling ‘fundable scam’ suggests that your word of mouth isn’t as great as you make it out to be. There are multiple complaints from people who didn’t get their money or a proper response. And you have a Better Business Bureau rating of F.

@3
Have you though of high-pressure used-car-salesman-like tv and radio ads to sell your work ?

I’ll preface this same post I made on the blog by saying I haven’t reached my goal yet, so getting the money is as yet an unknown. I don’t see much in the way of problems though.

“I’ve had a bit of luck with smartypig.com They have a rather cool site that allows you to set multiple goals, add monthly contributions and have your friend and family add funds as well. Also when a goal is complete you can get a gift card with an added “boost” up to about 3.75% of your money saved. They also pay you interest on your money like a savings account.

It’s not all roses though, in the 3 months I’ve joined the interest rate dropped from 3.05% to 2.75% to 2.01% They have a contest once a month to give out three $100 gift cards, this week they gave out three a day M-F to make up for the shit-storm from lowered interest rates.

All in all it’s a pretty good site, perhaps keep it in mind for the future. They don’t pay me or anything, but it sounds like more of what you wanted.”

-mikesum32

You’ve got lots of phosphors here to explain how keeping $1400 for 7 months and not replying to multiple queries by phone and email isn’t “ripping off” Mary.

Can you explain it? I’d be happy to publish a blazing retraction if it turns out that Mary made the whole thing up.

But I’ve known Mary for years. She is unimpeachable, honorable and smart. I am so sure that she didn’t make this whole thing up that I will personally mail you a testicle* if it turns out that this is the case.

*Not one of mine

I wish you the best of luck, but you’ll need an attitude adjustment before any karma steps in to help you out.

http://www.kickstarter.com
via Amazon Web Payments, money goes directly to you, but only if 100% is reached. For public projects and artists.

http://www.kapipal.com
via Paypal, money goes directly and instantly to you, even if 100% is not reached. For personal/private collections, and for public projects.

*Not one of mine

Just as my faith in you was renewed you falter. Maybe a good thing though because, as an incentive for Mr. Pratt, it might not have been the better choice, especially if not mailed ‘Express’, no ice…