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$13 million Kickstarter project for a cooler continues to be a disaster

$13 million Kickstarter project for a cooler continues to be a disaster

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But threats aren't the answer

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The biggest disaster on Kickstarter keeps getting getting bigger. Coolest, the company that pulled in $13 million in funding to build a cooler, and then repeatedly delayed shipping the product to its backers while simultaneously putting it up for sale on Amazon, has fucked up once again. According to an update sent to its Kickstarter backers that was spotted by Motherboard, Coolest is offering backers who haven't received the cooler yet (around 66 percent of them) the option of paying an extra $97 for "expedited shipping" for a product they already paid for.

Coolest says the idea came from its backers, and it would need enough of them to buy into paying more money for a product they were already promised. The company is touting the the extra fee as a benefit, as the total price still comes in below the retail price for the Cooler. It does this by conveniently failing to recall that during its campaign, Coolest told users they "will be saving at least $135 off of the retail price" when they backed the product, before raising the price after the fact.

"In a perfect world you’d already have your Coolest."

Coolest says it guarantees it can deliver the Cooler by July 4th, but to date, its guarantees have been pretty worthless. The company has seemingly blown through its cash and is looking for an extra $15 million in funding, a third of which would be used to produce and deliver the orders currently placed.

In a sad turn of events, Coolest creator Ryan Grepper and his team have been doxxed and received death threats, according to Motherboard. It's unquestionable that the launch of Coolest has largely been a disaster, but no one should be getting threatened or doxxed over a cooler. It's a fucking cooler.

Backers who choose not to fork over the extra cash will still receive their orders, but the company says there's no timetable for when the Coolers will be shipped out. In closing, Grepper wrote, "In a perfect world we wouldn’t rely on new sales to help fund the delivery of backer rewards, but in a perfect world you’d already have your Coolest."