Well this sent me off to research this.
I did find other examples of this sort of thing, with a project delayed and the project creator unilaterally giving a full refund to customers who were complaining. The examples i found involved customers complaining in forums other than the Kickstarter Comments area. These projects were for gaming, a large part of Kickstarter pledges, and the complaints were in forums specifically for those games, where other customers could read the responses, which is not like your situation.
As for Kickstarter rules about this, they permit it.
This is from Section 5 of their Terms of Use Agreement:
These are the terms that apply when you’re creating a project:
- You can refund individual pledges if you want. After your project has been funded, you can cancel and refund a backer’s pledge at any time. If you do, you have no further obligation to that specific backer, and no agreement exists between you.
There are no conditions set on this, it seems like Kickstarter permits the refunding for any reason. The project creator does not get to claim back the portion of money that Kickstarter takes to make their money. (That is after the 14 day settling out period, after the pledge period closes.)
So a creator could refund the money, of someone, who just wants their money back, let’s say they were sick and lost their job. Or it could be any other reason. Like the creator, would be losing money if they fulfill the pledge, and refunds are cheaper.
I also found elsewhere that Kickstarter will close a backer out of further project communications once their money is refunded in full.
You should also read Section 4 which details the responsibilities a creator has to the backer to successfully complete a project, and what must be done in the event of a failure. There are two areas that seem to me to pertain to a creator who chooses to refund a customer as they have in your case.
Specifically:
-
they work diligently and in good faith to bring the project to the best possible conclusion in a timeframe that’s communicated to backers;
-
they’ve been honest, and have made no material misrepresentations in their communication to backers;
You need to decide how you go forward with this.
If it was me, i’d take the money and run.
ADDED: The word unilaterally.