Cam, thanks for taking the time to try our product and give us your feedback. I hope you followed the instructions detailed in the Flojack page on how to setup the device. We’ve had some customers insert the battery the wrong way and trigger similar issues you’ve described. See, placing the battery in reverse can short the battery itself quickly discharging it. Then after correcting the mistake, the battery is discharged. Something to consider.

If in fact your FloJack is defective, then you have a right to return it for another. Because of the postage expense of shipping products internationally, you can understand we can’t shoulder these costs if we want to survive. We are a startup innovating at the bleeding edge and your support is a part of that. We cherish every dollar we get from our community and it would not be right to spend it on postage. Once we have sustainable revenue to work with, we can provide a better customer service experience.

Crowdfunding is a key part of our business and we are trying to manage it as best we can. The reality is that the complexity of the products we make are above and beyond what our backers are willing to pay for them. So we’ve had to make sacrifices on quality and polish that many people take for granted. Otherwise, the economics just don’t work. To change this we have to either grow the market or simplify the product.

Since growing the market is a bit out of our hands, we chose to simplify the product. As you recall from the FloJack Reimagined post, this was a very hard decision to make and one that will ultimately cost us a lot more than we have. But as you have gambled on us, we are willing to gamble on everything we’ve worked so hard to achieve to get us to the goal. The goal of NFC ubiquity. It’s the right decision and we know it better than anyone.

Richard and the Flomies.

@Eric, that’s a fair point. The development of the FloJack has spanned several years now and costed many multiples more than what we attempted to raise on Kickstarter. This made setting our fundraising goal pretty hard. If we overestimate, we price things out of the range of what the market will bear and get no backers. If we underestimate, we get pissed off customers who expect “commercial grade” products.

What motivates us is not the money we raised, but the potential of NFC ubiquity. Kickstarter has done a good job of giving us an audience to speak to. An audience to educate on this vision. Without this connection it’s likely R&D projects like ours would take much longer to reach the market, even though their impact on the world is a good one.