Kairos, at one point one of the most promising smartwatch companies in the wearable tech industry, ended up being a terrible nightmare for early buyers. Kairos has yet to show its face more than one year after its debut, leaving said buyers without the smartwatches the company promised to deliver by December 2014. Are you one of those buyers?


One of the most promising smartwatches has become one of the biggest lies of the wearables market.

In May 2014, Kairos launched a pre-order campaign of its Mechanical SmartWatch Hybrid through their own website with the promise of delivering the product in December 2014. The campaign was a huge success; they raised $100,000 in just 48 hours and ended up raising a total of $1.4M by February 2015 . Later on, Kairos crowdfunded its T-Band on Indiegogo in December last year and raised almost $150,000 in a month. It subsequently made $2M from pre-orders.


I am one of those backers who believed in Kairos Watches from the very beginning, but 8 months after the expected delivery, I am still without the smartwatch on my wrist. This failure not only demonstrates a lack of professionalism and transparency, but also damages the trust people place in startup companies. All backers paid between $500 and $1,200 for Kairos’ products and deserve to have the product they paid for...




Delays and more delays



Problems started early. Firstly, it was the worrying lack of updates from the company with regards to production. Since the pre-orders launch back in May 2014, backers only started hearing back from the company after submitting many complaints in the Indiegogo campaign’s comments section, further to which Kairos referred complaints to its Facebook page, which is flooded with them at the moment:



Just a few of the hundreds of Facebook complaints



Another concern was the fluctuating production schedule because of “reengineering”. One example of this is one of the company’s announcements back in May which stated that the smartwatch would include technology that would allow wearers to make wireless payments with their Kairos watch. Didn’t seem to work that one out, now did you Kairos?


“Unfortunately, this has caused delays in our production because it requires reengineering of our PCB,” the company wrote on Indiegogo. We are expecting about a 2-3 month delay and testing this new feature.” (Indiegogo Campaign Updates).

Yesterday, and several months after the watches were expected to be delivered, Kairos Watches released another update on Facebook:

“This time around, we are now faced with an unexpected delay from our touch sensor supplier. All this time, we had a lead-time of 3 weeks. However, we are faced with approximately 6 to 8 weeks—causing another 4 week delay.” Lies followed by bigger lies!




The only truth here is that for the whole first half of 2015, Kairos did not ship the promised quantity of smartwatches or T-bands creating a “lack of compromise and a very poor customer service” as one of the Facebook “ fans” (now haters) states.



The lack of updates and shipment of units suggest that the product that was pitched to the Indiegogo backers and early buyers was just a rough conceptual idea and not even a final prototype.




New Players

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that it wasn’t a good idea, it was just clearly the wrong campaign to back while being surrounded by other great products out there that are on a similar wavelength:

Activité by Withings

MainTool

Martian

Meta M1 is a smartwatch with a fine design that connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth, receives notifications and shows upcoming calendar appointments but does not track steps nor calories.

is a smartwatch with a fine design that connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth, receives notifications and shows upcoming calendar appointments but does not track steps nor calories. Omate

Polar Loop




If you, like me, purchased a Kairos watch or contributed to their Indiegogo campaign, there are unfortunately not many steps you can take to get your money back. The company does not offer refunds nor compensation unless the product is deemed defective.



“In exchange for one-time deep discounts, customers are expected to sacrifice on small variations on the design (due to production limitations), possible delays in delivery, wait time, as well as a no-refund policy,” the company states in Kairos Refund Policy




I can understand having a great idea and asking for people’s support to make it a reality. I can understand having small hiccups in production that set a product back a few months. But what I cannot understand is a company’s failure to inform me of what is going on with my money and denying me a refund for a product that is not even in my hands.



I don’t understand false promises, Kairos. Stop lying, it’s time to tell the truth and reimburse your backers.




Via: Facebook, Indiegogo, Kairos, Wearables Week