There is one very important thing you should remember whenever you find yourself tempted to back something on Kickstarter or anywhere else: It's not a store. You definitely aren't buying the thing and you're not even pre-ordering it. You're just giving a person some money and hoping they'll eventually make good. This nightmare tale of the "world's thinnest e-ink watch" is just the latest example of how that can go horribly wrong.

Launched in 2013, the Kickstarter for the unusual-looking e-ink watch you see above—named the CST-01— was a huge success, pulling in over $1 million in donations to help bring the Kindle-like time-teller to market. With that much money, what could possibly go wrong? Oh only everything.

The project was plagued with problems pretty much from the get-go. Initial production was delayed by the need to come up with a new battery solution that would meet the (frankly sort of absurd) thinness requirements the Kickstarter had promised. That lead to delays, and then ultimately, to an update in June of last year where the creators announced they were breaking up with their hardware partner Flextronics, and would need an additional $1.2 million to get the project done, pretty much conceding defeat in the process. This watch will never be.

But now it's gone from bad to worse because the company behind the band has filed for bankruptcy, which means there's basically no chance anyone will even get their money back. In a post for backers only, the company details how its remaining assets will be divvied up to pay off outstanding debt and, according toSlashGear, Kickstarter backers are at the very bottom of the list.

Of all the people who deserve to get some money back, Kickstarter backers are absolutely last in line.

Unsecured creditors—a largish umbrella that Kickstarter backers fall under—are the lowest priority, and will only be repaid if literally everyone else is taken care of and there's still money left. What's worse is that Kickstarter backers have it probably the worst of all unsecured creditors. They'll have to file a claim, which includes their social security number, and even then there's no guarantee. From the post, via SlashGear:

The Trustee/Assignee has not determined whether a Kickstarter or other crowd-funding contributor is entitled to participate in a distribution, if any.

So to sum up: Of all the people who deserve to get some money back, Kickstarter backers are absolutely last in line, and even if there is still money to go around by the time everyone else is paid off, there's no guarantee the backers will get any of it. To sum up even further: Yeah, no one is getting their money back.

Yeah, no one is getting their money back.

It's worth noting that this is a pretty old campaign; 2013 was three whole years ago. And in that time, Kickstarter has made a point of trying to keep this from happening. The site now requires functional prototypes of devices—which has resulted in obvious scams like the Skarp Laser Razor getting canceled.

The end result is that nowadays, Kickstarter is one of the safer places to donate your money, as opposed to sites like Indiegogo which often have much lower standards, and options that allow fundraisers to keep all the money they raise even if they don't make their goal. Scamtastic! But even when everyone has the best of intentions and the products get made, things can turn out crumby. Sometimes you'll get what you pay for, only it sucks.

So just remember few key things whenever you are tempted to crowdfund something:

There's no guarantee you'll get what you "pay for."

You probably won't get your money back if you don't.

Even if you get your new toy, there's no guarantee it'll be what it should be, do what it should do, or be any good.

It's called a "donation" for a reason.

If you're cool with all that, by all means, follow your bliss. Just be careful out there folks.

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