BeYou chair may be a scam on kickstarter and they have stolen my money
Let this be a lesson to anyone who buys a product from a kickstarter campaign or indeed an Indiegogo one. Let me share my story. There are unfortunately hundreds just like it and thousands with this particular company be your chair.
It all starts with my employee’s bad back and my personals trainer’s suggestion for a new type of chair that looked really cool that might fix it. A very slick marketing campaign, all over the trendy websites like this: https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/beyou-transforming-chair-30-09-2020/ and kickstarter itself https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bravotribe/beyou-the-transforming-chair-with-10-ways-you-can-sit where they raised awareness of this ‘revolutionary’ new chair and raised $1.5M in the process and $3M on Indiegogo https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/beyou-transforming-chair-with-10-ways-you-can-sit#/ and grand total of over $7M and that doesn;t include all the pre-orders they’ve had.
So, I ordered two in May 2021 and it’s now February 2022. At the time (and in fact still is) there is no mention of a Kickstarter campaign on their website, it just says they are taking pre-orders and there is a discount for ordering now. There is no mention however that they have not delivered a single chair to anyone, anywhere, ever.
In September 2021 after hearing nothing at all from them I sent an email requesting a refund. I needed the chairs and I had already been waiting almost 6 months, I was going to have to buy some chairs regardless.
My first email below
Mon, Sep 20, 2021, at 11:30 AM
Robert: Cavendish deVere
Email: info@cavendishdevere.com
Hello, I have order number ORDER #3072BYC I ordered it in may and now it seems that there is no chance of me getting this until February 2022. I’m sorry but I just can’t wait that long to replace my chairs. I understand you are making it and everything but I just cant wait 9 months for it and what is most likely going to be another 6 months. Can I have a refund please? Best Robert.
I received this message later on that day from someone called David, I was pleased with this – at least someone was responding.
David – The BeYou Chair Team
Email: contact@beyouchair.com
Hi Robert, thank you for your message.
I’m sorry to hear that you would like to refund your pre-order.
We’ve happily refunded pre-order customers who requested refunds within the 15 days refund window as we kindly noted on our Terms of Service, under SECTION#15 – CROWDFUNDING / PRE-ORDER CAMPAIGNS. I checked on your contribution and I can see that you pre-ordered on May 24th, 2021.
As we shared in our recent updates, we’re now in the pre-production stage of our campaign. After we receive your payment, we immediately process the increase of our supply and materials order in preparation for the mass-production.
We always do our best to help our customers in any way we can, however, I’m sorry to let you know that we’re unable to issue a refund for your BeYou at this stage.
Would you be able to maybe find somebody else who is interested/willing to take over your pre-order? In this case, we would be very happy to help transfer your pre-order details to the new person so you can recover your funds this way.
Your understanding of the situation is greatly appreciated, Robert.
Let me know if you have other questions and have a great day for now.
Best,
David – The BeYou Chair Team
So, basically I wasn’t going to get a refund unless I could find some other gullible individual to offload my order and send them down the Swanny as it were. Oh dear, this wasn’t looking good so I started to do some digging. ANd it was surprisngly hard to find at the time as they had good press and good SEO. But I cam across this article on Reddit (it is now much more prominent than it was as I suspect many more people are looking into this company).
My response therefore was:
Robert: Cavendish deVere
Email: info@cavendishdevere.com
Hello David, looking through your terms and conditions it seems you are not going to give me a refund.
When I pre-ordered these chairs there was no mention of a 9 month wait for it to arrive. I expected to receive my chair in November, it now seems that I will not be receiving them until February – and realistically with the way things have been progressing this doesn’t seem likely.
Yes, you have stated in the terms and conditions that you will not give a refund but that doesn’t mean those terms would be deemed ‘fair’ and enforceable in a UK court or probably any court in any country for that matter.
But it seems you are starting to get some bad press, people are questioning whether this is a scam and they will actually receive their chairs?
Where are you based? When am I likely to receive these chairs? Do you have any images of the pre-production chairs and the factory? If not why not? Because you state on your page that the crowd-funded chairs are going to be delivered in October. That is 2 weeks away.
Your website has no mention of the design you have changed.
Your website has no information about deliveries and manufacturing issues.
Your website has no links to social media – where the unhappy clients are now starting to voice their concerns.
These are not good signs. This looks like subterfuge.
I want some honest answers here otherwise I will be contacting my bank for a charge-back as this is looking like fraud.
Kind regards,
Robert.
David’s response – and to be fair to him he did keep responding and sounds like he belwives the Koolaid he’s drinking was:
David – The BeYou Chair Team
Email: contact@beyouchair.com
Hello Robert, thank you for writing back.
It is always very saddening when we see such serious accusations like “subterfuge” or “fraud” being thrown around so easily when there is no base in reality for it.
Nonetheless, I understand you might not be familiar with the crowdfunding/pre-order business model and as such it will be my pleasure to answer your questions.
We are based in the US, with our prototyping studio in the EU and our factory in India. I can see that you received our August production email update in which we share the challenges we have encountered so far (with the subsequent delays) and the updated timelines for delivery. You would have already seen from that (as well as the earlier updates which are linked at the bottom of that update) a few pictures (and even a video of the wheelbase payload test) from our pre-production optimisation.
We go to great length to provide as much information as possible on our website about how our pre-order process works. We can only hope our (potential) customers actually take the time to read it so as to understand it and set realistic expectations.
Our website footer links to all our social media assets and all our subscribers and customers are repeatedly prompted to join our private Facebook group.
When pre-ordering a BeYou chair, you are joining us in an entrepreneurial journey, which is very different to purchasing a ready-made product in a regular online store. That is also the reason why all our timelines are estimates and never guarantees, because when creating something innovative for the first time challenges tend to happen not once but multiple times.
We have launched BeYou on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, 2 of the world’s biggest crowdfunding platforms and for which we have had to undergo very strict verifications at both personal and business level in order to run our project on their platforms. We furthermore use Stripe – one of the world’s biggest, safest payment gateways and which similarly has very strict anti-fraud protocols we have to complete in order to accept payments through them.
On our own website we are simply continuing to take pre-orders by popular demand from many people who missed our Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns and still wanted to pre-order their own BeYou chair.
I hope this helps answer your questions Robert and puts your mind at ease. You and every one of our pre-order customers will receive the BeYou chair(s) you paid for.
We remain available for any assistance you might need with your pre-order and we wish you a great day for now.
Best,
David – The BeYou Chair Team
Robert: Cavendish deVere
Email: info@cavendishdevere.com
Hello David, thanks for the reply. I do appreciate it.
However, that you are on Kickstarter and Indiegogo doesn’t inspire me with any confidence. I think they are pretty much defunct models and everyone is beginning to know it: https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.kickstarter.com
You mention it is a safe payment gateway but it isn’t. Not if I cannot get my money back for an item that has not been delivered within the promised timescales.
And I’m sorry I don’t want to start an entrepreneurial journey with you. I just want a chair to sit on! One that I paid for 6 months ago, that I should be sitting on right now and am now told that I won’t have for at least another 3 months. I bought one for my wife because she has back problems. It seems now I will have to buy a different chair for her.
I shall wait to see what the feedback on this first set of chairs is. Your production doesn’t seem to be going well from the 3 images of a metal frame you have posted. I suspect they will have quality issues which will mean that I won’t be able to sell my chairs on the second hand market – assuming they ever arrive.
All in all a disaster and I feel very badly let down. I think you personally are doing a great job but I think unless you are in the management team you have been sold a pup here.
As a company, I don’t think you should still be taking pre-orders on your website for a product you don’t have yet and especially considering the problems and issues you have faced so far. Smacks of a ponzi scheme to fund the first set of chairs with the proceeds from the second set of suckers.
Even the photos you have put out as recently as last week show a 4 legged chair that you know full well you will not be making! Anyone who makes a purchase now will not be getting that chair. Why are you doing that?
So dress this anyway you like. Look at this through the eyes of your customers and as a company I suggest you stop drinking your own Kool-aid.
And let me know if you need a job in customer services if this doesn’t work out. I also have a company that sells software and we will be selling it in the States soon.
Best Regards,
Robert.
and his response back
David – The BeYou Chair Team
Email: contact@beyouchair.com
Hi Robert, thank you for the prompt reply and the kind words, I appreciate it greatly.
It is rather unfortunate that you feel this way.
Kickstarter and Indiegogo have tens of millions of visitors every month, the great majority are backers and super-backers (people who consistently back an incredible number of campaigns).
That can hardly be compared with a few hundred reviews on Trust Pilot. These may be from people who had the misfortune of backing creators that didn’t manage to deliver on their campaigns.
With thousands of campaigns launching every month, some are bound to not go as planned and people forget the nature of crowdfunding, so they behave as if they purchased something ready made in a regular online store and expect that the platform suddenly works differently to meet their needs.
Not to mention every business out there will have some negative reviews, because when working with people you can never please everybody and some are bound to feel let down despite the best efforts.
While I appreciate your perspective, I understand that you haven’t taken the time to read through the extensive details we share on our website about how our pre-order model works.
If you wanted a chair that gets delivered right away, it would have been best to wait until it is produced and pay full price for it.
I hope this doesn’t come across as rude. I am genuinely saying it with the best intention for your expectations because this seems to be yet another scenario where the terms of how something works are shared publicly so we can make an informed decision before joining a project, but then we expect those terms to change to meet our expectations (which were not set in the first place based on the terms of the project you joined).
The BeYou chair continues to evolve and all our backers and customers will receive a far superior product in quality, versatility and sturdiness compared to the one we shared initially on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Again, those who understand the nature of crowdfunding also know that it’s very normal for a product to evolve through the different stages it goes through from idea to mass production.
On a personal level, I do understand your perspective and I am very sorry indeed that we are not aligned in the exciting journey of bringing the BeYou chair to life together. We do our best to be as transparent as possible about the process and sincerely hope people take as much time as possible to understand what “they’re getting themselves into”.
If there’s anything I can do to help make your experience better, please don’t hesitate to let me know.
I wish you a relaxing weekend ahead and stay safe.
Best,
David – The Be You Chair Team
Robert: Cavendish deVere
Email: info@cavendishdevere.com
Hello David, thanks for your email.
I think you are mixing up the pre-order with the crowd-funding aspect. I wasn’t expecting the chair right away but I wasn’t expecting to wait 9 months + for it either – that certainly wasn’t made clear to me at the time of purchase – and it seems from the comments of other customers that they weren’t either.
But again, this is all detracting from the fact I don’t have the chair I was promised in the timescale I was promised, it won’t look like the chair I ordered and furthermore it seems I am not entitled to get a refund no matter how long it takes you to get this chair to me or in fact what it eventually looks like.
Surely you can see my point here?
And David, you haven’t answered my question as to why you are advertising the old chair? If as you say the ‘chair continues to evolve and all our backers and customers will receive a far superior product in quality, versatility and sturdiness compared to the one we shared initially on Kickstarter and Indiegogo’ surely you would be better to advertise this chair to the new potential customers? That you aren’t can only lead me to the conclusion that the new whizz-bang evolution T1000 chair that you have developed in in your super-smart million dollar EU based dark labs is much further behind production than you you guys are letting on. Because so far you have only released a picture of a metal base… https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/n572d3/im_pretty_sure_that_the_beyou_chair_on/ (they have since removed this image)- and dark labs looks very much like the outside of my shed – including the weeds sprouting through the cracked concrete. At least its sunny wherever it is ?
Now you have stated here ‘We do our best to be as transparent as possible about the process’ but that is a little bit disingenuous isn’t it? Because if you were really being transparent you would;
- a) have all this information on your website and not hanging off the *rse end of the crowd funding website that takes forever to find (at least it does at the moment..)
- b) have a blog about the internal processes and progress that is being made (even if you have to butter it up)
- c) change the images on your website to the new designs (if you really have them)
- d) probably not be running a new Autumn 2021 pre-order event when you you haven’t delivered a single chair from the Autumn 2020 kick-starter campaign
- d) allow your customers to get a refund when you fail to meet your targets and they have decided that they don’t want to make the journey with you anymore to office chair nirvana and would prefer to spend the money on the more fulfilling pilgrimage to Mecca
On the latter point the longer it takes to get these chairs out the more people will want a refund. The more people you refuse a refund to, the more ill-will you will have among your client base, which is going to result in more and more negative comments on social media.
My fear is that you will then see, if you haven’t already, that the rate of new client purchases will stall. I expect you have run up a lot more costs than you anticipated, thus you really need the new client’s pre-order money (which is why you are still heavily advertising the pre-order offers for the old chair) and this will then jeopardize your current delivery commitments to your kick-starter and first wave pre-order customers.(me).
I’m sure you are all under lot of pressure and I do believe that you started out with genuine intentions and that some of you (I hope its not just you) still have them.
But it seems to me this is a minor version of the Fyre festival fiasco starting to unfold. Events overtake good intentions.
But let’s say that I am old Mr Cynical-head from Ifiwasabettingmanville, just out to bust your chops and everything does go according to plan – when do you think I will have my chairs?
Best Robert.
David – The BeYou Chair Team
Email: contact@beyouchair.com
Hi Robert, as I mentioned earlier we never promised a delivery date, which is why all our timelines are accompanied by the word “estimates”.
All modifications that have been made to the chair so far are related to the mechanisms, which are concealed in the design, not visible unless you dismantle the chair completely.
The wheelbase is undergoing tests to see if we go with the 5-star or the 4-star wheelbase, depending on the performance of both. Even if we do go with the 5-star wheelbase, it will be custom made and we will do our best to bring it as close as possible to the original design.
As such, the outer design of the chair has not changed at all so far.
With regards to your other claims and assumptions, you will have to forgive me for not entertaining it from this point on Robert. It is a waste of your time and mine and a never ending back and forth based on just (you said it!) your skepticism.
As mentioned previously, we share ample information on our website, including the fact that we started this journey on Kickstarter, and we trust that our (potential) customers are adults who know how to conduct their due diligence before placing their pre-orders.
I am very sorry that you didn’t familiarise yourself with the terms of our campaign before placing your own the pre-order.
Joining the campaign only to throw a number of accusations our way is like accepting somebody’s invitation for dinner only to start insulting them the moment you sat yourself at their table.
To date, we have very positive comments from all pre-order customers. We have in fact extended the option to place pre-orders through our own website as a result of overwhelming requests received from people who missed our Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns.
Linking to a reddit thread is rather funny. If you base your decisions on what random people (most of which hide behind random pseudonyms) say on Twitter… that’s your prerogative I guess. Every Tom, Dick and Harry has an opinion about anything and everything, we don’t have time to dispute (or even read) nonsensical threads.
I could go on Reddit right now and make the most ludicrous claims about anything and anybody and nobody’s going to tell me otherwise. In fact, no matter the topic and however ridiculous my claims would be, I’m fairly certain there will be at least a dozen people who will be happy to jump on a negativity wagon with me.
We are a team of people with incredible integrity, working hard to bring BeYou to as many people out there as possible.
As with all perspectives in life, you can choose to see a rose bush full of thorns or you can choose to see a thorn bush full of roses.
I remain available for any support you might need with your pre-order. Please do forgive me as I will not engage in addressing further assumptions and claims that have no base in reality.
Have a relaxing weekend for now and stay safe.
Best,
David – The BeYou Chair Team
It seems that eventually I did manage to give David the needle and he seems to have lost it a bit on this last response, in fairness he seems to have lost touch with the reality of the situation. I think they call this stage ‘denial’. This line is quote laughable. ‘Joining the campaign only to throw a number of accusations our way is like accepting somebody’s invitation for dinner only to start insulting them the moment you sat yourself at their table.’ Er, I ordered a chair (two!) which I paid for upfront, I never wanted to join a campaign and either way I have hardly started insulting my ‘host’ as soon as I sat doen. I have been sat here for 6 months. A better analogy would be ‘I paid for a steak dinner upfront, only to be told that they don’t have any steak and I can’t get a refund but it’s my fault as I didn’t read the terms and conditions that say although they are selling steaks, it may be a year before you get to eat it.
But realizing that I was not going to get any further with him, as I supect he is writing back to unhappy customers all day, I sent this;
Robert: Cavendish deVere
Email: info@cavendishdevere.com
Yes thanks for the rant David. But can you just answer the question. When will I get my chairs?
His response
Sure thing Robert, our current estimate is set for Dec 2021 – Jan 2022.
Best, David.
Things are getting heated on the Kickstarter page:@
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bravotribe/beyou-the-transforming-chair-with-10-ways-you-can-sit/comments and they have a well hidden Facebook VIP page that is not linked to their website (funny that?) that tells a different story and in fact shows a different product from the one they are still selling on their website: https://www.facebook.com/groups/BeYouChairVIPs/permalink/3110091112580610
Haven’t heard anything from David or from beyouchair since. It’s now February 2022. They are still selling chairs on their website. No customer has ever received a chair from beyouchair to date. Be your own judge.
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