I've conducted three crowdfunding campaigns and my idea of customer service is not that donors should have to make extra efforts to get what I promised them. That responsibility was mine.
While donors' dismay was what incited my examination of the perk situation, the issues are more about Axanar's use of perks to set up an untrammeled revenue stream about which they've been anything but transparent.
Indeed, the expenses associated with the merchandise that is being shipped is being reported as if it were fulfilling Kickstarter rewards when it simply couldn't be once you look at
Axanar's own data.
The further implication is that when questioned about how much revenue the Donor Store is generating, and how much Axanar is bringing in from its direct donation efforts, Alec Peters deflected the question.
This extensive commercialization around merchandising is one bright line Axanar has crossed that distinguishes it from true fan productions. And the optics surrounding a situation where, if you just keep paying more (i.e., buy directly from the Donor Store)
then you can get perks shipped, while the people whose dollars financed the establishment of your entire operation just wait in limbo until Terry McIntosh presses some buttons before you even get your first patch.
Merchandise is moving, enough to keep a full-time person busy who publicly admits that
Store customers' orders get highest priority each day while not one physical product has shipped to the people without whom the whole shebang wouldn't exist in the first place.
That investment has now become a liability (expenses to fulfill) while the Donor Store is a profit center — a source of new and continuing revenue — which Axanar's burn rate of $15,000 a month makes utterly necessary the longer this lawsuit drags on.
