Fundable
So, you may have heard of a little service called Fundable. The idea is that someone has some cause that they need to raise money for (there are a LOT of “my puppy needs an operation!” type things which somehow get funded). A good friend is in a fair bit of financial trouble (that happens when the economy sucks and you have two special needs children and such). Now, she has given so much to the community and never asked for anything in return that when I saw her small note that she had made a Fundable (at the behest of friends), I decided to contribute. We didn’t get anywhere near the goal, but she was able to lower it at the last minute so the money raised would still go through. All of us contributers had the money debited from Paypal and figured that was that; but it wasn’t.
They (it is a familly after all, not just one person) didn’t get the money. Emails didn’t work until she put in a deadline and started CCing us, at which point she got a “we’ll get back to you” response. Well gee. As of Monday, it had been over a week, and she tried again. She also tried a phone call and found that all the number gave was a recording saying to use the contact email and then an answering-machine type beep. I tried my hand at emailing them (as a contributer), and also did some digging to find the email for the two founders of the company. Wouldn’t ya know it, the contact page used to look exactly the same, except that it used to give emails for the two founders instead of saying they both used the generic contact email. I sent my email (threatening to report it to Paypal and Consumerist), and gave her the info about the new addresses to try.
It worked. She got a response, just not the one everyone wanted. They refunded the money to us contributers claiming she had broken the terms of service. Now, they had a shaky argument about how she broke them, but I can accept their claim. What is not acceptable is the fact that they couldn’t just let everyone know that during the “24 hour review period” and refund the money. No, it took writing to the people in charge though hidden email addresses to get them to say that.
So, the long story is, Fundable sucks; don’t use it. I might even go so far as to say that Fundable is a scam, if only to get that to show up in searches so other people can be warned.
Its strange, because I have funded loans through Prosper and they are somehow connects (one of the same people in charge or something). Prosper just looks loads more professional and I’ve never run into a problem with them. *shrug*
-K