I was taken in by the Lilly Kickstarter campaign where you got a drone for about £300 and to this day nothing ever appeared. Luckily I got a heads up from the campaign that things were badly delayed and would I like a refund. I got my refund but was very lucky and this gave me an insight not to enter these campaigns ever again.

In August Net SE, the company behind Meyer Optik Görlitz, Emil Busch, C.P. Goerz, Ihagee, Oprema Jena, and A. Schacht products, was removed from the German stock exchange and subsequently filed for insolvency.

Now, the fears of Kickstarter backers of the Meyer Optik Görlitz products who have not received their lenses yet have turned into a reality: The reward will not arrive and you won’t get your money back either. Net SE is completely dead. This was first reported by German photo publication Photoscala after an official notice was published, asking to direct claims to a law firm.

Insolvency proceedings have been opened which means all hopes for backers to receive rewards or their money back have evaporated. Net SE’s lack of assets means nothing can be expected from the company and Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms reject all responsibility in such cases.

This isn’t the first crowdfunding project ending up in a mess but given we are dealing with several campaigns here the number of affected photographers is likely higher than usual. It’s a reminder that backing a crowdfunding project isn’t the same thing as pre-ordering and there’s always some risk of losing your money.

My thanks to DPREVIEW for this.