From the original article…
In July 2012, Equiso was living the Kickstarter dream. Now it’s in a Kickstarter nightmare.
It has legions of unhappy customers, alleged threats from hacking group Anonymous, and a forgotten co-founder who claims to have been unfairly ousted.
It’s also being accused of selling a product that is just a rebranded version of something available from a Chinese company.
Equiso would later release the following statement:
Thank you for your interest in Equiso and the opportunity to set the record straight.
Equiso continues to live the Kickstarter dream and is a glowing Kickstarter success story. In just a few months, we have received over $1.8 million in private investor funding, and our new and improved Equiso SmartTV Stick will in fact be in Walmart stores this Spring. We are thrilled to have come so far, so fast, and are eternally grateful to our wonderful Kickstarter backers who made this all possible. As a matter of fact, we have shipped over 5,700 units of the original beta’s with less than a 2% return rate and very few dissatisfied users. Of course any tech startup will have a few initial bugs, but we are dedicating significant resources to our ongoing tech and customer support. We were on a limited budget and skeleton crew in the early going, but have rapidly scaled up and our user experience and satisfaction is our #1 priority.
Equiso is planning a special Backer Appreciation announcement, stay tuned for that as well as our official Walmart launch press release which we will share with Business Insider first as soon as it is finalized.
While elements of the Kickstarter beta Equiso stick certainly contained components manufactured in China, Equiso is designed in the USA and our upgraded and improved retail product is unique. We look forward to your review of our new and improved retail item with its cool new design and upgraded specs. We also have multiple patent applications pending as we continue to innovate.
Our focus is not on negative allegations made by hackers, trolls, disgruntled former employees or criminals; that is for law enforcement and forum administrators to deal with. Our mission is to deliver value, innovation and service to our exploding customer base.
The demand for our product is staggering and we look forward to sharing more of our successes with you as they unfold.
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