Those of us who were around towards the end of last summer may remember a fun Kickstarter called the "NFC Ring." In short, it was wearable technology. It featured a writable NFC card that could hold a Bitcoin public key.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mclear/nfc-ringI was incredibly excited by this product. So much so I decided to be an Erli Bird backer. According to the Kickstarter delivery was promised in September of 2013. And as you can see they were wildly successful. It is a nifty product and a fair price.
Unfortunately that's where it ends. To date no rings have shipped despite being 6 months past the original delivery date. I had reached out multiple times in the past checking in on updates and shipping questions (I had moved, name change, etc) but never received a response. Weekly/Monthly updates always said the same thing: "Something is wrong, delays expected." but there was never a solid answer or date set, just more reasons why shipping wasn't occurring.
Today I emailed John McLear the entrepreneur running the Kickstarter. I asked when the Erli Birds should expect to see their rings since it was now half a year late. I was told to be more understanding and appreciative of his hard work and to go back and read the 50,000+ words of updates that are mish mashed with ring features that don't exist yet. Spoiler: All of them say the same thing: "Delays expected." I followed up explaining that I didn't share the passion for reading the NFC Ring novel and instead
John just canceled my preorder.
I was asked by a few sources to follow up on my experiences with this company. So this is my summary. Try to
avoid them, maybe in a year or two they will be together enough that you can pick up a ring but it's definitely not happening right now. Customer service is definitely the pits. Luckily, they had the rings manufactured in China so we will likely see cheaper knock-offs available soon. Perhaps wait for those instead.
If you are interested here is a pastebin with my name removed:
http://pastebin.com/fgDD2wfzhttp://pastebin.com/sEEgXxVd[url] - with updates
tldr: Apparently Inaba runs NFC Ring & BFL and cancels preorders when you ask questions about 6+ month shipping delays.