Europe has some pretty strict privacy laws, including “right to forget” on search engines like Google where you can basically have all your information removed. I wouldn’t be surprised that a full doxing would be illegal in many European countries
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No problem at all for me, I won’t put here any name or phone number but in the Netherlands it is easy to get thename and numbers by the commerce agency
And the iq2 firm has to stop lying and stalling.
They sell the pedals now on Facebook by a Chinese firm…
The iq2 firm has to be honest to their customers, for me personal I got me a powermeter from rotor for the mTB And on my roadbike the Favero assioma’s and both work well.
I’d not about the money what’s made me angry it’s the way they communicate.
Best regards Patrick
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The FB thing is a total scam that IQ2 has nothing to do with.
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Kickstarter makes it quite clear that you are funding a company, and absolutely not purchasing a product.
This has been made clear for years. I understand people being unhappy about them getting nothing for their investment in a extremely small and risky startup company, but that’s how it works.
You pays your money, you takes your chances.
If you want to buy a power meter, there are many places that sell products - do this if you want to buy a product rather than invest in an unproven company.
Kickstarter is not a shopping site!
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Who wants to be the first to comment? 
Joking aside, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt for now - I’m more inclined to believe that the weird Facebook posts are just badly misjudged, rather than fraudulent. But it would be nice to see feedback from a real, live actual customer.
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While I agree with pretty much everything you’re saying. This company has been particularly unscrupulous in that it started off with an entirely different product that it claimed was “production ready” and then switched gears to a completely different product, without offering the opportunity for “investors” to pull out. Do backers have any legal recourse? No. Do they have the right to be pissed off? Absolutely.
You had a friend who asks for $20 so he could go get some pizza from this place he says is awesome and totally open, and said he’ll share it with you.
You give it to him.
After some time passes, he tells you the pizza place is closed. But don’t worry, he’s getting burgers.
You don’t want a burger, but you’re like fine whatever.
Your friend then proceeds to tell you, he doesn’t have buns, wrappers, gas for his car, or knowledge of what a burger is or how to acquire one.
You might be a little irked…
You might tell your friend where he can go…
All that being said. I don’t think this was a “scam”. I just think they’re crappy business people and had no idea what they were doing, nor the integrity to admit when they were way over-their-heads to the people who took a chance on them.
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These are all pedal bodies - no axles, so no power meters, in fact.
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Change this to “Some guy on the internet asked for $20, and said he would get filet mignon to share with you”, and it works a bit better 
- you had no reason to trust or be confident with iq2 to deliver, as you would have had with a friend.
- They promised quite a lot for the money - a much better price than existing similar products sell for from reputable companies.
Look - people can be upset about getting nothing for their investment. I have seen no credible claims of fraud here - you have a very small company, trying to make a technically complicated product and bring it to production. They are actually making the things, at least in prototype quantity. The idea that they went through all that work to be able to perpetuate a fraud is rather entertaining. All the evidence points to a startup overpromising what they can deliver, and being run by people who are likely not qualified to run such a venture. There’s a reason they went to kickstarter for money, and not experienced investors.
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I never thought it was an intentional fraud. I’ve done plenty of kickstarters and indiegogos (which this one was btw), and honesty most of the companies have delivered. Where it turned the corner for me was when they shifted from the initial product to making pedals. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, they obviously realized their product wasn’t going to work, oops. But when you then make the decision to keep the money, and do something else with it, that’s the point where you’re drifting into a gray area when it comes to ethics, and while you can sit back and say “the Indiegogo policies say ____”, you still chose that path, and deserve being tarred-and-feathered across the internet.
You are right - there are much simpler ways of defrauding people than going through all this trouble. Occam’s Razor and all that. Overpromised? Certainly. Badly managed? Absolutely. Fraudulent? Highly improbable.
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I understand the frustration, but again this is an investment in a company you have no influence in (unlike VCs in a startup), you are not buying a specific product.
More than a few people in this thread have used the word ‘scam’, which I have seen absolutely no evidence presented to support.
It’s not a good situation, investors are (likely) losing their investment and getting little or nothing in return, but I see no indication that it is a scam.
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Well, in their defense. There are people in this country who get to throw out the word “scam” and “fraud” who get a lot of traction at the highest levels… 
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That’s the thing that I think is closest to the edge of being dishonest - the fact that they’ve been taking ‘pre-orders’ on the website for a long time (so not Kickstarter or Indiegogo) with indicative delivery times that they must know aren’t real.
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What was the schedule, technology, and status outlined in their funding pitch? Was it realized, no. Was it even close, no. Is it a scam, technically no as they haven’t shut the doors but basically yes.
It’s not black or white but when it dark grey, it’s close enough. When the door closes without every delivering, it’s 100% a scam. It doesn’t matter if they every lifted a finger to deliver a product, it was a scam for you to pay for their education.
See the posts above. I don’t think this qualifies as a scam. A scam would be if they intentionally from the beginning never had the goal of building a power meter. I think they were jumping through a lot of hoops to build one (and they are still working on it as it seems like). You might call it a fail because they didn’t achieve what they originally intended. But if they just wanted to scam people they would have taken the money two years ago out of the bank, make a BS excuse an ran with it without ever testing products etc…
Otherwise per your definition every unsuccessful startup / business is a scam.
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I mean, that’s literally almost the definition of Kickstarter:
When you back a project, you’re supporting a creator’s right to try to make something new—and agreeing to go along for the ride. For more information, please read our Terms of Use.
*What are creators obligated to do? *
When a project is successfully funded, the creator is responsible for completing the project and fulfilling each reward to the best of their abilities. Their fundamental obligation to backers is to finish all the work that was promised, honestly address backers’ concerns, and deliver rewards.
There’s certainly an ethical side that says making a flashy video that you have no intent to ever create could be considered a scam, but if it looks like they made a good-faith effort and just couldn’t get it done as well as they thought they could, well, that’s pretty much what Kickstarter is.
Nowdays, I think KS has much more of a ‘store’ vibe to it, but I remember how it was back in ~2012, and it was very much “Hey I made this thing in my garage and I think it could be great but I don’t have any money to scale; back me and I’ll eventually send you one.” Now it’s definitely more of a store than it used to be, and I don’t love it when pre-existing companies basically use it as a guaranteed pre-order machine, but at it’s core, if someone tries to make a product and just ultimately fails, well, that’s Kickstarter.
Here’s specifically what Kickstarter expects of both parties:
Throughout the process, creators owe their backers a high standard of effort, honest communication, and a dedication to bringing the project to life. At the same time, backers must understand that they’re not buying something when they back a project—they’re helping to create something new, not ordering something that already exists. There may be changes or delays, and there’s a chance something could happen that prevents the creator from being able to finish the project as promised.
If a creator is unable to complete their project and fulfill rewards, they’ve failed to live up to the basic obligations of this agreement. To right this, they must make every reasonable effort to find another way of bringing the project to the best possible conclusion for backers. A creator in this position has only remedied the situation and met their obligations to backers if:
- they post an update that explains what work has been done, how funds were used, and what prevents them from finishing the project as planned;
- they work diligently and in good faith to bring the project to the best possible conclusion in a timeframe that’s communicated to backers;
- they’re able to demonstrate that they’ve used funds appropriately and made every reasonable effort to complete the project as promised;
- they’ve been honest, and have made no material misrepresentations in their communication to backers; and
- they offer to return any remaining funds to backers who have not received their reward (in proportion to the amounts pledged), or else explain how those funds will be used to complete the project in some alternate form.
The creator is solely responsible for fulfilling the promises made in their project. If they’re unable to satisfy the terms of this agreement, they may be subject to legal action by backers.
What was the backing? The project, the original project, not the company. When it failed were the backers offered an exit? E.g. here what was expended, we cannot make it work, and here what’s left and you want it back?
No. They took the money and started on something else. On top of that they started selling units that they know it could not be fulfilled. A few were lucky to get their money back and rest are still waiting.
Back to the definition, Merriam-Webster, scam as a transitive verb means to deceive and defraud (someone). Was there deception? Again what was the schedule? The working prototype was completed and all production partner on board prior to fund raising. Next, what was the project? Is it the same project today? Was any of the testing results ever shared? Or was it trust us, we couldn’t make it work but here’s something better? To the recent press, what was in the units that was tested? Time will tell if defraud applies but there were definitely deception.
This all smell like Amiigo, Your fundraising goal is bullshit » Drop Kicker
Scam: Here, buy some ‘magic’ beans from us
Shitty business and questionable investment decision from backers: Give us money to develop ‘magic’ beans. Turns out there are no magic beans, so we work on ladders now…
Edit: I’m not trying to defend IQ2. I think at least morally their approach / communication is questionable. I have no idea if there is intentional / unlawful wrongdoing. My impression is just that they had big naive unrealistic dreams in the beginning and people bought into that and wanted to believe. It sounds to me like they had not enough experience on what it entails to produce a product at scale (including dealing with manufacturers). In my opinion there is no winner in this situation. Neither IQ2 not the backers. I feel sorry for both and wished it would have worked out. I would have loved to buy the original design once available.
I think you are being too quick to judge and see malice where I think there is none. To me it seems that their shipment estimates were especially initially, their best guesses as to what the shipment estimates were. They called something “fully tested” because they thought they had considered every relevant issue and tested for them. Add a few strokes of bad luck, not least of which a global pandemic that wrecked havoc on the global supply chain, and it seems quite easy how everything unfolded without the malice that you seem to imply. I was happy to see IQ2’s decision to scrap their initial design and to try to do it right. That was bold and told me that the guys were trying to do the right thing. I don’t know what the situation is like at IQ2 HQ, but it seems that they are going down the drain and the people there are desperately trying not to drown.
Honestly, I think the mistake many Kickstarter backers made is to think of their Kickstarter pledge as an order on Amazon: it’ll turn up eventually. There’s a reason why the Kickstarter editions of their pedals were cheaper — buyers were assuming a risk that the product would never materialize. That sucks, I’m sure both, IQ2 and its backers would have wished for a different outcome. But I wouldn’t project all the malice into it.
Whenever I backed a Kickstarter project, I considered this money lost and was happy when I was wrong. I supported project that I wished existed. I came close to supporting IQ2, but decided against it since I already had a power meter and their Kickstarter campaign had met its funding goal.
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Meanwhile, Shimano has updated their patents related to power meter pedals: