Surprise, surprise - the Comet Smartphone campaign is moving to another crowdfunding site

Remember that completely legitimate Comet Smartphone Kickstarter campaign we told you about a few days ago? As it turns out, Comet Core, the company behind the finned smartphone, has cancelled the funding campaign after it raised upwards of $25K of its $100K goal. Apparently, Comet Core is unable to provide its backers with the Smart Earphones that were originally available in one of the Early Bird packages, due to some sort of violation of Kickstarter’s policies and procedures. From Comet Core:

Comet is designed with smart earphones as a package and we had promised the same to all our friends, family and all our promoters the same. However as per Kickstarter’s policies and procedures we had to remove the smart earphone reward from our campaign as they view this as a breach of regulations. We shall honour our commitments and wish to keep the earphone package together with our smart phone.

Whether you believe Comet Core’s reasoning for removing the campaign or not (and you probably shouldn’t), fear not! The company has announced that it’s moving its efforts to another crowdfunding platform! You see, Kickstarter doesn’t offer flex funding campaigns, which means if a project doesn’t raise its entire goal, no money is awarded whatsoever. But Indiegogo, on the other hand, offers such platforms, which is why it wouldn’t surprise us in the slightest if Comet Core moved the campaign there. The company has yet to announced that it’s moving to Indiegogo, but we should receive an update within a few days.

Before we get too far into what we can do about this scheme, let’s go over some of the features the Comet H2O (renamed from Comet because of a trademark blunder with the T-Mobile Comet) Smartphone aims to offer its users. For starters, the Comet H2O is the world’s first buoyant smartphone that’s the “next big thing in technology lifestyle.” It features fins that pop out of the chassis when the phone is submerged in water, mood-recognizing LED lights that change depending on what you’re feeling, and its very own “Bubble Messenger” platform that’s exclusive to Comet phone users. While details were pretty scarce regarding the impressive use of fin technology at the campaign’s start, it looks like the company has shed some light on how it works:

Just because Comet Core is moving to another site, doesn’t mean it will get away with taking consumers’ money, though. Earlier today, the Federal Trade Commission announced that it will begin taking legal action against fraudulent Kickstarter campaigns, just like this one. The first campaign that’s feeling the FTC’s wrath is The Doom That Came to Atlantic City, a board game that raised $122K but never delivered any rewards. It turns out that after an investigation, project creator Erik Chevalier “spent most of the money on unrelated personal expenses such as rent, moving himself to Oregon, personal equipment, and licenses for a different project.”

Unfortunately, just because we can clearly see that Comet Core’s project is a joke, doesn’t meant the FTC can take legal action right away. Until Comet Core fails to deliver its impossible promises, the agency can’t take action. So in this case, if the Comet H2O is moved to Indiegogo and placed in a flex funding campaign, backers are probably protected, but unfortunately nothing is guaranteed. We don’t even know for sure if the campaign is moving to Indiegogo, but there’s reason to believe that it will be.

If you want to receive updates on the future of the Comet H2O, visit cometcore.com for more information. We’ll be sure to let you know once the new campaign goes live. But until then, feel free to re-watch the company’s amazing promotional video one more time.