80% off your next heating bill ...

[madires]

No blockchain feature? I'm disappointed! It would give them a few million more.

[EEVblog]

They have test results!
It drew 10.6kW over 24 hours.
Now I'm not very good at this arithmertics thing, but that's 441W continuous. Very strange considering it's rated input is only 300W...



https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/koleda/solus-the-most-efficient-radiator-in-the-world/posts/2430561

[golden_labels]

So SOLUS offers 100% efficiency? Let’s assume for a moment that it really does. How does that compare to heat pumps, which easily offer 300%, cost the same (per apartment) and some may work as air conditioners during the warm season?

[StillTrying]

How can 440W be a saving of >95% on other electric radiators, it would have to be only 50W to 100W.

"Consumption: approx 300W per hour".  LOL

[malavon]

I created an account on this forum (after having followed Dave on youtube for years), just to let you know what I sent to kickstarter. Feel free to feature it in a video, using my nickname (just don't use my real name or e-mail address, I don't need real-world credit and prefer to keep that stuff private).
Reason I'm doing this is because I'm sick of all the scam artists generating massive amounts of revenue on the backs of the weak. I can't believe that authorities don't crack down on this stuff with a vengeance. It's not like it's difficult to gather evidence.
I've been thinking about creating a scam-exposing blog/site but sadly scam.watch is already taken. Would have made a great site. Then again, it'd be a full-time job as far as time goes. Anyway, here's what I sent:

While this project is obviously a scam for technical reasons (defying the laws of physics), it's even easier to recognize from their supposedly business information.

1. I quote: "Here at KOLEDA we have sourced, and have agreements in place, for every single component of SOLUS"
There is no company registered called "Koleda" in the Swiss Genevan registry
Do a search on https://www.ge.ch/recherche-entreprises-registre-du-commerce-geneve (available in English)
Also, the creator's other businesses are located in another canton (county?) called Vaud, but no Koleda is registered there either.
https://www.rc2.vd.ch/registres/hrcintapp-pub/companySearch.action

Switzerland with all it's counties is difficult to search and most sites aren't available in English (but it is in French, Italian and German - the official languages).
If it's registered in another county, I missed it. Then again, it's still misrepresented on the kickstarter which mentions Geneva.

2. The "company" domain koleda.co is registered in Colombia
Do I need to say more? No whois information is supplied either.
Edit: just checked and koleda.ch (ch=Switzerland) is available

3. I quote: "The average UK home* spends approximately £655/€745/$845** on their heating each year. By backing SOLUS on Kickstarter, you can radically reduce your heating costs by converting your entire home to a SOLUS system. With a SOLUS system the average home heating bills would be reduced around £135/€154/$175, leaving you to enjoy the extra £520/€600/$670 savings each year to spend on things that matter to you the most."
I'd say this clearly breaks the prototype misrepresentation rules, unless it's possible to have over 100% heating efficiency (i.e. defy the laws of thermodynamics).

4. The product has already been legally identified as a scam, even though it was a different company back then
See https://www.gov.uk/government/news/freeze-put-on-scam-heating-system-company

5. The company has only 2 employees on LinkedIn: the creator and one anonymous one living in the UK
https://www.linkedin.com/company/koleda/people/
I wouldn't be surprised that they're actually the same people as the ones behind Xefros, but can't prove that in the 30 minutes it took me to research this.
It's a shame that Kickstarter doesn't do the obvious checks when large amounts of money are involved.

Disclaimer: take this for what it's worth. I didn't do an in-depth analysis and may have made mistakes. It's just what I came up with in a short timespan.

[NiHaoMike]

No blockchain feature? I'm disappointed! It would give them a few million more.

I think Bitmain already dominated that market for years. And they really are cheaper to operate per BTU output compared to other resistive heaters. If you know where to look on Ebay, you can even find some for reasonable prices.

[IanMacdonald]

An electric heater is just a resistor. Big deal. Unless it makes noise, light, smoke or drills holes or something, it is by nature 100% efficient.

[malavon]

An electric heater is just a resistor. Big deal. Unless it makes noise, light, smoke or drills holes or something, it is by nature 100% efficient.

It is. Yet apparently there are several people who are fine losing their money because of some marketing speak.
So even though it just is, it's obvious that many people don't understand this simple fact.

[Cyberdragon]

An electric heater is just a resistor. Big deal. Unless it makes noise, light, smoke or drills holes or something, it is by nature 100% efficient.

Well a passive quartz element heater (no fan) does emit some orange light, but that's only a tiny percent of the total energy output.

[larsdenmark]

I've reported the project to Kickstarter. Here is the response:

Report content:

The claims of being 95% more efficient than regular electrical radiators are false. It is scientifically impossible for a radiator to have an efficiency other than 100% since all power in any radiator i...

"We’ve investigated and determined that it doesn’t violate our rules or community guidelines."

So the conclusion is that Kickstarter do not care. I was thinking that Kickstarter was more careful with their projects and that it was more safe to back projects on this platforms than some of the other crowd funding sites, but not any more.

[madires]

All crowdfunding platforms make their money by keeping a percentage of the backer's money. They don't care unless a project is about something obviously illegal and they might be held responsible.

[malavon]

I've reported the project to Kickstarter.

When did you send it? I haven't had anything back yet, so there might still be hope.

[golden_labels]

So the conclusion is that Kickstarter do not care. I was thinking that Kickstarter was more careful with their projects and that it was more safe to back projects on this platforms than some of the other crowd funding sites, but not any more.

Aside from not having no direct reasons and very little indirect incentive to take down projects, Kickstarter is bound by agreements with the people behind SOLUS. While the agreement is vague and lets Kickstarter do pretty much anything, they can still get their ass sued by SOLUS team if their project is removed. Not only that: they may get bad publicity, if it happens that their assesment was wrong and they killed a perfectly valid project. I doubt Kickstarter has experts capable of determining if SOLUS is working or not, which makes the case even more complicated.

So what is really happening is more along the lines of: a random person petitions a company to do a thing, which:

• Gains them nothing short-term;
• Puts them in a considerable¹ risk of negative long-term consequences (financial and image losses);
• Offers possibility of avoiding small negative long-term consequences;
• Expects the company to do a thing, which they probably can’t do, because they have no experts.

Would you in such a case risk removing the project. Even more: would you, believing now that SOLUS can’t work, offer Kickstarter money and support to deal with losses they may experience after taking it down? Don’t expect Kickstarter to do things you yourself wouldn’t do. I am not an idiot and I expect this to be just another case of being ignored, but even if one goes beyond the bouncers, the company has good reasons to refuse the request.

I guess that at this point there are three things that may work:

• Sending enough of not spammish messages from different users to create pressure on Kickstarter. They can’t simply ignore that and this may make them reconsider the things listed above.
• Make many people, who already backed the project, claim that they were misled (ToS §3, 2nd point) by the project.

I do not know Austrian law, but using general knowledge about how lawful, democratic republics work, Austrian citizens should also be able to report them to the public prosecution office if they are commiting a crime under Austrian law.

But do you really care enough? It’s a whack-a-mole game now. Perhaps a better idea would be to demand Kickstarter to develop ways of dealing with similar cases? This is something a company may be willing to do, especially if the pressure group frames the situation so the company believes they profit from the change.
____
¹ Look at the case from a neutral perspective of a random person from the population — not a person, who has technical knowledge that can support claims that SOLUS is a scam.

[Pluscrafter]

I created an account on this forum (after having followed Dave on youtube for years), just to let you know what I sent to kickstarter. Feel free to feature it in a video, using my nickname (just don't use my real name or e-mail address, I don't need real-world credit and prefer to keep that stuff private).
Reason I'm doing this is because I'm sick of all the scam artists generating massive amounts of revenue on the backs of the weak. I can't believe that authorities don't crack down on this stuff with a vengeance. It's not like it's difficult to gather evidence.
I've been thinking about creating a scam-exposing blog/site but sadly scam.watch is already taken. Would have made a great site. Then again, it'd be a full-time job as far as time goes. Anyway, here's what I sent:

While this project is obviously a scam for technical reasons (defying the laws of physics), it's even easier to recognize from their supposedly business information.

1. I quote: "Here at KOLEDA we have sourced, and have agreements in place, for every single component of SOLUS"
There is no company registered called "Koleda" in the Swiss Genevan registry
Do a search on https://www.ge.ch/recherche-entreprises-registre-du-commerce-geneve (available in English)
Also, the creator's other businesses are located in another canton (county?) called Vaud, but no Koleda is registered there either.
https://www.rc2.vd.ch/registres/hrcintapp-pub/companySearch.action

Switzerland with all it's counties is difficult to search and most sites aren't available in English (but it is in French, Italian and German - the official languages).
If it's registered in another county, I missed it. Then again, it's still misrepresented on the kickstarter which mentions Geneva.

2. The "company" domain koleda.co is registered in Colombia
Do I need to say more? No whois information is supplied either.
Edit: just checked and koleda.ch (ch=Switzerland) is available

3. I quote: "The average UK home* spends approximately £655/€745/$845** on their heating each year. By backing SOLUS on Kickstarter, you can radically reduce your heating costs by converting your entire home to a SOLUS system. With a SOLUS system the average home heating bills would be reduced around £135/€154/$175, leaving you to enjoy the extra £520/€600/$670 savings each year to spend on things that matter to you the most."
I'd say this clearly breaks the prototype misrepresentation rules, unless it's possible to have over 100% heating efficiency (i.e. defy the laws of thermodynamics).

4. The product has already been legally identified as a scam, even though it was a different company back then
See https://www.gov.uk/government/news/freeze-put-on-scam-heating-system-company

5. The company has only 2 employees on LinkedIn: the creator and one anonymous one living in the UK
https://www.linkedin.com/company/koleda/people/
I wouldn't be surprised that they're actually the same people as the ones behind Xefros, but can't prove that in the 30 minutes it took me to research this.
It's a shame that Kickstarter doesn't do the obvious checks when large amounts of money are involved.

Disclaimer: take this for what it's worth. I didn't do an in-depth analysis and may have made mistakes. It's just what I came up with in a short timespan.

The only company with the name Koleda I found is in the canton of Jura, but this was Holding AG and get liquidised. There is a website of the federal governement of switzerland where you can search for any companys registered in switzerland, but these guys isn't listet there. https://www.zefix.ch/de/search/entity/list?name=Koleda&searchType=default

[Pluscrafter]

The coud also found an Illigal company and didn't register it.

The Founder seems to be active/was active in two other company that are registered.
https://ch.linkedin.com/company/engagead?trk=ppro_cprof
https://www.zefix.ch/de/search/entity/list/firm/1283377?name=EngageAd%20S%C3%A0rl&searchType=exact

https://ch.linkedin.com/company/engagelink-sa?trk=ppro_cprof
https://www.zefix.ch/de/search/entity/list/firm/1250960?name=EngageLink%20SA&searchType=exact

And no Company with the name Solus that claim to develop heating elements
https://www.zefix.ch/de/search/entity/list?name=Solus&searchType=exact

[malavon]

12 hours left before someone buys himself a new villa

If there is anyone here who backed that abomination (even for a single $ or €), could you leave a comment on the project asking why there is no company called Koleda in Switzerland?

[Pluscrafter]

Nah with an half million you even can't buy a shed on lake geneva.

Gesendet von meinem G8341 mit Tapatalk

[Gregg]

This could be the science behind this: 
The normal body temperature of domestic cattle is 37.8-39.2°C 
Assuming the shit coming out of the bull is very close to body temperature    for a short while
Therefore with enough bullshit you could stay quite warm 
Nowhere do they mention the associated smell

[JanHenrik]

It looks like Kickstarter stopped the project 

[JanHenrik]

And haters are now heaters... 
"Interesting how certain heaters posted dozens of comments..."

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/koleda/solus-the-most-efficient-radiator-in-the-world/comments?comment=UHJvamVjdENvbW1lbnQtMjM0MjYzNzE%3D

[MrMobodies]

£309,906
pledged of £37,780 goal
1,056
backers
0

Funding Suspended
Funding for this project was suspended by Kickstarter about 11 hours ago

Interesting to see how the backers will get refunded of what is left.

[malavon]

I wouldn't be surprised if the people at kickstarter decided to google it and found out that it was under scrutiny by multiple people.
The law of numbers is real, kickstarter can't risk being associated with outright scams too much.

Funny thing is, I still haven't heard from them. I guess they didn't even need my report to do the right thing.

[EEVblog]

Funding Suspended
Funding for this project was suspended by Kickstarter about 11 hours ago

Interesting to see how the backers will get refunded of what is left.
[/quote]

They should get every cent back, as the money never went to Solus as the campaign had not ended. I think some in the comments said they got refunded already.

[kjr18]

Wow, someone posted this comment multiple times:
"Here's a link to a *VERY* well respected electronics youtuber that explains everything:

".

[Daixiwen]

How long will it be before this campaign reappears on IndieGogo?