What’s going on at the Rite Company, makers of the crowdfunded Rite Press coffee maker? As of this morning, backers on Kickstarter say they still haven’t received their “no-mess” French presses, the company’s website is down and an email The Spoon sent to the company’s CEO bounced back to us. We are in the midst of investigating the situation.
For those new to the saga, Rite Press started as a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign in March of 2018, crowdfunding $1.3 million. But then in February of this year, almost a year after the Rite Presses were supposed to ship, we reported on how backers still hadn’t received their units and Sargam Patel, CEO of the Rite Company, had asked backers for an additional $30 each to fulfill the orders. The situation was aggravated in May of this year when the Rite Press website launched, allowing people to buy the Rite Press directly from the company. Customers who did so would get their Rite Presses first and help fund the fulfillment of outstanding pledges.
That Rite Press website is now down, and evidently has been for about a week and a half. According to a GoDaddy message on the site: “This domain name expired on 8/22/2019 and is pending renewal or deletion.”
Based on backer comments like this one on Kickstarter, many customers still haven’t gotten theirs:
Has the Rite Company finally been ground down? We reached out to Patel via email over the weekend, but as noted, our message bounced back, which would make sense if the web and email domains are no longer active. We also reached out to him via LinkedIn.
We will update this story as we learn more.
Lol, great journalism Chris! We tried to tell you back when you originally wrote your puff piece for Patel. You weren’t interested in hearing from any of us backers because we only had “ opinions “. Looks like you were scammed just like the backers of rite press.
Lol, fact!
I appreciate your article, as this is the only information I have been getting about the Rite Press. I too was one of backers putting up $60 in February 10th of 2018 then on February 8th 2019 I received an email requesting an addition 57.92 to help expedite my order and I would receive my order by July of 2019. shortly after my second payment I was informed my order was getting ready to ship and I would get further information on the shipping date and when to expect my order. today is 09/30/2019, and still nothing, I have been emailing them twice a week for months now for information, it does not bounce back and I have yet to get a reply. It would be helpful if Sargam Patel just stated he is not going to fill our orders and all of the suckers…… I mean backers need to give up and move on. Shame on Sargam Patel and his lack of communication.
After placing my order 4/23/2018 and having $45.00 and $10.00 (for the Tea Kit Add-on) charged to my credit card, I requested a refund 3 weeks ago and have received no response. Seems I’ve been placed on “ignore.” So I opened a dispute with my credit card, Discover. They have credited the $55.00 back to my account while they investigate with the merchant. The credit card rep sounded sympathetic and said they will notify me of the resolution in 30 days. I think it will put more pressure on the merchant to ship or to refund if everyone started opening a dispute through their bank or credit card.
I see the website is back up. Any updates?
Somehow I actually got my pot (maybe 9 months late…but it’s here). I remember at one point there was quality control issues. There seems to be a crack forming in the weld along the lip. The whole thing was a train wreck…