Every once in a while I see something on Kickstarter that I think I want.
It’s never anything I need…because if I “needed it” I would buy it, and not put money down for an item I’ll get months/years later.
Last week I came across an item that I thought “hey, that’d be useful”, and when I went to look at the Reward Tiers, I saw that it was all in HKD (Hong Kong Dollar), but being the nice people they are, Kickstarter had a translation right under it in how much it would cost me in USD$.
Once the campaign closed and I got charged, I saw that I got hit with a Foreign Transaction Fee (FTF), for having my card charged in China. There are two thoughts I have on this:
- Kickstarter should have a nice big warning when you buy from foreign countries that you are going to likely be charged an FTF. And if they do have that warning, then it needs to be bigger, because I didn’t see it.
- Kickstarter should have figured out a way around the FTFs. They should be charging the customers based on their country of origin, and paying out the creators in their native dollar.
There is no reason that us, the backers, should be hit with those fees, because it will just discourage future backing of foreign projects.
Aviously 
Agreed! Credit card statements can be cryptic, and it would help to know when a KS project involved this and any additional fees. Otherwise, I’d be calling my cc company about the fee and see if anyone’s stolen my cc number. fyi, The fee may be collected on NOT the same day as the KS pledge.