crowdSPRING After paying good money and giving feedback, kicked me off platform and disclosed private information. Don't listen to customer suggestions. Chicago Illinois

MY PROJECT

I did a naming contest to come up with a brand name for a new website that I'm planning. 

NAMING CONTESTS

The concept of crowdsourcing brandnames in general is definitely effective and worthwhile. There is no way I could have come up with so many names by myself. 

PACKAGE CHOSEN

I chose a platinum package, which only allowed "Platinum Creatives" the option to participate. I’m not sure, but, apparently this keeps out a lot of noise from the project. 

GETTING BEST RESULTS

In the end, the results you get depend on how clear and well thought out your brief is and how much feedback you give:
- I feel that my brief was clear and well thought out. I also worked with a professional naming consultant who helped refine my brief.
- According to the system's ratings and the feedback from crowdSPRING staff, I gave an unusually high level of feedback to the creatives, which I believe is what resulted in my getting so many entries.

CROWDSPRING PROCESSES

They have two ways you can buy an entry:
- Awards: this is a one-way transaction.
- Offers: you give the Creative an offer and they have the option to refuse or negotiate. Offers is where things get messy.

crowdSPRING rules are such that you are not allowed to register a domain name for a brandname that you want to purchase until the transaction is done. This puts you in a very precarious position because they seller could theoretically snatch it and try to sell it to you at an inflated price.

So, if you go ahead and register the domain, this is grounds for crowdSPRING to terminate your account.

Due to these rules, I had one transaction pushed off the platform and we eventually did the deal, but it would have been so much easier and cheaper if they had just let us do it on the platform.

CROWDSPRING UI

The crowdSPRING UI was buggy, clunky, and missing basic functionality such as the ability to search among the naming entries. It needs a lot of work and doesn't seem to have evolved much since I first used it in 2009. 

Their UI is not really setup for naming projects. They've just taken the same workflow used for logos and hacked it for naming contests. It's a hassle to navigate the way they've set it up. I expect that competing sites that specialize in naming project sites will be a lot stronger in this area.

If your credit card has reached its limit, the crowdSPRING UI will not allow you to change or update your payment details like most modern EC sites do. You have to call their support and get them to do it manually - just like the good old days of TV shopping.

Apart from the top page, the site is not responsive, so you might want to go elsewhere if you are a mobile device user.

CROWDSPRING SUPPORT

They only offer support during Chicago business hours, so this meant that I had to wait up to three days sometimes for a response if I sent them a message on a Friday.

I cooperated with their support reps and gave them a lot of detailed feedback (actually wrote up and sent them two documents with details on what they need to improve). I believe I was polite, professional and clear in my communications. I was, however, very vocal about my frustrations both via support tickets and on Twitter. 

In the end, they decided that I was too much trouble and terminated my user account.

Furthermore, they posted a tweet about my personal financial status. I had properly paid all fees and feel this was a violation of my privacy and trust as a customer. You can see the tweet here (unless they delete it):

twitter.com/crowdSPRING/status/633410178847653888