I dont see the need for there having to be a time limit on how long you have to raise the cash and its the existence of it that is generating all of the emails that are desperate for cash.
This aspect of KickStarter needs to be sorted out .
No, it doesn't! If there wasn't a final date, then you'd have no idea when they were going to bill your card for your pre-order. You might make the pledge in good faith and then turn out to be desperately skint when they wanted payment, potentially leaving the project short of the number of funders required.
I accept that people's circumstances change unexpectedly, and people might still find themselves unable to honour their pledge even on a fixed date, but I'd have thought you'd get a lot more defaulters if they just randomly billed you an unspecified amount of time after you'd agreed to support the project…
Cheers
Jim