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So you can join most Patreon pages, not pay anything, and steal everything...

hordak

hordak

Member
Oct 31, 2017
2,533
Anaheim, CA
I had a Patreon account for several months now. I've been slowly been promoting it on my Instagram account for the several months. In July i peaked with 21 patrons following me. But with Patreon, they bill your patrons at 1st day fo each month for the previous month. So you can sign up July 1st, and sit there for 30 days and enjoy your Patreon's hard earned work, and then cancel before August 1st. or cancel your credit card. or change your credit card info.

AND NOT PAY JACK SHIT

I just got my figures for July and get this, 65% of my patrons got their credit cards declined. My count went from 21 to 18 and then finally 13. How is this possible? In the past, i get maybe 1 person declined. but to get this many in one month? i guess more people are figuring out the same shit I'm telling you.
Cancel
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Imagine if Netflix billed you after 30 days of watching their movies and tv shows, instead of the 1st day. Imagine if 65% of netflix customers ended up not paying for their service!. Patreon does allow their customers to do a pay per post thing, which fixes this problem. And they say they are beta testing a "Pay Immediately right after you join" which you think should be the norm. but its not. and it's too late. I hope they fix this problem before more artists get less money for their work.

Mean while I'm signing up with Onlyfans.

ps. i submitted many tickets to customer support. unfortuantely they used Zendesk and after receiving the automatically generated email from them saying they got my inquiry and will respond soon, they never did. after several months I managed to contact someone there and he said the problem was zendesk wasn't recognizing my email

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I tried resetting my password at https://patreon.zendesk.com but i did not get any emails to confirm my password reset. How can I, when their zendesk wasn't recognizing my emails? Basically its like having a problem with your phone company and the only way is to call them from your phone. Bunch of idiots. Also i did not get any further emails from 6 weeks ago.
 
ListeningGarden

ListeningGarden

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,495
All accounts have access to charging patrons up front now, which should be the default method moving forward if Patreon wants to battle this kind of abuse. Shame it took so long.
 
Alice

Alice

Banned
Nov 2, 2017
5,867
And that's why most Patreons have switched to Pay Upfront. That way, everyone who freshly signs up will instantly be billed at the moment of their signup. That way you won't be giving away free months.

Also protect your Patreon rewards by not giving them away as "public" posts. Send rewards via private message only to people who's payment went through.
 
kiguel182

kiguel182

Member
Oct 31, 2017
9,440
Yeah, Patreon works a ton on trusting your Patreons to stay subscribed on the first of each month.
 
atomsk eater

atomsk eater

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,828
Up front payment really should be the default. Really sucks, and their customer service can't even reliably keep in contact. I don't think I've heard any good news about Patreon in a while, hopefully their are alternatives coming up if they don't exist already.
 
OP
OP
hordak

hordak

Member
Oct 31, 2017
2,533
Anaheim, CA
ListeningGarden said:
All accounts have access to charging patrons up front now, which should be the default method moving forward if Patreon wants to battle this kind of abuse. Shame it took so long.
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As of 2 hours ago, i didn't this option. So i just gave up and deleted my account. Also i deleted it mainly out of spite. I left a nasty note on my IG and tagged @patreon. I doubt they would read it or even care.

kiguel182 said:
Yeah, Patreon works a ton on trusting your Patreons to stay subscribed on the first of each month.
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I'm going to switch to Onlyfans. and charge like $5-10 a month instead of doing tiers. Their cut is a bit higher - 20% versus %5-7 from Patreon. But with Onlyfans I get paid up fronttttt.
 
Thorn

Thorn

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
24,446
Every Patreon I've donated to has deserved every cent. Would never abuse it.
 
tommy7154

tommy7154

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
5,370
Kind of like on ebay to avoid non payers I only sell using buy it now with immediate payment. Otherwise that kind of shit happens.
 
Psittacus

Psittacus

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,932
It's very unlikely that someone willing to do that on a consistent basis would actually pay for your content if they didn't have a choice.
 
Alice

Alice

Banned
Nov 2, 2017
5,867
CormoranStrike said:
Crowd funding website?
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I wouldn't quite call it that.

Freakzilla Patreon is basically like a personalized Newsfeed for artists and creators to have people support them. People pick a monthly pledge level for a certain amount of money and get whatever rewards, you as the creator, offer them.

People can subscribe and unsubscribe whenever they want. It's a way to support artists directly without any sort of middlemen.
 
Edge

Edge

A King's Landing
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
21,012
Celle, Germany
Everyone knows about this, that's why one of the biggest Patreon users, Germany's gaming podcast "The Pod" with currently 19500$ a month, created and alternative for their audience where you, on one side, can pay with via online banking now, which is not possible on Patreon, but also directly subscribe for a full year if you want to.
 
ishan

ishan

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,192
hmm wasnt aware of this. I assume it should def be closed (/made the default , it seems you can opt for a pay immediately option as the creator)

Its not like pateon content creators want to offer a free month.
 
Chamaeleonx

Chamaeleonx

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,348
hordak said:
As of 2 hours ago, i didn't this option. So i just gave up and deleted my account. Also i deleted it mainly out of spite. I left a nasty note on my IG and tagged @patreon. I doubt they would read it or even care.



I'm going to switch to Onlyfans. and charge like $5-10 a month instead of doing tiers. Their cut is a bit higher - 20% versus %5-7 from Patreon. But with Onlyfans I get paid up fronttttt.
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Personally wouldn't have deleted it right away though. =/
Maybe you just missed the option.
 
Odesu

Odesu

Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,539
Absolutely everyone who does this to small artists, journalists and entertainers is an absolute piece of garbage. Seriously. We're making enough money off of our patreon that we can deal with a few declines, but for those where every single patron counts? Inexcusable.
 
Ketchup

Ketchup

Member
Nov 5, 2017
170
I launched my patreon a month or so ago and thankfully not had this yet.

There are also sites that scrape patreons and then repost the content for free on their sites. They're generally of the more adult or niche variety (as random artist or podcast probably doesn't have he same pull) but it's equally as disgusting.
 
ZackieChan

ZackieChan

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
8,056
hordak said:
As of 2 hours ago, i didn't this option. So i just gave up and deleted my account. Also i deleted it mainly out of spite. I left a nasty note on my IG and tagged @patreon. I doubt they would read it or even care.



I'm going to switch to Onlyfans. and charge like $5-10 a month instead of doing tiers. Their cut is a bit higher - 20% versus %5-7 from Patreon. But with Onlyfans I get paid up fronttttt.
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You didn't think to ask about this BEFORE deleting the account and bugging out on social media?
 
C.B.

C.B.

Member
Oct 26, 2017
63
England
Yeah I never had this issue and have had a Patreon account for several years. Charging upfront was an option that was introduced a while back to stop exactly this from happening. It should have been an option available while you were creating your account and choosing how your Patreon would charge your clients (monthly vs. per creation etc). There's a whole FAQ page about it : https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/210291283. It seems the charge up front feature is only available if you charge monthly, rather than per creation. However, if someone creates and account the first of July, and you make 5 paid posts before the first of August, and they quit at the end of July, they should still be charged within that time period (if you made a paid per creation account).

As well as that, patrons who exit the service shouldn't be showing up as "declined" as they would immediately drop out of your "attempted pledges" figure iirc. Declined pledges are when Patreon has tried to charge the card, but the card is either expired or the bank has blocked the charge. Your overall issue seems kind of weird or maybe I'm missing something...

Not getting a reply in that amount of time is pretty shit though
 
tsampikos

tsampikos

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,613
Communicate with your fans. Ask for help spreading the word. Let them know how hard it is for you... give them a reason to want to support you for the sake of supporting you instead of treating the patreon like a paywall.
 
OP
OP
hordak

hordak

Member
Oct 31, 2017
2,533
Anaheim, CA
C.B. said:
Y However, if someone creates and account the first of July, and you make 5 paid posts before the first of August, and they quit at the end of July, they should still be charged within that time period (if you made a paid per creation account). As well as that, patrons who exit the service shouldn't be showing up as "declined" as they would immediately drop out of your "attempted pledges" figure iirc. Declined pledges are when Patreon has tried to charge the card, but the card is either expired or the bank has blocked the charge. Your overall issue seems kind of weird or maybe I'm missing something...

Not getting a reply in that amount of time is pretty shit though
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It was not set to paid per creation. I only had one problem with a decline card. but i just noticed today that i had ALOT for July. and since i can't communicate with Patreon, i would never this problem resolved. It's not like they're gonna all of a sudden get a better customer support team. I asked other photographers and some have had various issues.

tsampikos said:
Communicate with your fans. Ask for help spreading the word. Let them know how hard it is for you... give them a reason to want to support you for the sake of supporting you instead of treating the patreon like a paywall.
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its okay, I only had 20, well 13 followers so its not that big of a deal. I started it 4 months ago so it wasn't exactly a waste of my time. I can just start over again with Onlyfans or bentbox.com and then use the same photos :)

Chamaeleonx said:
Personally wouldn't have deleted it right away though. Maybe you just missed the option.
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nope, I checked often. I emailed the guy at patreon with no response. I posted comments on their Instagram page with no reply. I couldn't find any other way to contact them. When the only way to get customer assistance is through zendesk but zendesk doesn't work, doesn't let you reset your password, and with no other means of getting any other issues resolved, I just got mad and quit.

Btw if you go to their sitemap page, https://www.patreon.com/sitemap, this is what you see. A complete list of all the pages and posts and crap. why??????

TAipgPm.png
 
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Jecht

Jecht

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,650
This is the cost of doing business OP. I own a small business and have had to put up with charge-backs from time to time. It comes with the territory of dealing with the public. Not every customer/fan is going to be a great person.

Bugging out and deleting your account was overkill and honestly a little childish since now you have to start over on a lessor known site.
 
tsampikos

tsampikos

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,613
hordak said:
its okay, I only had 20, well 13 followers so its not that big of a deal. I started it 4 months ago so it wasn't exactly a waste of my time. I can just start over again with Onlyfans or bentbox.com and then use the same photos :)
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None of this says you are looking for support and people will pick up on it. You seem to want a product page and this doesn't really foster "support"... good luck with getting people to follow you on a lesser known platform.

Just out of curiosity what do you do on patreon/ instagram?
 
OP
OP
hordak

hordak

Member
Oct 31, 2017
2,533
Anaheim, CA
tsampikos said:
None of this says you are looking for support and people will pick up on it. You seem to want a product page and this doesn't really foster "support"... good luck with getting people to follow you on a lesser known platform. Just out of curiosity what do you do on patreon/ instagram?
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i did look for support from patreon. i dont' expect my instagram followers to provide me with assistance. If they like my stuff, then hopefully join me in my future endeavors. Patreon was just something i wanted to try out to make some extra cash but it wasn't work out for me. thats what i mean when i said its not a big deal. I didnt' have to open a store or spend hours coding a website. I have spent two years fostering a following on my instagram and hopefully some one them will support me financially moving on. Patreon was not supporting me. yes i was a bit childish, I did act out of spite and anger. Well I'm fucking human,

The problem is people can still sign up and and cancel with most other patreon pages. hopefully they fix that problem.

p.s. I'm a photographer. I'm not going to mention my IG cause i dont want everyone to think that I'm just bitching to get more subscribers or something. actually me being a big baby is probably making everyone here think Im an idiot. Which I am. Sometimes :)
 
gozu

gozu

Member
Oct 27, 2017
10,315
America
hordak said:
Imagine if Netflix billed you after 30 days of watching their movies and tv shows, instead of the 1st day.
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That's exactly what Netflix does though, so you just undermined your argument.

Imagine if 65% of netflix customers ended up not paying for their service!
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Netflix doesn't advertise the number of people who cancel after the first 30 days, but it could very well be 65%. Bottom line is enough people end up rejoining and keeping netflix in the end because they like it so much that netflix is rolling in gold and its execs are palling around with hollywoo stars under the pretense of making Netflix originals. I see you netflix!

So basically Patreon "forgot" to advertise that it offers a super janky, wildly inconsistent, "0-30 day trial" of sorts. All for the sake of unifying billing on one day, likely to save processing costs or some such. See, crypto would fix all that. I have some cheap bitcoin I can sell you. ;)
 
OP
OP
hordak

hordak

Member
Oct 31, 2017
2,533
Anaheim, CA
gozu said:
That's exactly what Netflix does though, so you just undermined your argument.
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"Monthly charges are billed at the beginning of your billing cycle and can take several days to appear on your account."

They bill you on the 1st day. if your credit card doesn't work, you don't get netflix? but then again, my mom pays for mine :)
 
C.B.

C.B.

Member
Oct 26, 2017
63
England
hordak said:
It was not set to paid per creation. I only had one problem with a decline card. but i just noticed today that i had ALOT for July. and since i can't communicate with Patreon, i would never this problem resolved. It's not like they're gonna all of a sudden get a better customer support team. I asked other photographers and some have had various issues.
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Wait so did you have charge up front on or not?

Also I'm confused as to why you're going to the sitemap page? Arn't those for webdevs and other web related uses not like...for the actual users of the site to use?? I'm not sure how that's related.
 
OP
OP
hordak

hordak

Member
Oct 31, 2017
2,533
Anaheim, CA
C.B. said:
Wait so did you have charge up front on or not? Also I'm confused as to why you're going to the sitemap page? Arn't those for webdevs and other web related uses not like...for the actual users of the site to use?? I'm not sure how that's related.
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no i did not have the option to pay up front. and i was pointing out that the people that work at Patreon are stupid. If you go to a sitemap to a website, like bank of america, it generates a list of pages you can visit. that's what site maps are for I thought.

https://www.bankofamerica.com/sitemap/personal.go?request_locale=en_US


uh that a multimillion dollar company offering a free month trial. after the first month, you get billed on the day you signed up. so you have to pay to see. Patreon bills the person on the 1st day following the month you join.
 
doof_warrior

doof_warrior

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,431
NJ
i never understood why patreon didn't just launch with pay up front, but pro-rate the first month based on when the user signs up so they're not paying the full month price for less than a full month
seems like a win/win for the patron and artist
 
MagicDoogies

MagicDoogies

Member
Oct 31, 2017
1,047
CormoranStrike said:
I mean people do abuse free trials with Netflix and amazon prime and the like.
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Those are multi million companies. They can afford free trials. That's why they offer them.
Patreon on the other hand is comprised of small, hardworking individuals and groups that rely on the platform to make ends meet or provide monetary assistance. It's a shit move to pull and people doing this knows that.
 
C.B.

C.B.

Member
Oct 26, 2017
63
England
hordak said:
no i did not have the option to pay up front. and i was pointing out that the people that work at Patreon are stupid. If you go to a sitemap to a website, like bank of america, it generates a list of pages you can visit. that's what site maps are for I thought.

https://www.bankofamerica.com/sitemap/personal.go?request_locale=en_US



uh that a multimillion dollar company offering a free month trial. after the first month, you get billed on the day you signed up. so you have to pay to see. Patreon bills the person on the 1st day following the month you join.
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Sitemaps are for search engine crawlers for the most part, and though they can technically be used by clients to navigate a site, that's not really their main purpose. So it's not exactly relevant to the problem you're having, and having showed it to a dev they said it's not particularly weird or strange to see it like this.

I dunno man you could just open your patreon back up and tick the "charge them up front" box and that would solve most of your problem it seems. Spending time trying to make a company look stupid when you could have ticked a box to ensure you didn't have this problem doesn't exactly paint the picture you're trying to portray here...
 
Herr Starr

Herr Starr

Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,226
Norway
You fucked up, OP. Charge Upfront is available to all creators now, so this is no longer a problem as long as you take steps to fix it. I suspect you looked in the wrong place when you checked if it was available to you. More importantly for the specific problem you have with declines, this is normal during the first day or two of the month. A lot of people get declined charges for whatever reason, then it either fixes itself on the next attempt shortly after, the patron fixes it manually (for example by adding funds to the account they're using or by changing their credit card info), or finally, if everything else fails, Patreon gives up and the decline is final. The latter is rare. Had you waited a few more days, your decline rate would have been near zero. Also, it seems there's something wonky going on with charges through Patreon this month since, from everything I've heard, the decline rate is astronomical for everyone compared to what it usually should be. This will fix itself within the next few days as it always does.

Your impatience got the best of you. I know running crowdfunding is stressful and it's easy to look at every negative thing as "proof" that people either don't like you or are out to get you, but you're jumping at shadows in this case.
 
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