Patreon - Patrons who are manipulating their pledges

[altena000.livejournal.com]

Hi,

I signed up for patreon two months ago. And in short: I have overall monthly income around 600$. But I end up with around 400. I have it set as per two weeks. So I give them pledges twice a month while they are charged once a month but doubled.

So I receive much less money that it's said on the main page. It happens not only because people are declining transactions but mostly because they're pledging, after they do, they have access to whole patreon gallery (I don't know why they have access to whole gallery not only since they joined?) they download everything and change their pledge to minimum - if they are gentelman, if not, they withdraw their subsribtion right away after downloading stuff and dissapear. Until the next month, when they do the same thing. So basically they get everything for free when other people pay for their pledges.

So my questions are:
1.How do I ban patreon (Not delete but pernamently ban them from the list) and how do I ban patreons who are not my patrons anymore. (because they subscribe for 5 minutes and it's hard to catch them, and I want to avoid they do it again)

2.You too are informed via e-mails about everything, that you got message, that you got a new patreon, that this patreon changed their pledge, that your patreon just came back from the toilet BUT you are not informed that and who just withdraw their subscribtion? I have people who dissapear all of sudden and are manipulating their presence to avoid payment and I'd have to work as an policeofficer to catch them all. That makes no sense

3. Can I rearrange my pledges so the new patreons are getting acces to the gallery only from the day they joined?

I'm asking here because I couldn't find the answers on patreon site. I hope I will find some answers here.

In the end I wanted to share an opinion that manipulating on patreon with pledging is highly pathetic. I put a lot of affort in drawing all the stuff that I normally charge 100$ per piece. I ask for 5 dollars and people STILL tries to manipulate as hell just not to give me a damn dollar for the whole month of my work. Or are deeply offended that I am not giving them stuff for free because they can't affort to spend 2$ per month. The toilet paper costs 2$. Its discouraging because I can't even judge how much will I earn monthly.

Comments

[celestinaketzia.livejournal.com]

The short answer is no, there's nothing you can do about it. Patreon has zero protections in this regard. People can jump in, get full access, and take off with all of your content all in a matter of minutes. I have personally emailed Patreon about this, and they told me they were going to get a ban feature rolling but it's been a while since then.

Due to this huge loophole, I have decided to pull my Patreon entirely. It's too much of a headache and I'm doing far more work than what I end up paid for. Also, that doesn't even take into consideration Patreon and Strype's fees which are astronomical when combined. I don't mind paying a fee for a service, but not when the service allows for such rampant abuse.

[kazeno-taka.livejournal.com]

I really hope they go a step farther and implement a feature where the person CANNOT access content until their pledge is processed. I don't know what they can do about chargebacks, since that's on the side of the bank or credit card, but if the money is actually taken out of their account instead of them being able to cancel right before the withdrawal, I think it would cut down on this sort of fraud.

And I wouldn't be adverse to a big Beware post with a blacklist of pledge-dodgers. So that people know to block them as soon as they pledge so they don't get any free stuff.

[celestinaketzia.livejournal.com]

The thing about that though is that would require A_B to make a post involving people's emails and most likely real names. We don't allow these items in the community as it is due to LJ's restrictions on harassment.

[kazeno-taka.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's true. I was thinking usernames but those are super easy to change between accounts. I don't get why this is such a problem with Patreon and not other sites. I don't hear of this sort of stuff nearly as much with Kickstarter, for example, and you can offer digital content with pledge levels. I guess the big question is, why is it so easy for people to do chargebacks? Is it because Patreon basically a donation site with 'goodies' given for donating, so credit cards consider it okay to process a chargeback?

[celestinaketzia.livejournal.com]

This isn't a chargeback, though. I don't think we even know how Patreon handles chargebacks as they do the billing and you get a pay out minus fees. If anyone would do a chargeback, it would hit Patreon and not the artist.

The issue is that content is available at sign up, and it's very easy to edit it or to remove it entirely.

[nambroth.livejournal.com]

It's not a chargeback. No one is getting charged in the first place.

When you sign up to be a Patron on Patreon, and you pledge $X to a user, you are automatically allowed "in" on that level of the user's content. Obviously this is an issue for digital content, because then I could download whatever I want of the digital content, and change my pledge back to $0 or a lower amount, while keeping the content I downloaded. Patrons are only charged once per month. So if I did this before I was charged-- free stuff!!

This isn't an issue with Kickstarter, because people pledge, get their money taken at the end of the campaign, and THEN get emailed or sent the reward (be it digital or physical).

[kazeno-taka.livejournal.com]

I haven't used Patreon, so I only have a vague idea of how it works (make a pledge, pledge is charged to your card on X day, you can cancel pledge any time up until X day). It seems a bit strange that patreons can access the content before they physically pay. It seems like it would be easier and safer for artists if the content goes 'live' the day when pledges go through.

In that case, no one is able to get free stuff. It's sad that you have to treat everyone like they're going to steal, but it seems like there's more than just a few bad apples, particularly in the original poster's case where $600 worth of pledges turned into $400 of actual money.

[nambroth.livejournal.com]

Well, part of the way people use patreon is not really as a sales site to buy a product, but as a way to support an artist as the artist creates work and shares it. One support level that myself and many other artists use is just a general "you get to see all the neat behind the scenes stuff". This is a slow trickle of creativity over the course of a month that patrons enjoy seeing.

Even just posting new content only after the first of the month (when patrons get charged) wouldn't really help? If someone were to sign up any time after the first of the month they could still see all of the content uploaded up until that point. It doesn't just go away. Though, an artist could indeed pull/delete their content after a certain time. Or just email content directly. That would be sort of a headache for strictly visual artists just making stuff to share, though. And goes against the flow of the whole concept of "support me and you get to see what I am working on constantly!".

Of course not everyone uses Patreon in this way. I am also lucky that I have had very few incidents of people not honoring their pledge or pulling it after getting to see the goodies. But it is very easy to abuse, should someone wish to do so. If I provided high value digital content (Like a musician might in a digital download of music, or someone that makes an involved digital file like a tutorial, or maybe high res art, .PSDs, etc..) I would likely just make sure that I sent it direct to patrons via email or dropbox. But I am mostly sharing a stream of "behind the scenes process, WIPS, etc" and it would be a huge hassle and an immense time sink to email all of my patrons each time. Not to mention it might be annoying for some of them to get several emails a week!

[altena000.livejournal.com]

"And I wouldn't be adverse to a big Beware post with a blacklist of pledge-dodgers." - That is actually very good idea indeed. I was thinking of doing such thing on my deviantart page but if I do it there, people will find out that they can actually still from patreon, so maybe.. don't tell them. I could do it also on patreon page but I'm afraid since I will be the only one doing such thing, people might get angry that I act like a police. Even if it's right. Nowadays people want everything for free.
But it is an idea after all. Thank you very much

[kazeno-taka.livejournal.com]

Celestinaketzia made a good point that in order for a blacklist to be effective, you'd have to post real names and emails, since usernames are too easily changed and aren't a reliable way to catch people committing fraud. And posting personal info like that would be against the rules of the community (not to mention dangerous to the people being blacklisted). I wish there was an easy fix to all of this, but it sounds like until Patreon fixes its own system and finds a way to really crack down on people pulling out last second and still getting all their goodies, it's a problem that's going to stick around. :(

[nambroth.livejournal.com]

Additionally, most people seem to use only their real name on Patreon (in my limited experience).

[wuvvumsoc.livejournal.com]

I'm curious, do you still pay for the fees of any backer that backs out of it? :/

[celestinaketzia.livejournal.com]

No. Whatever clears they take a cut of prior to sending it to your bank. So if you get $100 worth of pledges it comes out to about $93ish to your bank.

[altena000.livejournal.com]

in my case it takes 10% exactly. So out of 100 I get 90.

[wuvvumsoc.livejournal.com]

That's good to know! Thank you. c:

[altena000.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Although I was hoping for different answer :) more optimistic..
I asked because one of the known patreon artist made something like " if you want previous reward then you can pick it" - so I thought we have possiility to block rewards. Because it is kind of sad perspective to delete the content after for example 10 days. Or a month. It's just like.. working in a zoo.

[celestinaketzia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, unfortunately I couldn't give you a nice answer. It's turned what was supposed to be a fun personal project into a gigantic headache. Patreon is a great idea in theory, but if we have to treat Patrons like they're two seconds from stealing everything from us then it's not really all that fun to deal with.

I suppose if you ran it like Nambroth does as just extras, it'd definitely work a lot better. Mine was a paid series though that had content made monthly for it.

[thaily.livejournal.com]

I've worked in a zoo and have never deleted any animals :3