Like clockwork, when it comes time to collect subscriptions from patrons, Patreon screws up yet again. (Click here for the endless saga of Patreon’s inability to do anything right.)
This time it appears the issue is that they moved their payment processor to the UK, so anyone who was paying from the States with debit or credit cards will be listed as a fraudulent payment, so their subscription here will fail, they’ll be removed from the subscription list if their card is declined twice, and some people are reporting their cards are being cancelled by their banks.
I am so sorry if you’re one of the people caught up in this. I can’t imagine how upset I’d be if I found out my debit card was frozen or cancelled, but Patreon is putting this back on us, the creators to contact all our patrons about this. And they aren’t telling us what’s going on, just what you see in the image up there, and what I’m sharing here was pieced together by people wanting to know what was happening. So I’m supposed to tell you what?
The second screw up is that I can’t take any money out of Patreon as that process results in errors, too.
On top of all of this, I can’t even get into most of my Patreon site as there are so many of these errors, and there’s something about RSS feeds, but that wouldn’t affect us.
And I’m paying 13% of the money I bring in to them as a service fee for all of this.
What does this mean for you? If you’re a Patreon subscriber, and you’re one of the people whose payment was declined, you aren’t even showing up on my list of subscribers as they booted you off. And you won’t be able to get into the blog. (I can’t even check to see the members as I’m getting that 500 error in the subscriber management page.)
If you think you’re a subscriber through Patreon, try logging into one of the posts on this blog or into your account. If you can’t do it, then you’re probably one of those affected by this. Or you can go into Patreon and check your status with the blog.
In April, Raymond set up a membership system on the blog so we could get away from Patreon, and we haven’t had a single moment of outage over here. In that same time, I stopped counting how many times Patreon said the system was broken. They’re even to the point that when the event is over, they’re deleted it all from their Twitter feed, which is so dishonest. (Follow their Twitter feed.)
If you’re on Patreon, please please please consider moving over here as a member instead. You’ll get all the same benefits you had on Patreon, you won’t be affected by the never-ending stream of screw ups by that company, we keep more of our money, and I don’t have to pay service fees to a company that offers very little service. It also makes Raymond’s life easier as he has to update the Patreon subscribers every single month, something he doesn’t have to do with the members here.
If you’re a creator who uses Patreon and wants to get away from them, Raymond is happy to give you an overview of what he set up here so you can do it yourself.