Moin,
this maybe a personal thing, I am sure people around the world have quite different perspectives on it. However, I think it is worth a discussion, since it just made a dent into my image of Patreon:
I received a mail yesterday (note: July 2017) about “it has just been Payday in May” (note: May). In that mail, friendly in style, there was the plea to answer “one question” (note: The question was not asked, the mail just told me that Patreon had one question for me). Then a link to some third party, unknown website.
The response I got from Patreon upon asking about this mail being legit (considering it talked about May PLUS linked to some third party website without telling me about it being third party) PLUS the message header showing fourth party by-lines (meaning: The mail was sent through some obscure mailing service, not through “legit” Patreon MX) - the response was, basically, “welcome to Patreon” and “sorry that you considered the mail spam”.
I must admit, I am puzzled. On my side of the planet it’s July, not May. If I am asking a partner about something introducing the conversation by “now we are having May”, in July, my partner would consider me a fool or ask if I just erred a tiny bit. We would both laugh and go along.
However, if I used obscure, unknown “services” to collect data about my partner (like IP addresses, time of response, maybe email routing information), I would definitely TELL my partner about what I am doing there.
Honestly - I would just ASK the question I wanted to ask instead of “click-baiting” to a third site.
That’s my story. I haven’t visited their “we have a question for you” because I still don’t know if the email was legit in the first place and I don’t know what that site is, who runs it etc. Personally, I would prefer an open communication, information about what’s going on and a way to check the legitimity of links sent out to me. Plus, if I inquire about a mail being legit, I would prefer a clear statement about that.
Marc