I love this! Thanks for sharing with us.
Hey @erin,
The way I see it, declined patrons should be removed by the end of the declined month.
From what I’ve noticed over the last 6 months, whenever a new monthly cycle starts, the legacy patrons from the previous months are not charged anymore for the subsequent ones (they don’t even appear on the new monthly patrons list).
Example of how it’s currently working:
- Patron Billy gets declined on the processing of Apr 1st.
- He remains declined in Apr 30th (and is shown as declined on the April manager)
- When May starts, he is not even charged for May anymore (Billy isn’t the May manager)
That creates a big confusion because whenever a patron does correct his payment after the month turns, it’s a chore to explain to them that he won’t be eligible for the current rewards, but only the rewards for 2, 3 or even more months before.
So, I’d suggest either remove declineds by the end of that month or start charging them for all subsequent months (I consider the latter a bad option, since those patrons might get charged a lot of unexpected money at once when the fix it).
If there were going to be automated rules, perhaps they should be harsher with people whose first payment declines, as opposed to people who have paid for some time before the decline.
I would be fine removing someone whose first payment declines at the end of the month (giving them the month to clear it up).
I would perhaps give to the end of the second month for someone who has paid successfully previously.
As far as I understand, if you are declined for 4 months and want to get back on track, you have to pay 4-5 months worth of your pledge (all your pledges, I guess, if you support multiple creators) to get caught up. That MAY not be a big deal for $1 pledges, but seems absurdly unlikely to happen for $15 or $50 pledges or whatever. Basically, I don’t think it takes very long before someone should quit all their projects and re-pledge so they only have to pay one month’s worth. Is that right?
If that’s case, I’d be fine with Patreon automatically canceling people by the end of the second month (before they start really racking up the multiplier), but perhaps the final “you are fired!” message could include links to all the projects they previously pledged to and a “here you go if you’d like to pledge again” type of message.
FWIW, I’d also be fine just having a “remove patron” button and using it myself.
@erin
My biggest pickle right now is that mostly everyday I get a surge of 4-to-5 fake patrons (probably the same bot) that get immediately removed from Patreon, but still remain as pledgers on my patron manager. (img attached)
Why can’t they also have their pledges automatically removed with their removed pages?
Everyday I have to go through the chore of blocking one by one individually… 
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I’d love to add my voice to the choir of asking for the ability to remove patrons without blocking them.
And if they come back - it would be great to see that they are the same person who was previously a patron… but I won’t be too greedy and ask for that right now.
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I like the idea of auto-removal. I’ve been asking for a delete button for over 2 years, it’s good to see some movement on this at last.
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When you retry is an email also sent to them at some point to let them know they’ve been declined?
I don’t have a lot of patrons, so typically if there is a decline it’s been sorted out before the 5th in the retries.
I have 2 declines this month and I suspect it’s card expiration. I also think these are 2 people who pledged to me a year or more ago and completely forgot they have been givin’ me $1 as I don’t know them and they’ve never participated in anything I’ve been doing. They are both Patreon creators who have abandoned their own Patreon pages. If they don’t get processed in the retries, it would be great to be able to delete them without blocking them. I can see why it’s necessary to be able to block some people, but it seems rather aggressively hostile toward someone who’s been pledging for so long and probably just forgot. A delete function would be great for if they don’t ever go through. I wouldn’t care if it was automatic, but I would hope Patreon would send an automated email when it’s done to let them know that their payment declined so they’ve been deleted as a patron, but they’re welcome to come back any time.
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That would help so much, I just spent an entire hour on blocking and unblocked 66 users with declined payment who was getting my stuff for free during months. Yes, they was able to see my posts even with declined status, and saw on the patron manager that their last charge was 3 months ago.
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I completely agree. It is tedious and time-consuming to have to block and then unblock all our long-declined patrons. I absolutely do not understand why we don’t have the delete feature any more.
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Though it would be good to to combine “delete non-paying patrons” with the feature request to “identify patrons who have paused their pledge” or whatever that’s called. Just so we’re sure who we’re deleting.
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I’m having the same problem with a patron and would also love to have an option to delete without blocking.
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I’ve got some declined patrons and a few that show up as fraudulent. However the only way to remove them is to block them? There should be an option to delete them, rather than having to block patrons who always decline payment or in a few cases, their bank shows their Patronage as fraud.
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Thanks for this feedback @INeedDiverseGames! We have a thread about this so I will merge your topic to that one to continue the discussion and updates there.
Sorry if these have already been addressed, but I’m wondering if:
a) Creators can have the option of being CC/BCC-ed on the emails to patrons about declined cards? Then I wouldn’t be so confused as to whether the patron was emailed and what language was used in the email. Might help me tailor future responses and follow-ups.
b) At the onset of pledging, patrons could be prompted to fill out a field for alternate email address or phone number for Patreon to text automatically only in the event of a declined payment/if their main email isn’t working/if there’s an “urgent matter”?
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hi @chrysanthetan, thanks for the post! We’re adding some more communication within Patreon itself to help limit the confusion around retrying payments, as it’s not feasible sadly to CC the creator in the emails itself. I hear your confusion though, and we have a lot more coming in how we can help be more transparent in our processes around payments - we’re thinking about that and working on it this quarter so I’d love to hear more about where you are most confused/frustrated/or unclear on!
For the secondary communication method, it’s an interesting idea for sure. I wonder that a patron who puts an email they don’t actively check as their primary email, whether they would just do the same thing for a second email address or phone number! Some people just hate to get any kind of company communication. But I think it’s a nice option to opt in to more comms in matters around payment - I’ll pass this on as an idea as I know we’re also thinking about methods of communication for patrons who set their payments up to support creators but then don’t visit patreon.com very much.
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That makes sense about not being able to CC the creator!
But for the secondary method of asking patrons to write in an alternate email address, i wonder if there’s a way to encourage genuine email addresses with the language used. Perhaps something like “Don’t worry – this email address will only be used as an ultimate last resort if the creator really needs to contact you” or “don’t worry – we will never use this email address unless your payment method has declined 3 times [potentially insert something about how declined payments happen to everyone but can be a significant source of financial stress for creators].”
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That’s a good idea! We too have a problem with not being able to get a hold of people when there’s a problem!
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Love the new ideas flowing here!
@mindy Any update about deleting patrons? I have a number of patrons who I am getting ready to block/unblock to get them out of the system but would prefer not to if some kind of delete option is coming soon.
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@dearestscooter No word on it yet but I have told the product team it’s one of the most highly requested features to come from from the forum. Hopefully we can get it in scheduled in the Q4 roadmap, in the meantime I’d continue without it.
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I’m a little late to this thread, but yes, I would love what was talked about early on with the option to have Patreon automatically remove declined patrons after a certain amount of time and fair warning. I wouldn’t mind doing it myself either, if we could only have one or the other. My own frustration is with my tiers where rewards are limited to a certain number of patrons. I’ve got declined patrons in those tiers who are taking up limited spots, which I could reopen to new patrons. But I don’t want to block them, since the help center says “Blocking a patron will remove their pledge to you as well as prevent them from becoming your patron again.” Thanks for working this issue!
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