@Onyrica In actuality, it’s been longer then that, sadly. There are many other threads about this and conversations elsewhere asking for this. They used to have one, so this is extremely frustrating.
@reyna Could you shed some light on this? This is a really important, simple and basic feature and many of us are very confused why this hasn’t been on the roadmap for years. This is such a simple update that would make a lot of our lives easier and prevent us from dealing with alienating patrons because of those block emails (You folks can say it doesn’t specify who it was from all you want, as we’ve said countless times, it’s not hard to figure out who blocked you. It shouldn’t send an email if there is a block and unblock within like 30 minutes holy moly. This is one of the simplest updates folks have been needing for years and I’m so frustrated because the button used to exist!!! )
I’ve been waiting for a real answer on this since the option to delete was removed. I don’t think we ever got an explanation for why it had to go in the first place.
The longer this post sits here, the more any of our requests look like a joke.
Patreon doesn’t care what Creators want. That much is becoming blatantly obvious.
This is a way to discourage us from deleting patrons. They know we won’t do it if the patron is going to be informed that they were blocked. That allows Patreon to pump up the number of patrons to show their venture capitalists.
(Not native eng speaker)
I also REALLY want/need this option, please, I want to delete people without blocking and the RUDE “This artist blocked you” email, I’d love them to join to me in the future if they can! But with this they probably won’t come back.
Also there are new people who don’t know how to cancel a pledge and I have to do it myself, it isn’t fair to have to send and explanation of the email to every single person to not scare them.
I do think “Your pledge was removed” part is enough for people we don’t want to block.
As we understand this is causing a lot of issues, like the one coming up here frequently around being forced to block patrons, the team is looking into ways we can automatically remove patrons who end up in a declined state and haven’t cancelled and are showing up in limited tiers and Patron Relationship Manager We still want to make it accessible for you to re-engage these patrons. They’ll still show up in the Relationship Manager in case a you wants to reach out to encourage them to re-pledge, but they’ll be clearly marked as cancelled due to nonpayment. Stay tuned for more updates!
I don’t want Patreon to automatically remove people. I want to be specifically notified when someone hasn’t paid so I can reach out and handle it myself and remove them on my terms if need be.
Why is a remove button so hard just as a bare minimum feature? Folks should be opt into the automation if it suits them but not forced. One size does not fit all and we all handle our patrons and businesses differently.
Appreciate the feedback and that makes sense. Another thing we want to make sure we consider is the poor experience for patrons if they have a long term declined pledge and they update their payment method (maybe even for a different creator) and that declined pledge from months ago would go through unexpectedly. We want to avoid that situation for you and your patrons.
That sounds like a tech problem that should be solved on it’s own, not forcibly strapping creators onto your automation rocket which will affect our relationship with our patrons.
Also, I’ve been told by staff in the past that patrons will not get recharged after so many days of a declined payment, even with an updated card (And I’ve seen this happen myself where someone updates their payment and it waits until next pay day to charge again.) So what is the truth here? What actually happens when someone declines for over a month then updates their payment? Is this documented and tested or just a glitch that happens sometimes and someone might get retroactively charged? And is this inclusive of folks not on the charge upfront model or just charge upfront?
Patreon has repeatedly told us they dont want to interfere with our relationship with our audience and yet, released features, patches or future planned features keep interfering. Like turning off public commenting on posts for everyone for example. Really messed up how my page functioned and I’ve lost interest with some potential patrons because I can no longer engage with them on the platform! No proper fix to trolling/spam in sight, as that was directly sited by staff as the reason it happened.
I’m so tired of having my agency taken away on how I to run my business over things that can have straight forward solutions. Or at least show us some data on why this is the “best way” for you folks? Something, so it doesnt just feel like we’re constantly being blind sided by overly complex solutions that seem way out of left field.
Hey Temrin, appreciate your candor and honesty about what’s frustrating you. What I hear is that you want us to consider the maximum amount of flexibility we can give in solutions to creator pain points. That’s definitely something for us to consider in implementing a solution here, and great feedback for the team.
We have a blog post here on the retry logic that declined pledges go through, which can result in the situation above, or could result in the pledge remaining in declined state. At a certain point we don’t try to retry the pledge until the payment method is updated, for charge up front it would be immediately, for non-charge-up-front it would be on the next 1st of the month. A patron could update their payment method and cancel their pledge at the same time to avoid being charged, which sounds like what you may have experienced in your audience? Hope this can clear things up a bit.
That is what many of the solutions conversations have been for like 4 years now, finding good flexible options. Over the years we keep hearing that Patreon doesn’t want to interfere with how we interact with our patrons and yet, the more features that come out, the more it seems like there is huge disconnect within Patreons staff communications and no one really knows what the goals are anymore and everyone has wildly different views on who is actually making Patreon money (it’s creators… we’re the reason our patrons come to the platform and stick around. We’re the ones giving you cuts of our income to make a platform that works and allows some flexibility in running.) I’ve even heard Jack state flexibility is wanted, multiple times when he’s been live on video feeds with creators just during the last year. Some flexibility is needed for a platform of this size that caters to people across almost every country and industry that exists. Maximum flexibility is likely overkill, but -some- well thought out flexibility because of thorough research, good creator feedback communications, etc are needed.
To be quite honest, it feels like a ground up rebuild of Patreon and releasing a 2.0 platform is needed. I’ve seen you answering other posts here on the forums with roadblocks that stem from the systems that are already built and implemented, even if grand scale changes are doable and are done on various other platforms. (Heck, Patreon has sorta done it once before.) I totally get that previously built systems can really hamper what can easily be updated without affecting other systems but that doesn’t mean they should just be ignored because it’s hard. Plenty of sites I’ve been on have completely rebuilt their systems to get properly updated with new tech, better workflows, etc. and while sure it can be a pain rebuilding your account if new accounts are needed (some sites offer migrations which could be implemented here to migrate posts, setups, etc and I’d recommend it) it’s well worth the flexibility the new systems can provide if you are seeing major roadblocks because of previously built aspects of the site that i guess no one is willing to tamper with or change.
Thanks for the link on the retry logic and adjacent topics. That was an interesting read, though it doesn’t really state what the optimal retry times are, which would be good to know. It still seems quite silly that you cannot put work into just making sure that when someone updates their payment, they could be asked if they want to reinitialize their payments right away (and list what pay upfront creators they are subscribed to that need a payment, how much, etc) or can choose to wait until the 1st of the month before doing so and obviously, they shouldn’t have access to viewing content if they declined and wont get access until the new payment goes through. And no, my patrons did not cancel when they updated. I am -not- charge up front because that feature screws me and my patrons over on multiple fronts, even if parts of it would be very beneficial. The good does not outweigh the bad, for me. So they just didn’t get recharged right away because it would have waited until the 1st.
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