I just went through a long process of helping a patron update her credit card after the old one expired. But it wasn’t just a matter of updating the credit card, she had a NEW credit card she wanted to use and we needed to “Transfer membership” from the old credit card to the new one. It was a pain the ass, frankly, and a normal person would just say F-it.
60% or more people use the internet on their phones which makes the whole process even more complicated, frankly, the way things display on a tiny screen, without the use of a full sized keyboard.
But… I realized that a ton of my patrons just simply let their credit card expire and then give up on the Patreon system. What is the strategy to get these patrons to update? Please share your experiences. (If I look at my total “pledges” vs. monthly payout it is HALF. When I analyze the exit interviews, it’s clear that I lose most patrons simply when their credit card expires and they can’t figure out (or be bothered) with updating.
To be clear: This system is effed when you want to switch your credit card entirely. The “Transfer membership” process is not intuitive… at all.
Patreon and its creators are leaving a lot of money off the table.
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Honestly, THIS should be Patreon’s focus on “updating billing” and not “completely uprooting the billing system”. There are already loads of issues turning people off supporting us. This should be their priority. I’ve lost several patrons to declined cards, and one deals with issues every month. It’s ridiculous.
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agreed on this too!
I lose many patrons because they don’t know how to update their new CC - or aren’t even notified that their CC is outdated/expired and then it boots them off. Many of my patrons say they don’t get a notification that it hasn’t been charged, so they don’t even know to fix it.
I’d love for this to be handled by patreon and not patrons/creators as I don’t feel it’s right to navigate patreon’s billing system with clients when that’s one of the boons patreon totes about the platform.
I’d be willing to provide feedback, my experience if you all need it!
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This problem needs to be fixed really quickly… I just noticed that I lost 19 patrons over the past 6 months and I guess I had not been paying close enough attention nor do you get any notification that there’s even a problem. Since I had some people switch to annual, etc, I had not noticed the income difference very closely until I went in and filtered my members by declined cards. C’mon Patreon - this is not that hard of a problem to fix!
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By the way. I did some calculations and this has cost me $1,100 since the start of 2020.
I have had this complaint as well - my patron simply canceled his account and signed up again because it was so much trouble. Credit cards get compromised and new credit cards get issued all the time - why is this so difficult?
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Could you describe this process? In what ways is it difficult?
@mindy ? Anyone? This has been a big problem for me as well. I lost my biggest patron ($100/month) for 13 months because he couldn’t figure out how to update his card when he got a new one, and he got frustrated. He came back, but I think that is a very very rare case!
Mindy doesn’t work at Patreon anymore. You’ll need to ask @reyna