Is our total patron count totally made up now?

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So here’s the thing - last month, they changed the way our patron count is displayed to show patrons who had deleted their pledge somewhere along the month, but still had access until the next billing cycle. Fine - it sucks, because I’d rather know the real number of patrons I have at the time, but I can sort of estimate and infer what the number will look like after pledge day.

Except I can’t. After pledge day, the number of patrons on my page makes absolutely no sense no matter how I try to calculate it. Let me illustrate that:

I closed January at 194 patrons, counting the 6 deleted pledges I had. In February, that number should have gone down to 188. Then I had 10 declined pledges on pledge day, so the number should have gone down to 178 while those pledges were unaccounted for. Easy math, right?

Nope. I’m currently sitting at 185 patrons. That’s 9 patrons less than 194. What is this number? It’s not “10 declined pledges” or “6 deleted pledges”. It’s 9 what?

Additionally, in the relationship manager I can see that that 180 pledges were processed on Feb 1. However, in the “pledge growth” tab, I can see that 197 pledges were processed between Jan and Feb. Another TWO numbers that don’t add up to anything. Which is highly ironic, given that the reason we were given for the upfront total reflecting even deleted pledges, was that it had to match what the back end systems showed. You can appreciate that’s going swell.

I realise that this might sound like a minor niggle with the system, but it’s not: I’m close to 200 patrons and I’m trying to plan events to push towards that. Just like Jack and co always tell us to push our growth, get more patrons! Except that number is a lie and I feel severely uncomfortable not knowing what it represents or if it’s going to change. I can’t plan a big celebration where I give my patrons bonuses if we reach a 200 milestone that isn’t really true.

So can someone please explain what kind of 4D chess is going on here? And why?

Edit: Thinking a bit more about it, I did gain 1 patron yesterday, so if we count that person out, we could assume that 185 - 1 = 184 and 184 is the result of the 10 declined pledges being deducted from 194. But if that’s the case, that would mean that the 6 deleted patrons from last month STILL haven’t been deducted off the total count. So if that’s the case, when is that number going to disappear - if at all? Are we all going to continue to “grow” with a bunch of skeletons in the closet? This whole thing reeks of Patreon trying to inflate its own value…

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I can make sense of the number, but I cannot make sense of why:

202 patrons at the end of January
7 cancellations throughout January
5 declined payments on February 1st

Currently sitting at 197 patrons (202 - 5?) and my PRM also shows “197 as of today” but it’s including 7 patrons who cancelled, who should have their access restricted but still have their Discord role.

PRM cancelled patrons still listed as active
PRM cancelled patrons still listed as active1200×856 156 KB

First line is an annual patron who cancelled. Her access expiration date is incorrect. She deleted her annual pledge because it prevented her from joining a higher tier. Was annual billing implemented as “thoughtfully” and “carefully” as you always do?

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Aha, I edited my post as soon as I realised the same thing - the number has decreased based on declined pledges, but not on the cancelled pledges which are still being counted in the system.

As for the discord bot, that’s another unholy mess - after processing everyone’s pledges yesterday, it completely screwed up the roles of people who changed their pledge last mont (for example, someone went from the 20$ to 10$ tier which changes their role color in the discord. After processing their pledge this month as a 10$ patron, it still replaced the 10$ role with the 20$ one. I’ve had to manually edit this 4 times already because it keeps doing it).

Also I just noticed that the access expiration of that top patron who cancelled their pledge on Jan 19 is Feb 3, instead of Feb 1. Strange.

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My total guess would be that those canceled patrons are processed at a later time (today? tomorrow? :man_shrugging:), after the pledge payments that happen on the 1st.

I was also going to say that it could be because of annual patrons that canceled, which would still be active for the entire year (I’d expect?), but it doesn’t seem that you have annual payments.

But to be honest, I’m not even sure about that. I’ve been tracking down their pledges for different accounts and every time I compare the data that I calculate, with the data from Patreon there is always something new to learn :joy:

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I don’t have annual payments enabled, no.

And let’s face it: it’s not “data” if all the numbers are random.

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Well, at least they’re not random in a way that they change at every refresh of the page :laughing:

But I totally agree that it’s hard to plan for celebrations (or also expenses) when the numbers are not the ones you’d expect and you need to do some [unknown] math to get to the correct numbers :disappointed:

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They kind of do? The forward facing number for earnings fluctuates heavily, and not just around the 1st (which is to be expected). I am not even looking at this number anymore, because desktop / mobile browser / app all say something else.

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Has anyone reported this to Patreon support yet? I am still struggling to deal with somebody quitting in January and for some reason their access supposedly being extended until February 3 I’m being told that is the grace period which is ridiculous because they canceled weren’t declined. And I’d rather not have to send this to support as well, but I’m having the same issue and as noted above I do a lot of page goals and currently it looks like I hit just over 100 when I’m actually below that. I too was not a fan Of the new display method, but was willing to deal with it until it resets on the first of the month. But I am well into February 2 here and my stats are still displaying patrons who are no longer on my page. My relationship manager is also still listing multiple people who technically had access expire on February 1 that are still listed in the active section. And none of them have moved to the canceled pledge section. Incredibly frustrated.

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Another “new thing” they haven’t told us about. Isn’t this just great.

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Yeah, like what the hell is that…? They want us to be like Netflix so bad- but Netflix ain’t going around giving people grace periods. That should be up to us, not for Patreon to decide.

I’m just so done with this crap.

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That’s the BS I got too. And yet it’s only affecting a couple patrons, not everyone. So why are some people being given this “grace period” and others aren’t? I’m also really worried that a bunch of people that should be “cancelled” right now but are showing up in “active” do have access to my content so I’m not posting anything right now >> And I shouldn’t have to alter my update model because they effed up their site.

I’m so done with this >>

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So does this mean canceled patrons are being given access to content for free???

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I very much want to know this too, and same with the grace period that seems to be going to the 3rd of the month for some users. Does that mean they can seen content in a month they haven’t paid for for three days?

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I have no idea… I might reach out to some canceled patrons to check. I checked my relationship manager and I only have one patron with an official access expiration date of February 3rd, but they canceled on January 8th, so they shouldn’t have access to anything if they weren’t charged on February 1st.

Patreon needs to let us have control over “grace periods” (or just get rid of grace periods entirely because they didn’t bother to warn us of this new feature to begin with) - it’s only a matter of time before patrons find out they’re able to get content without paying for a certain amount of time and spread the word around.

I guess I’ll manage to navigate this by not posting any content until at least the 5th of each month? I don’t want people cheating and getting content for free while other patrons are willingly paying for it.

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This is really annoying for many reasons.

One, is that I use the data in the CSV to create end screens for YouTube videos. Sure I can filter down to only those who paid in February, but then, I need to account for annual members, etc. It’s a bunch of extra steps for something I barely have time to do anyway.

The data on the back end of Patreon is a mess on almost every single screen now.

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What the hell??

I lost 70 patrons within a minute and my income stayed the same??? I saw some get added last month but it wasn’t that many (as in randomly added figures from patreon…)

First time in four years i’ve seen it this bad as far as the back end goes.

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Yeah, the new public facing number factors in cancellations, and we got confirmation today that there is a “grace period” where those Patrons still are in the “active” category til the 3rd (and count toward that number - even though they don’t have access.) The grace period just ended, I got hit with a big drop-off too.

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Thankfully it doesn’t seem like it as far as access to your feed (but I would keep an eye on your Discord roles if you use those, I’ve had to manually remove some people.)

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I had several patrons message me and ask WTF happened??? why did so many people unsubscribe?? and i have to explain over and over … they didn’t… patreon just stuffed up. (and my pledge amount is actually 200 patrons higher than what it actually says on my main creator page…)

They don’t think about the other repercussions sadly, Imagine the really big patrons… they would have seen drops in the thousands

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I closed my January with 936 patrons and after the turn of the month there was the usual little drop to around 900. Now when I woke up this morning my patronage shows 800. So, to me it looks like I have lost 136 patrons in a few days and a hundred over night which does not really seem to be the case. Wtf?

This does not add up with declined payments nor cancelations. Also, this makes my patronage-based goals totally pointless. Also, makes me feel really stupid as I just yesterday published a post to my patrons celebrating over 900 patrons.

Could someone explain what is happening?

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