I have had a patron who is an elderly lady who is not tech savvy and has been my patron at $5 since the start of 2018. She loves my work but she has never been able to figure out how to message me within patreon AND has never even been able to visit the posts within patreon. She has only received the emails and then something has happened that has not allowed her to log in. Admittedly it could be she doesn’t understand, but she says she has spent such a long time trying to get answers and none were given.
Now, this is just one patron I know, but this is one patron who is dissatisfied and as the rules go with these things, it means there will be others who don’t come forward who are also dissatisfied.
She hasn’t had access to the site for months and has been told it is because her iPad is too old? This seems odd, her iPad would be able to log in via safari browser (if someone explained this to her).
Anyway, I just wanted you to know as I think this is really sad. She always messages me via email and never via patreon. You guys need to up the customer service, it used to be brilliant when I first joined…
This is one of my major concerns as well. I think, like the example here, my older patrons are the most likely to struggle with technical difficulties and need direct support. I’ve lost a lot of income for things like a mistyped credit card number or expired cards, or not being able to log in to renew. And in almost every case, the person is over 65 and might not have access to the tech that the rest of us do. These are folks who really need a phone number to call and a patient person to answer it and talk them through it. Things may be developing away from the old fashioned phone but let’s not leave the un-teched behind!
Yeah it is very frustrating isn’t it. I know that this particular lady had said her son was going to come over and help her, but having experienced trying to explain some tech stuff to my mum or my mum in law… sometimes you can tell them 10 times and they still don’t get it LOL.
I have to say that I’m experiencing the same issue with some of my members which are normally of a retired age, as you say especially those that have been with me for a long time. The exit survey is usual one of the set options of ‘It was too hard to find or access my benefits/rewards’ which isn’t right as I have even needed to create a ‘companion page’ for my Patreon content on my personal web site.
My members head to my site and click on a Patreon video tutorial, which then takes them back to Patreon. But even that is now proving tricky due to Patreon’s [tag] URL addresses not working from an outside link sometimes.
It’s a shame that the app may not work with older iPads or older android versions, maybe worth looking at Patreon? Not everyone has a new device.
So yes, I completely agree, sometimes there are far too many changes which with some can affect those members that are much less tech savy.
BTW, not all retired aged persons (I’m getting there), are not tech savy, some are very much able indeed.
Paul
yeah I know loads of tech savvy older folks!
I think that they would still be abel to log in to patreon via safari browser on iPad, regardless of age - however trying to explain that to some folks would just be too tricky unfortunately. It’s something you need to be able to show someone.
While laudable and technically possible, I don’t see how Patreon’s cut of our earnings would pay for this type of support. Free phone support is very expensive for the provider—or the people calling when it’s not free.
And even if it would exist, phone support is rather limited in what it can achieve. For these type of problems, you essentially have to have someone with enough technical knowledge come over to check out the hard- and software, perform maintenance and demonstrate the functionality directly on screen. There is only so much you can do over the phone. “What kind of iPad do you have?”, “Well, I don’t know”.“Which version of the operating system? Which browser?“, “Well, I don’t know” …
The already giving example of “having a relative come over” is therefore often the best possible solution.