Have a question, hope I’m putting this in the right place! I have a patron whose card was declined, and it still has not been resolved. I had another patron previously who did not pay for months and was still able to access my content. I don’t want to have this happen again. Is there any way to remove this unpaid patron without banning (which really should NOT send them an email, this really needs to be remedied)? Or any advice on how to approach the issue with my patron?
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People have been requesting this feature since Patreon first formed. I don’t see us being able to do this any time soon. Best I can think to recommend is either ban then unban them, but message them why so they understand, or message them requesting them to remove themselves.
Alternatively, they might just not know their card has been declined for so long. If you haven’t already messaged them first about that, that might be worth doing. (You could also include both in the same email, that if they no longer wish to be a patron, they can delete their pledge and just follow your page for free.)
I really don’t understand why we can’t do this yet. 
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Thank you so much for the reply, and I agree, idk why this isn’t a feature yet. I feel very uncomfortable with contacting them regarding their pledge but I love the way you mentioned tossing in that they can follow for free…that’s how I’ll go about it. It’s very frustrating, I’m not sure I understand why I’ve been able to have a patron not pledge for a long time and still receive access. And banning with an email sent out is so awkward 
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Hi @Danni, thanks for reaching out!
You can send this help article with a video walkthrough to this patron to help them resolve their declined payment. If they’ve already gone through this process, have them contact support.
Banning is currently the only option to remove a patron. When a patron is banned, they receive an email notifying them that they’ve been removed from a creator, but the email does not specify who blocked them. I hope this helps!
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Please please please allow us to remove people without banning. Most of the time the person did NOTHING wrong and the email has ruined relationships with some of my previous patrons and other creators have said they’ve had similar experiences! It is –not- hard to figure out who removed you when most patrons seem to pledge to 1-5 creators! (Also easy to look at your pay history and see which creator is no longer on your membership list!!! This is not a valid solution to remove folks that don’t have bannable issues!)
I don’t know why a simple remove button is so dang hard to get on a priority list when it’s actively losing patrons for creators which means less income for patreon. This has been asked for for literal years and at one point, there -was- a remove button. It’s beyond frustrating!
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Wait what? So, a patron can actually not pay, but still have access? I thought access was granted only when payment went through for each time!
And I just had a new patron signing up, but his payment was declined. Does he have access to my stuff?
@reyna, the issue with banning being the only option is troublesome mostly due to the arbitrary email sent out notifying the patron, not the banning itself so much. (We can immediately unban, but the insulting email puts people off). Simply stop sending the email advising of the ban. Is there another platform that advises of banning? I can’t think of any. This would be a simple fix. Thanks.
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This is correct, they still have access. I actually had a patron with access to my content for months on declined payments. She was once a huge supporter so I felt too uncomfortable about banning due to the email that gets sent out. She finally deleted her pledge, but it is very annoying to have to deal with things like this. Posts are still visible to them and they can still contact you, etc.
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This isn’t actually a very good solution, tbh. I’m sure my patrons would be wise enough to know I was the one who banned them. When a card is declined, it would be a lot more helpful for them to lose access to any new content until the issue is resolved, and some sort of message asking if they wish to remain a patron or simply become a follower temporarily would be better than a ban.
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Now, this freaked me a bit out. So I checked with a guy I know who was a patron earlier. He has been declined for a while, so I asked him if he could access my page, and see if he could see my posts. And he could not, as the enclosed screenshot shows. So now I am really confused here…
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With pay upfront they do not have access to content until the payment goes through and they lose access if thier payment declines after previously paying.
At least this is what I’ve seen patreon staff say.
If you dont have pay upfront it’s a confusing mess. Patreon staff say they dont have access but I’ve been told by patrons otherwise with thier first hand experiences. They dont even really seem to lose access when their payment declines after previously paying. I get conflicting Info from patrons on this. Sometimes they do, sometimes they dont.
Even the patreon discord bot cant decide how it’s supposed to work.
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You know what that sounds like? It sounds like there was one system, a new one replaced it, and people on the older system got grandfathered in to how it used to work instead of being updated to how it works now.
I have NO proof that is what happened, but that’s my conjecture.
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This. 1000 times, THIS.
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I am commenting to strongly second this and add that it’s nearly-unbelievably poor judgement for Patreon to have a creator relationship-driven platform but automated communications that damage rapport.
It can’t possibly be so difficult to change the verbiage of an automated outgoing email.
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I’ve thought of making an index of all my posts and their links on a pinned master post. Would that work?
Agree. I’m so confused. They secured like 90 million in funds for the platform but I still haven’t seen any helpful changes made. It’s sort of confusing. Not to be ugly in any way, I just don’t understand.