Thanks! I knew there might have been something I was missing.
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If I want to set a post so it’s only for higher level tiers, the pull down menu goes off the bottom of the screen and I can’t click it unless I get my mouse (can’t do it with a touchpad or touchscreen) and use the mouse’s scroll button. That’s just plain stupid.
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The notifications are a mess. I see the alert that I have a new one, and then I have to figure out where it is and what type it is.
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I can’t get rid of Patrons who have been declined in forever without blocking them. I don’t want to block them, in case they want to come back, but I don’t want them mucking up my patron manager views.
9 Likes
Lack of support for 1 time donations.
There are people who want to give $50 or $100 right now, but don’t want to sign up to do it over the course of a year. I end up pointing them to paypal which leaves me having to keep track of them away from everyone else.
15 Likes
I wish that there was a minimum contribution pledge requirement for different tiers when the creator has it set to a per creation basis. Just as patrons can set a max monthly pledge, there should be a minimum monthly pledge for certain tiers.
I do a podcast where I always release four episodes a month, and I have different tiers where people can get access to different types of bonus content. The issue is that when someone is on the $5 tier, they theoretically should be paying about $20 a month, assuming that I release 4 episodes a month. But the issue is that because Patreon allows patrons to set their limit anything they want, some people are able to just pay $5 once a month and still get access to that tier, which effectively means that they are almost really only paying what the $1 tier people are each month.
This could be resolved pretty easily I think by giving per creation creators the ability to set a minimum monthly pledge amount for each tier. It is fine if each patron sets a max monthly pledge, but it just can’t be lower than the minimum monthly pledge set by the creator.
Does that makes sense? I understand that my situation is a little unique, but it can’t be that unique. It just seems like a weird sort of loophole in the system that people exploit sometimes.
2 Likes
So much truth on notifications
Thanks for asking, Mindy.
- Notifications suck. Everyone has already explained why.
- The inability to do anything with a declined patron but block them to get them off my list is simply not good business. What if they had personal life issues that took all of their attention and finally come back to it months later to find they can’t even contact you! Hate that lack of choice. Need an inactive status that allows them to sign up again instead of burning the bridge. Still need the Block option for trolls, fraud, etc.
- Composing emails in the RIDICULOUSLY small box is SO irritating, and so unnecessary. I like one creator’s suggestion of being able to see all of their data when you write to them. As it is now - I open multiple windows to access the info I need.
There are other things I had issues with when I actually used patreon the way it was intended to be, but I am a censored adult content creator who now uses patreon only as a payment processor and I keep in touch with my Patrons through a weekly email (not sent through patreon). Gives me much more flexibility in terms of content, adding free memberships, one time donations (which I process separately) and ease in accessing rewards for my Patrons. In an odd way it’s been a blessing. And it gives me the distance I need, should the whole house of cards adult content thing come crashing down someday.
P.S. Thanks for allowing both Patron Managers to exist, and giving us a choice to use either. While neither is perfect - between the two I have what I need.
4 Likes
I just want to emphasize this. Not only would I love for the Benefits feature to keep track of these rewards, but I’d also love if there were a specific place for them on the creator page - perhaps alongside the reward tiers.
4 Likes
Why not make a $50 or $100 tier for them and then they can unpledge after, and you can just use the manager to send them rewards as you please for the future?
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I agree with what folks have said about notifications and the need for email notification of deleted or changed pledges. I have a list of $5+ patrons on my website as a reward, and it’s difficult to keep it updated because I don’t always know when someone has deleted or decreased their pledge.
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Communication with patrons. There are some patrons I’ve had no luck getting in touch with. They don’t respond to Patreon messages or emails. In one case I mailed a patron a reward and it was returned by the post office, marked “address unknown”… but they never responded to my messages or emails, so I haven’t been able to send them their reward. I’m not sure what Patreon can do about this, to be fair. My one thought is that patrons must often sign up for accounts using burner / old / rarely used email addresses to avoid spam or protect their information. Maybe as part of the pledging process, they could be asked if they want to to provide an additional email address specifically to receive direct communication with the creator. And/or they could have the chance to share their Twitter/FB info with the creator, without making it public on their profile.
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I want to post multiple images on one image post! If there’s a way to do that I haven’t figured it out, except to add the them into the body of the text.
2 Likes
There is only one really big pain point for me which is much more important to me than all other minor pain points and that is receiving payments outside the US. Currently we loose about 100$ per month just on transaction fees and this is seriously a pain. 
For creators outside the USA there is currently only two payout options: paypal and payoneer, both advertise with low transfer fees (3$ and max. 20$), but make lots of money with hidden currency transfer fees. So even though it might only cost me 3$ as an official fee to transfer my monthly income from Patreon to my German bank account through Payoneer, I’d also loose around 100$ currently because Payoneer would sell Euros at a much lower exchange rate than the official exchange rate of the day is.
I wonder if Patreon could add services like Transferwise that operate with fair and transparent exchange rates.
6 Likes
Hi, thanks for the suggestion. How would you use the manager to keep a defunct account active?
We do have active $50 and $100 tiers but the people who feel this way are not interested in signing up for a monthly and then trusting that I won’t charge them.
Additionally, adding more work on my end to track and manipulate their accounts would not be much of an improvement I don’t think.
1 Like
The utter lack of responsiveness to support requests.
1 Like
I’ve been reading these other posts with a lot of interest, and we agree with many of the complaints. Trying to come up with our top 3, I’ve got:
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Problems with declined patrons. We don’t know what messages Patreon is sending to them or when they are sent, or if the patron responds to those in any way. So we start trying to message them ourselves. Some we can’t seem to get a hold of (which possibly Patreon can’t do anything about). Some report problems getting their payments straightened out. Some say our emails to them are the first they’ve received about the problem. And then there’s the problem of having to block them if there is no response after some time, instead of being able to delete them.
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Some bugs don’t get fixed, even months or years after being reported. Examples: Problems with notifications abound, as many have noted. There’s also the problem with the drop-down menu to choose the reward level for a post (where the menu goes off the bottom of the screen) that we have also mentioned to support quite some time ago. It is frustrating to see Patreon working on new features when the old features still don’t work correctly.
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There’s no way for us to search our previous posts. After almost 4 years and hundreds of posts, sometimes we can’t remember what we’ve previously posted.
If I could add a fourth it would be that neither patron manager right now can handle all the tasks I need it to, so I do end up having to go back and forth between them. I guess as long as you keep making both available, that’s not too bad.
Thanks so much for asking the question!
3 Likes
Locked post suggestion for patreon : Maybe just blur them a bit - you can almost see it but not quite. Might be more enticing.
3 Likes
Because they don’t want to sign up and then cancel. People like to be lazy. They wait to pay and then totally forget about it.
1 Like
I’m not a fan of blurred content - I’d rather have content aimed at non-Patrons, and content aimed at Patrons, and each group can only see appealing, unblurred content aimed at them.
1 Like
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Lack of searchability or listing for NSFW creators. It’s not like we are allowed to show anything to the general public anyways, it’s 100% blocked/censored on pain of death. We’re a black box within a black box. So why not at least give us searchability? Plug us back into the Matrix please.
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Blocked public post icons are hideous. Let us make custom thumbnails please.
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Helpdesk, when I had to use it, was not helpful at all. All the cheeriness only gets us so far, because once all the smiles and sparkles and rainbow unicorns fade away, we’re still left without the answers and results we need, and we’re usually stuck waiting several days for a response that completely fails to address the issue. Even for stuff that should be very clear-cut such as blocking/banning users for breaking the TOS, etc. The only times I have been able to get actual response was through direct personal contact outside of helpdesk. Example you should really pay attention to: I shouldn’t have to go directly to Maritza for piracy/abuse reports when helpdesk fails to address what I am telling them in plain English. Its a waste of her time and it shows Patreon is wasting its time and resources on a helpdesk that fails in people or process or both.
3 Likes
I heartily agree with this! I would also like a search function that would let me search my OWN posts…to be certain that the great idea I have for posting isn’t something I actually had and posted a year ago…and so that I can refer to a previous post and can easily find and hyperlink to it.
Thanks,
Steve Eulberg
8 Likes
Lack of download counts.
7 Likes
YES PLEASE THIS IS SO VERY IMPORTANT!
2 Likes