I would love to see an automatic message pop-up when people go to cancel their membership that asks if they want to lower their tier instead. I bet it would retain a lot of Patrons, but even if it only retains 10% it’s totally worth it.
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Agreed here. Would be a nice feature.
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A GREAT idea and should be easy to implement! It’s much more costly to attract NEW supporters (or customers) than it is to retain those you have, so Patreon should jump on this.
@reyna could maybe check if something like this is on the roadmap?
Brian
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Honestly, not a big fan of the idea. If a patron
has already clicked “edit or cancel membership” and chose cancel instead of edit, I don’t want patreon to annoy them with pop-ups on my behalf, begging to reconsider. My patrons are not stupid and know what they want to do.
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I hear this, but I’ve had patrons simply forget they can change their tier to something lower or do a custom amount and when I’ve mentioned it (because they didnt want to outright cancel and leave the community), they’ve been like “Oh! That’s right.” And generally will go lower their tier instead of outright leaving. There are use cases for this and maybe if it was an option then creators could choose.
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Of course they do. How do you imagine a person respond when you personally ask to pledge a smaller amount? And in a month they silently run and never come back.
I want my patrons to have minimum friction to leave, so that they will have more motivation to resubscribe.
I know it’s an extreme example but several years ago i wanted to unsubscribe from creative cloud and I couldn’t do it without jumping several hoops, including calling their customer support and talking to them about why i want to stop my subscription. Needless to say i will never ever consider subscribing to them again.
Nice assumption. You know absolutely nothing about me and my relationship with my patrons.
I openly tell my patrons they can come and go as they please and that there is never an obligation to stay. They understand this and I never use forceful language. I only brought it up because they were bringing up not wanting to lose access to specific things at their current tier. Their current tier was not the only option for what they wanted so I brought it up and still said no obligation. Also, none of them that chose a lower tier have left.
Again why I say it could be optional since everyone’s audiences and expectations are different. One size does not fit all.
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While canceling, I think on the same page the option could be listed. You already have to go to a separate page to cancel, and having text there saying, “You can lower your pledge instead” is no more intrusive than canceling itself. I don’t think it’s necessary for additional pages to click through, pop-ups, etc. It can be done cleanly. (I know Patreon doesn’t have that reputation, but you never know? xD)
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Hey @BrokeAssStuart,
We have a message close to this now! Here is a screenshot of the pop-up message a patron see’s when they go to cancel their pledge.
Hope this helps! Some creators are having a similar discussion here.
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That’s great! I just wonder if maybe it can be more direct like “Are you sure you’d like to cancel instead of downgrade to a lower tier?”. People breeze over things, so I find that saying exactly what the message is and doing so directly cuts through that.
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That is such a phenomenal idea!!! Patreon - make this happen - PLEASE!! Let us create a custom message.
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Totally hear you, it could be more clear and a more incising message. I’ll share this with the team! Thanks @BrokeAssStuart 
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Upvote.
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Plus the custom amounts! Brilliant! They might lose perks but still help with less.
Ah! It is already shown like that! 
Hi there,
Thank you all for the great ideas and feedback here. While we’re not currently working on further customization for cancellation flows right now, we’re logging this feedback for the future when we can look at this again.
Brian