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Blocking suspicious patrons?
4 years ago
General
--> My T.O.S. <--
I have not reeeaaally thought about that throughout the years, but now I do.
Obviously, my #1 worry is about people who join my patreon, stay the whole month and then jump off on the 30th/31st/1st of the month
when payments are collected. The problem is that patreon doesn't tell me who does this repeatedly, unless I make a list of my own to keep
track of these people. Which is also nonsensical since they could just create new accounts each month if they wanted.
Now I don't have a problem with someone joining, seeing that my stuff is not really to their liking and then leaving again, and patreon
actually does give me quite the list of people who leave the same day they joined. BUT how do you detect like an actual fraud?
And before anyone tells me, I know there's an option to charge patrons for each post individually (at least there was last time I checked), but
I wouldn't want to implement that at all.
Of course you can check out their profiles and see if they are supporting any artists at all, in that case there's no real reason for blocking anyone,
but there also these really sus accounts who jump off when payments are collected and then their profiles are completely empty as well.
Anyone got experience with that?
Obviously, my #1 worry is about people who join my patreon, stay the whole month and then jump off on the 30th/31st/1st of the month
when payments are collected. The problem is that patreon doesn't tell me who does this repeatedly, unless I make a list of my own to keep
track of these people. Which is also nonsensical since they could just create new accounts each month if they wanted.
Now I don't have a problem with someone joining, seeing that my stuff is not really to their liking and then leaving again, and patreon
actually does give me quite the list of people who leave the same day they joined. BUT how do you detect like an actual fraud?
And before anyone tells me, I know there's an option to charge patrons for each post individually (at least there was last time I checked), but
I wouldn't want to implement that at all.
Of course you can check out their profiles and see if they are supporting any artists at all, in that case there's no real reason for blocking anyone,
but there also these really sus accounts who jump off when payments are collected and then their profiles are completely empty as well.
Anyone got experience with that?
In case it helps: Patreon usually gives you the option to mention why you're unsubscribing if you remove a pledge. I'd check if the person leaving offered a motive and wrote something in the exit survey too.
But yes mostly it just says "my financial situation changed"
https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-u.....up-front-works
It works slightly different from what I had in mind to be honest. Though the fact you can never undo it means I gotta put more thought into it
Pay Up Front ight make it less desirable for people to sign up in the first place, but it stopped the people vanishing and re-signing up every month.
I watch people on rotation; some every other month and some every couple months. I only have so much i budget for, so i spread it out. So i normally drop off on the last day of the month.
That being said, when it comes to the "not being charged up front", i try to keep a mental note on those, and stay on till it hits a paying month.
Idiot fact: I had to block him one time before because I wanted to change my Patreon price but couldn't because he was still a "donator" (I even made a note about that). So it was a temporary block. After that, well he started being an ass
Assuming you don't want to force peeps to pay upfront, keeping an eye on accounts that sign up and then leave before the month is do would be an solution, just takes up time. Watch for a pattern of behavior. If they do it every month, you know they are doing it on purpose. Now they are either cheating or they are just VERY bad a money management and assume they would have money for you. Either way, there might be a way to automate monitoring but haven't seen anything from Patreon's resources. Got me thinking about it thought. Patreon dose have an API and you can automate image creation. Going to see if there is a way to automate patron subscribing and leaving monitoring.
Up front payment might be the simple solution but permanent for the account.