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This is pretty crazy of Patreon. I mean - they can easily bundle pledges on charge. I don't understand why they'd drop a separate charge for each one, except fo

This is pretty crazy of Patreon. I mean - they can easily bundle pledges on charge. I don't understand why they'd drop a separate charge for each one, except for "fuck it, they won't care, right?".

Hemospectrum 9y ago
They can bundle the charges to the patrons to reduce cost to themselves, while still charging fees as if they were making individual transactions. I’m inclined to believe they’re already doing this.
- eropple 9y ago
  Plausible. Shitty, but plausible. If you're right, I'll be pulling every pledge I have immediately and telling every campaign that I'll happily return once they leave. I guess I'll find out next time they run and I can count number of charges.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  I can confirm my Patreon pledges to multiple people were charged to PayPal as a single transaction.
  - eropple 9y ago
    Under their new model? I wasn't sure if it's already gone through.
    - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      Existing charges. But it's hard to imagine Patreon would intentionally triple their service fee costs to themselves by charging pledges individually instead of in aggregate. The only thing that's changing is the service fees they're charging users.
      - eropple 9y ago
        It's not hard to imagine if you've ever looked at running a marketplace. ;) The one reason I'm not throwing stones yet is that the laws around money transmission are state-level and very weird and there's the possibility that they're trying to avoid getting slammed by then. Also, Stripe might have a beef with their bundling, too.
      - james-skemp 9y ago
        When I contacted them back in April when they were doing this, they mentioned changing over to billing monthly based upon when you first started backing a creator. So instead of being charged once at the beginning/end of the month, you would instead be charged on the monthly anniversary of when you started backing someone. I'm not sure they're (thinking about) switching over to this (yet), but I've seen mention of this in comments online, so, could be. EDIT: They are: > To do that, we need to move our payments system to treat your pledges like any other subscription service. In other words, we need a system that charges patrons at the time of their initial pledge, and on the anniversary of their pledge each month thereafter.
- zkms 9y ago
  > I’m inclined to believe they’re already doing this. AFAICT (from my charges) they have indeed been bundling charges. Charging the %+constant fee for each patron given that there is no individual payment-processor action for each patron on the debit side is absolutely nasty. I'm not asking them to eat payment-processing fees, I'm not asking them not to make a profit, I'm simply asking them to not charge for fees for transactions that never happened. I hope Hatreon (or any other patreon clone) steals half of their userbase because they absolutely deserve to be punished and chastised for this manipulative nonsense (along with their banning legal-but-NSFW content producers); because nothing else but people exiting from Patreon will make them feel anything.
  - eropple 9y ago
    Hatreon's a platform designed explicitly and specifically for white supremacists, so maybe not them.
    - DuskStar 9y ago
      I think Hatreon was just designed to not censor things. At the moment that happens to be appealing to white supremacists and right leaning content creators, but I wouldn't be too shocked to see NSFW creators moving there soon.
      - fluxsauce 9y ago
        Given both the presence of "Hate" in the name of the site and the fact that it's one of Richard Spencer's revenue streams, I don't agree with your assessment that it's temporary and it's oriented towards "not safe for work" content. Sexual content can be considered NSFW and should not be conflated with a "safe haven" for hate speech.
      - eropple 9y ago
        The name is literally Hate-reon, my dude. Its audience is well-defined. I can definitely see a Patreon alternative that might do better by folks getting some traction--Kickstarter as a PBC is interesting, I actually didn't realize Patreon wasn't. But I know a decent few NSFW creators and I can't imagine any of them going to where the Daily Stormer and Richard Spencer gets their funding. Conflating self-declared Nazis with pornography is exactly what those Nazis would like people to do.
thisisit 9y ago
It seems that will depend on their payment processor and the bargaining power of Patreon. If no processor wants to lower their charges there is not much Patreon can do. Similarly, if Patreon are not a big ticket fees generating customer they don't have much leverage. How to do a profitable micro transaction is still a mystery.
- cortesoft 9y ago
  It shouldn't depend on the payment processor; if the credit card payment is going to Patreon, they can batch up the charges however they way (e.g. they could batch up all of one customer's donations for a week to 50 different artists, and process a single transaction with their payment processor for the whole amount. They would then only be charged for a single transaction)
  - thisisit 9y ago
    This is assuming that everyone is paying $1 across 50 different artists. The question here really is - What is the distribution of backers and payment amount on Patreon? If majority of their customers are, 1:1 ie one patron to one artist for $1. Then it is an issue which payment processor needs to look into. But, if it is 1:50 ie one patron to 50 artists for $1 then I am sure Patreon will be creating a batch transaction. Patreon's problem surely stems from the fact that 1:1 is more likely true.
    - freeone3000 9y ago
      Even if it was 1:1, actually charging the payment processing fee for the payment processed would be fine. The person with one pledge for $1 to one creator would be charged $1.38. The person with one pledge for $100 to one creator would be charged $103.80. The person with 100 pledges for $1 to 100 creators would be charged $103.80. Fine. With the rules they're putting into place, the person with 100 pledges for $1 to 100 creators will be charged $138.00 - with the other $37 going to Patreon. Not cool.
- PeachPlum 9y ago
  They should really let me charge up my account by $10 and then take it out of that until it gets below $1 and do it again etc.
InclinedPlane 9y ago
They already do. I only get one charge on my account for like half a dozen patreon pledges.
floatingatoll 9y ago
They appear to bundle pledges by the creator's numeric ID, so if you pledge $1 to 15 creators who signed up today, you'll get charged one transaction - but if you pledge $1 to 15 creators who signed up at various times over 3 years, you'll get charged up to 15 transactions. It's incredibly confusing as a customer to see this occurring, since I ended up at one point where one transaction contained a single pledge and the second contained ten of them.

This is pretty crazy of Patreon. I mean - they can easily bundle pledges on charge. I don't understand why they'd drop a separate charge for each one, except for "fuck it, they won't care, right?".

Hemospectrum 9y ago

They can bundle the charges to the patrons to reduce cost to themselves, while still charging fees as if they were making individual transactions. I’m inclined to believe they’re already doing this.

eropple 9y ago
Plausible. Shitty, but plausible. If you're right, I'll be pulling every pledge I have immediately and telling every campaign that I'll happily return once they leave. I guess I'll find out next time they run and I can count number of charges.
ocdtrekkie 9y ago
I can confirm my Patreon pledges to multiple people were charged to PayPal as a single transaction.
- eropple 9y ago
  Under their new model? I wasn't sure if it's already gone through.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    Existing charges. But it's hard to imagine Patreon would intentionally triple their service fee costs to themselves by charging pledges individually instead of in aggregate. The only thing that's changing is the service fees they're charging users.
    - eropple 9y ago
      It's not hard to imagine if you've ever looked at running a marketplace. ;) The one reason I'm not throwing stones yet is that the laws around money transmission are state-level and very weird and there's the possibility that they're trying to avoid getting slammed by then. Also, Stripe might have a beef with their bundling, too.
    - james-skemp 9y ago
      When I contacted them back in April when they were doing this, they mentioned changing over to billing monthly based upon when you first started backing a creator. So instead of being charged once at the beginning/end of the month, you would instead be charged on the monthly anniversary of when you started backing someone. I'm not sure they're (thinking about) switching over to this (yet), but I've seen mention of this in comments online, so, could be. EDIT: They are: > To do that, we need to move our payments system to treat your pledges like any other subscription service. In other words, we need a system that charges patrons at the time of their initial pledge, and on the anniversary of their pledge each month thereafter.
zkms 9y ago
> I’m inclined to believe they’re already doing this. AFAICT (from my charges) they have indeed been bundling charges. Charging the %+constant fee for each patron given that there is no individual payment-processor action for each patron on the debit side is absolutely nasty. I'm not asking them to eat payment-processing fees, I'm not asking them not to make a profit, I'm simply asking them to not charge for fees for transactions that never happened. I hope Hatreon (or any other patreon clone) steals half of their userbase because they absolutely deserve to be punished and chastised for this manipulative nonsense (along with their banning legal-but-NSFW content producers); because nothing else but people exiting from Patreon will make them feel anything.
- eropple 9y ago
  Hatreon's a platform designed explicitly and specifically for white supremacists, so maybe not them.
  - DuskStar 9y ago
    I think Hatreon was just designed to not censor things. At the moment that happens to be appealing to white supremacists and right leaning content creators, but I wouldn't be too shocked to see NSFW creators moving there soon.
    - fluxsauce 9y ago
      Given both the presence of "Hate" in the name of the site and the fact that it's one of Richard Spencer's revenue streams, I don't agree with your assessment that it's temporary and it's oriented towards "not safe for work" content. Sexual content can be considered NSFW and should not be conflated with a "safe haven" for hate speech.
    - eropple 9y ago
      The name is literally Hate-reon, my dude. Its audience is well-defined. I can definitely see a Patreon alternative that might do better by folks getting some traction--Kickstarter as a PBC is interesting, I actually didn't realize Patreon wasn't. But I know a decent few NSFW creators and I can't imagine any of them going to where the Daily Stormer and Richard Spencer gets their funding. Conflating self-declared Nazis with pornography is exactly what those Nazis would like people to do.

thisisit 9y ago

It seems that will depend on their payment processor and the bargaining power of Patreon. If no processor wants to lower their charges there is not much Patreon can do. Similarly, if Patreon are not a big ticket fees generating customer they don't have much leverage. How to do a profitable micro transaction is still a mystery.

cortesoft 9y ago
It shouldn't depend on the payment processor; if the credit card payment is going to Patreon, they can batch up the charges however they way (e.g. they could batch up all of one customer's donations for a week to 50 different artists, and process a single transaction with their payment processor for the whole amount. They would then only be charged for a single transaction)
- thisisit 9y ago
  This is assuming that everyone is paying $1 across 50 different artists. The question here really is - What is the distribution of backers and payment amount on Patreon? If majority of their customers are, 1:1 ie one patron to one artist for $1. Then it is an issue which payment processor needs to look into. But, if it is 1:50 ie one patron to 50 artists for $1 then I am sure Patreon will be creating a batch transaction. Patreon's problem surely stems from the fact that 1:1 is more likely true.
  - freeone3000 9y ago
    Even if it was 1:1, actually charging the payment processing fee for the payment processed would be fine. The person with one pledge for $1 to one creator would be charged $1.38. The person with one pledge for $100 to one creator would be charged $103.80. The person with 100 pledges for $1 to 100 creators would be charged $103.80. Fine. With the rules they're putting into place, the person with 100 pledges for $1 to 100 creators will be charged $138.00 - with the other $37 going to Patreon. Not cool.
PeachPlum 9y ago
They should really let me charge up my account by $10 and then take it out of that until it gets below $1 and do it again etc.

InclinedPlane 9y ago

They already do. I only get one charge on my account for like half a dozen patreon pledges.

floatingatoll 9y ago

They appear to bundle pledges by the creator's numeric ID, so if you pledge $1 to 15 creators who signed up today, you'll get charged one transaction - but if you pledge $1 to 15 creators who signed up at various times over 3 years, you'll get charged up to 15 transactions. It's incredibly confusing as a customer to see this occurring, since I ended up at one point where one transaction contained a single pledge and the second contained ten of them.