honk! Patreon right in the butt.

by

With Carolina Reaper Lube, no less!

So, in a nutshell, I deleted my Patreon account.
The upside outweighs the downsides by a decent amount, because self care is important.

The reason?
Patreon keeps using an out-of-country payment processor in the United Kingdom. This has been happening since August 2018.
This use causes both my credit union and my bank to both throw fraud flags and lock my cards at the top of the month.
The only two ways to prevent this in both cases is to either:
* Call my financial institution a few days before the top of the month and say "Hey, you're going to see a charge from Patreon in the UK at the top of the month. Please don't lock my card. Again."
or
* Fully unblock the United Kingdom, which (per both financial institutions) means I get no protection or recourse if my card info is leaked and used overseas beyond cancelling the card, eating the expenditures, and licking my own wounds while dealing with a new card number.

No, neither FI will recurrently schedule that unblock, so that means pencilling in business hours time to say "Hey, you're going to see a charge..."

Patreon still has a USA-based payment processor. Patreon still uses the USA-based processor after the UK-based one triggers the fraud lock and I get it cleared. That processor's located in Sacramento, California. One state away from me.

Patreon is adamantly unwilling, even with support tickets open asking, to not use the UK-based processor first, insisting that they use multiple processors in order to save money, even though they follow with the USA-based processor.

I find this is abusive behavior that should not be rewarded.

The downside:
It means I can't support things or folks on Patreon.

The upside:
It means that I'm not standing in the grocery store with a card that is declining because Patreon decided to try to take money with the out of country processor. That shit is fucking embarrassing.
It also means that I'm looking at alternatives to Patreon.
As example, I'm supporting one artist on SubscribeStar Adult, because I like his comic, and he was looking into alternatives before the Patreon thing hit the absolute fan with me.

It also appears that it's worth it as a creator to reach out to SubscribeStar if you're migrating away from services like Patreon. They want the business, and right now, it appears their rates can be better than Patreon's when you look at their fee schedules, based on features, and they really want to hear from folks abandoning Patreon.

Or, if you don't mind setting up Stripe, then Buy Me a Coffee (and NOT Ko-Fi) is also a damn fine option with recurring payments that can let you have that recurring tip jar that some folks insist on using Patreon for, at typically lower fees than Patreon.

Just... any option that isn't Patreon will do right now.