Patreon adding fees and causing loads of people to stop pledging

The crowdfunding platform for artists currently takes a fee of 5% (creators also pay fees charged by payment processors like Stripe or PayPal) from each pledge. That changes on December 18, when patrons will start paying 2.9% plus 35 cents for each individual pledge, according to Patreon’s product update page.

For patrons who back per-post creators, the 2.9% plus 35 cents service fee will be added to all paid posts. Creators don’t have the option to cover or remove service fees from their pledges.

Seems like now people are haemorrhaging pledges

https://twitter.com/bclevinger/status/938909396641468422

in part I think down to them making their original statement very unclear but it also sounds like the addition of these fees will result in transactional fees being upped too as they move away from a monthly payment method.

https://twitter.com/Burrito_Tim/status/938943641791401986

Anyway, probably final proof that Pomplamoose are evil, assuming we needed it after that old thread.

So OSW, a service I pledge for explained they got 89% of the net pledge which they were happy with as they could absorb that no problem. What they aren’t happy with is having the fee passed onto user because it would lead to people dropping their pledges, especially the more pricey ones which would lead to a far more significant drop in total income than getting to keep more of the pledge would account for.

It seems like a stupid move on Patreons part either way to not just keep it concealed in the background between themselves and those running pledges.

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So they’ve added a sales charge? Seems like a really stupid move. Like booking fees on tickets or sales tax in US states? Opens the door to a service that doesn’t gouge the customer with supplementary costs, I suppose.

One thing i pledge for has said theyve lost a ton of people who pledge $1, imagine that’s the same for a lot of people. Bit annoying but i cba making a stink about it.

Thought they’d ended up going back on it after loads of people mentioned losing low-value pledges?

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Just goes to show that moaning always works

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Try telling that to Jose Mourinho.

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Only just read the original post but I thought the way they were trying to do the new fees were fair to be honest.

I will need to charge you an extra 25% fee if that is your opinion.

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It’s the fact they charged you more often so you’d pay more fees from PayPal, and also charged you on a per patreon so you paid more fees if you support lots of people for a small amount instead one person for a big amount

Read both of their blog posts. Don’t understand why they don’t just pro-rata the first payment if that’s the problem they were trying to solve

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