Patreon Problem. (Patreon)

You know, ever since celebrating my 2000 watchers my patreon has been on a nice little upkick. I've gotten so much more support and it's come to a point where I do actually rely on it in order to help take care of myself now. It's an essential part of my life at this moment, which makes it all the more shitty that they keep fucking up.

If you're one of my patrons you'll not have noticed anything different but for me, I have. Last month, the payment was taken and put onto my Patreon account, however, I didn't notice that the automatic payout towards my paypal didn't go through. I figured it was just a mistake and that the next month I'd get the added sum of the month before and the current month since that was something that had happened before. On the 5th of every month, the money they take from my patrons is supposed to be automatically submitted to my paypal account and then I submit it to my bank. Easy.

Well, it's past the 5th of September and it happened again. I didn't get the usual notice that money was transferred to my paypal. So I did some investigating. It says that my patrons were charged so I went to check out the area where I can manually transfer the money to my paypal myself. There I see the full sum of the money that I haven't received yet. It's right there! They've collected it and it's on my account... however, I'm not allowed to transfer it to my Paypal. Why? Well apparently it's because they've been monitoring for "Suspicious Activity On My Account".

Now I was not informed of this. The fact that I had to do some snooping to discover this already made me angry but then I realized that it's been 2 months since I was last allowed to get the money that's locked onto my account. Which means they've been "monitoring" my account for over 2 months at this point...!

Well than gee, you think you would have found "suspicious activity" on it by now if there actually was any wouldn't you? 

But no, there actually IS a reason for this and the reasoning is seriously some of the most daft bullshit I've ever seen. This isn't just an isolated incident with me. It's a problem with a ton of people out there. Just a few days ago, an article was released detailing that other people have had similar problems: medium.com/@lucylit/patreon-is…

Suddenly, a ton of people are having problems getting their money or even their accounts to work because they're being monitored for "suspicious activity". What's ACTUALLY going on, as I discovered by doing even more research (a lot of work on my part just to find out what the FUCK is going on mind you...) is that new policies have been put in place on Patreon regarding ADULT content.

People who have their accounts focused on more adult oriented stuff are having their stuff monitored by servers set up in the UK and not the US for one, which means that some of it's being flagged as fraudulent when it was fine before because they're linking to credit cards or accounts that are stationed in the US. Other people may be victims because of an adult content crackdown that Patreon started 2 months ago. That was a whole fiasco that I missed because it didn't really affect me at the time. However, I'm aware of it now and it's officially apart of my business because they're fucking with my livelihood. 

Even though adult focused content is the thing that made their platform so strong, the crackdowns have seen some accounts even get suspended. Patreon is usually regarded as a place that people go to when they're abandoned by other venues for being too weird or different. That's why it was such a God send when I finally got around to making one. The fact that this is happening at all is ridiculous.

The money is RIGHT THERE! It's ON my account but I can't transfer it to my Paypal because of some bullshit "investigation" that I wasn't informed was happening and is apparently taking them 2 months to complete. The reports that people are giving say that they can't get in contact with Patreon support. They're not saying anything. No one's looking over anything. This was just something that happened because they're fucking up. What's worse is that, checking my Email, they did eventually talk about what was happening but it was all a bunch of bollocks about how they're working hard to fix the issue and trying to send word to the people about what we can do to fix the issue.

Yeah but YOU'RE the ones who fucked with my shit! I can't fix it! None of these people complaining about it on Twitter can. Only YOU can! You're not addressing it either. The fact that I had to do so much fucking research to find out what the hell was going on, 2 months after not even realizing what was happening is ludacris. What kind of platform has whacked out customer service like this? 

So yeah, I'm a BIT pissed off right now. I've got a little over 900 dollars on my account that's just sitting there. The frustration of having it sat there in front of your fucking face but being unable to DO anything to get it is one of the worst feelings in the world. I'm livid.

So, for right now, I'm gonna have to focus more on making some money with commissions. Those don't rely on Patreon and are just direct feeds to my Paypal. That means I'm gonna have to work EXTRA hard too. One more page of Survivor Island will go up, since I just finished it, but after that I'm gonna put that on hold because I have no choice. Juvenile Jenga, however, I will continue just because I NEED to work on something I actually want to work on so I can help work through the frustration.

You can't rely on any of these sites for shit anymore. I'm lucky I have both a part-time job and a commission system. I can't imagine how it must be for people ONLY relying on Patreon who're going through this. 

Jesus Christ. 

On the bright side, commissions will be opening soon for those who want to snag one.