THE PATREON BILLING SAGA: September Billing period changes (Patreon)

As a reminder, Patreon messed up BIG-TIME in August (they moved their payment-processing headquarters to another country without informing anyone, resulting in their charges looking suspicious to basically every bank ever), declining a bunch of peoples' cards and, as a result, not paying its creators for those peoples' benefits. A significant number of Dirtybird patrons were not charged for August, despite retaining full access to all posts and benefits (and, in the case of the color tier I just introduced, limited slots). A couple of folks did toss me a tip on Ko-Fi, which I really appreciate!!

THIS IS NOBODY'S FAULT BUT PATREON AS A CORPORATION-- by not fixing this issue, they effectively did not pay me the full amount I was owed. I am definitely not the only creator this happened to, either-- others were hit far worse, and I'm fortunately not in a position where a hundred bucks' difference will put me on the street or something. But it's still, like......... a pretty big chunk of cash for a self-employed artist living paycheck to paycheck.

This is all to say: September's billing period has now started. Hopefully Patreon has fixed its issues, but just in case, I encourage all patrons to pay attention to their transactions over the course of the next week or so to make sure that their payments aren't getting declined.

But, onto the other issue: I believe part of this problem has to do with how I have my account set up to bill patrons-- in order to avoid a scenario where someone might sign up at the very end of the month, get charged, and then immediately get charged *again* a couple days later, Dirtybird patrons have only ever been billed during a set billing period at the beginning of each month, even if they signed up a week or two before that. This has sometimes meant that individuals here or there would sign up and strategically cancel right before they had to pay anything-- which sucks, especially if they claimed benefits during that time, but I always kind of took it as coming with the territory.

During this debacle in particular, however, patrons struggling to get Patreon to accept their payments were repeatedly canceling and re-signing-up  in the hopes that it would fix the issue, only to find that Patreon wasn't even going to TRY and charge them until the NEXT billing period, several weeks later.

I definitely don't expect you guys to scrutinize your payment history in order to participate in the Dirtybird Patreon, aaaaaand I don't want to do that myself either. SO, as a protection against any... future Patreon dumpster-fires along these lines that might occur, after September 7th I will be switching over to Subscription Billing.

This means that new patrons will be charged upon signup, and subsequent months' payments will happen on the same day going forward (ie, if someone signs up on September 13th, they will be charged immediately, and then their next payment will be due on October 13th, then November 13th, etc).

Hopefully this will be less confusing and more convenient for everybody involved, and mitigate the damage caused by any future fuckups on Patreon's part.

And I'd like to extend a heartfelt thanks for everybody's patience during this whole frustrating saga. Please let me know if you continue to have any issues during this billing cycle.