Patreon problems

[d22249]

Last Wednesday (3/15/2017) I received an email thanking me for a pledge that I did not make. I immediately tried to log into my account to see what was going on, but instead of going to my home page I got a notification (still on the log in page) that said my account was disabled. So I immediately contacted Patreon's customer service. They have yet to reply. Is anyone else having problems with Patreon?

[JFR]

I just checked into my page and everything seems fine. Sounds like you might have been hacked.

[d22249]

Seems like. Patreon customer service is poor. Be nice to get the rewards that I keep getting e-mails about.

[Ralcen]

Could it be that your Patreon account has been hacked???

I´ve no problem with my account.
You should controll that they don´t charge you for anything that you don´t wanna have.

[d22249]

Problem is that I did get charged. I can dispute the charge with my credit card company but would like to give Patreon a chance to fix it. Unfortunately I have not heard back from them for 6 days now.

[Ralcen]

I would bombard them with emails. At least two per day and make it urgent. It can´t be that they don´t react with such a problem.

[d22249]

Tried that. Sent 6 total. Day 7 with no response.

[JFR]

At this point, I'd be tempted to PM Wolf and see if he can get them to respond to him as a Creator in support of one of his top-level patrons. He might be able to get their attention so they would get back to you. I don't know what else to suggest. With that kind of non-responsive customer service, I would be very tempted to simply no longer do business with them. Unfortunately, I don't know of any alternative method to continue supporting the artists.

[d22249]

Wolfschadowe already took a look. The results of his low level inquiry were odd. My best guess is that someone hacked my account and did something that seriously violated Patreon's rules to the point where they just ignore my customer service inquiries. If I don't hear from them soon, I'll take care of it with my credit card company. Not the best way to run a business but they seem to have a bit of a monopoly in this field at the moment.

[Ralcen]

Maybe they answered to your account email adress, which was probably changed by the hacker. So they reply to the hackers account. Force them to reply to your email account and tell them that you call your lawyer if they don´t reply.

[d22249]

I still get emails from creators that I support and I received automated replies when I placed customer service inquiries so my account email hasn't changed and I was able to change my password even though I can't get into my account (by using the forgotten password function) which is dependent on the account email.

[Ralcen]

That is really strange!!?

[d22249]

Ok, Patreon just got really weird. I got an e-mail stating that my account has been removed and they refunded pretty much every pledge I've ever made, except for the one I didn't actually make, totally screwing the various artists. Wolfschadowe, Tlaero, Mortze and others just got hosed and I still have no idea why. I've already repledged Tlaero and Mortze and I'll get to Wolfschadowe right before he sends out the next episode. But that doesn't make up for the past pledges that I intended for the artists to have and keep. High handed and absolutely no explanation.

[JFR]

It definitely sounds like you were hacked and the hacker did some bad stuff. I assume you are going to be re-pledging under your new handle. Since they are closing your account, I wonder how they can "refund" past payments. Refund to your credit card? That wouldn't be so bad as you could make one-time "special" payments to your artists. On the other hand, if they refund to the hacker's card, that would be a tragedy. Or perhaps they mean they will be pulling back funds already payed out to the artists. That would really be unfair.

If you don't get any refunds back on your credit card but they pull the funds back from the artists, they would be perpetrating a fraud but I don't know what recourse the artists and you might have.

What a pain in the ass!

[OpineegChipp]

Maybe it is just Patreon. I had bad experiences with them. I wouldn't trust them for anything.