Charge Up Front Answers

Helllllo Rivans.

I spoke to Patreon Support regarding the recent confusion. I'll briefly summarise before I explain what they said.

Essentially, I switched my Patreon to a Charge Up Front system of pledging. This means that any patron who pledges is immediately charged and therefore gains immediate access to rewards. I was under the assumption that people who pledged between the last payment cycle (at the start of this month) and when I activated Charge Up Front (about two weeks into the month) would be charged immediately upon activation, allowing me to put PokeSins passwords in patron-only posts.
After the switch I waited a couple of days to check patrons were being charged correctly and found that they were not. The people who pledged for the first time in the two week gap were NOT charged, while people who pledged after the switch WERE charged.

I brought this to the attention of Patreon Support, seeing as it's a massive flaw with switching to Charge Up Front, and their response told me that they either didn't understand my issue with it or were choosing not to address it.
Existing patrons (with a processed pledge or not) are completely unaffected by the Charge Up Front switch. They are not charged again, even if they'd never been charged at all. The switch only directly affects people who pledge AFTER IT'S ACTIVATED.

What this means is that anyone who pledged after the first but before the switch to Charge Up Front will have to wait until the start of September in order to receive their rewards. This is because Patreon will not charge you until this point.
I hope you've followed all of that and I apologise for reiterating it all again; this is just such a cluster that I felt I had to be crystal clear. This is a flaw with Patreon's system as it leaves the patrons who pledged in that two week gap in something of a limbo. I encouraged Patreon Support to edit the info page about Charge Up Front to explicitly explain this flaw, but I personally doubt they will.

What To Take Away From This:

If you had a processed pledge at the start of the month, nothing has changed. For you it's exactly as it always has been, except if you increase your pledge you'll get the higher rewards immediately.

If you pledged in the first two weeks of this month, you WILL get your rewards, but you'll have to wait until you're charged at the start of the next month. I apologise for the inconvenience and the coming and going on this, but I completely blame Patreon for both this flaw existing and for not clearly explaining it.

If you've pledged since I switched to Charge Up Front, I've been checking for processed pledges every day, so you should already have received a Patreon mail containing your PokeSins password. For all intents and purposes, you're in the same category as people who had their pledges processed at the start of the month.

I hope this clears up the recent confusion and again I'd like to apologise. I'm confident that this will only be an issue until the start of September, at which point the Charge Up Front will take full effect and there shouldn't be any more issues.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

- Geran