Switching to "Charge Upfront" payment method (Patreon)

No update about v13 yet, but there will be one next week (hopefully with a new beta). In the meantime, I'm making a change to how payments work for my Patreon that I would like all of you to be aware of.

I'm going to be switching to Patreon's new "Charge Upfront" method of payment as per today. This affects how Patreon handles new pledges and how it is handled when you change your pledge amount. Let me explain some of the differences so that it is clear for everybody.

New patrons will be charged on the day they join. Then, they will be charged on the 1st of the following month and the 1st day of every month after that.

For example, if someone pledges $3 on September 20th, they'll be charged on September 20th for $3. If their pledge remains active into October, they will be charged $3 again on October 1st and subsequent months.

If a subscriber increases or decreases their pledge, they'll immediately be charged the difference between their recent payment and new membership value.

For example, take someone who has a pledge for $1 now and pays this $1 on September 1st. If this person then changes the pledge to $3 on September 5th, they'll be charged $2 on September 5th and $3 on October 1st and subsequent months.

Nothing will change if you are currently a subscriber and don't change your pledge now or in the future.

1. Prevents people from pledging, taking the content they want, and then immediately cancelling their pledge without being charged.
Some of these people even apply for rewards outside of the Patreon (e.g. Google Drive access, ask for things to be transcribed) which I then have to constantly monitor if they paid or not.

2. Prevents people from pledging with payment information that doesn't work, taking the content they want, and then never paying.
These cause the most headaches, as they stay on the list of patrons and often apply for rewards outside of Patreon, which I then have to chase down when the payment doesn't work.

3. Eliminates the need to schedule or stagger updates because everyone who is viewing a post has already paid for it.
This means I can immediately make updates on the Patreon and the Google Drive/Dropbox, which I have, in the past, been hesitant to do during the second half of the month. 

Items 1 and 2 above make up 2-5% of pledges every month and they take a relative large amount of time to keep track of with regards to rewards (much more than 2-5% of my time). Not having to spend this time on this kind of boring administrative stuff will free me up to spend more time on useful things, like improving the sheets!

People can feel cheated out of their money when pledging near the end of the month and then getting charged twice within a short amount of time.

Unfortunately, Patreon doesn't offer any way to disabling charging during the last days of the month. However, I am able to do refunds and will do so happily for anybody who feels they have been charged unfairly. To make this clear for everybody, I have changed the Welcome Message to explain the process and a way to ask for a refund.

For more information, please see the Patreon help articles "What is charge up front?"and "Why was I charged immediately? Will You charge me again?".

If you have any questions or concerns about this switch, please leave a comment or message me. The switch is permanent and Patreon doesn't let me revert it back once I apply it.

I am intentionally doing this switch at the last day of the month, so that it will be applicable for the whole of the next month. From the help articles linked to above, it is clear that there are some issues during the remaining days of month of the switch. I hope to avoid this by doing it today, the last day of the month.