OIJ Patreon Update / Message Board for July 2018

Hey everyone! John here :) I wanted to do a little page housekeeping update.

1) Patreon UK VAT tax and VPN messages.
I wrote to Patreon about this and I will attach Nick's (Patreon support desk) reply at the bottom. I'm not sure what it all means but it may be helpful to some affected that haven't gotten a reply yet.

2) Declined payments. We had a record number of declined payments and Patreon says it is due to Stripe, the company they use for charging, declining cards.
It could also be from PayPal asking for confirmation of a new account or just a new credit card.

HOW TO CHANGE PAYMENT IN PATREON:
https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203913769-How-do-I-update-my-payment-information-

If your payment was declined, I sent you a quick message (I say it's a quick message in the message too) because I think you should know in case there are other charges you need to make on your card in the future that won't be processed. Your support here means a lot to me and the series and I can't say thank you enough!

3) Postcard Club: We are closing in on 200 club members! It's a lot of fun to makes these each month and send them off to viewers all over the world!
If you did not receive a postcard by the end of the month, please let me know by direct mail here in Patreon. It can take up to 2 weeks to arrive after sending it, and I always post an update here when they are sent. Typically it takes 4-7 days to arrive.
Double checking your address helps. You can fix or update it here:

HOW DO I UPDATE MY ADDRESS ON PATREON:
https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002832686-How-do-I-change-my-shipping-address-

Make sure it is written properly, capitalize names, places, check for misspellings (someone misspelled their city :P) Please don't use all CAPS if you can prevent it, especially if your address is long. It means the address is smaller on the label (takes up more space) and increases the chance of it being missed when it arrives in your country.
State abbreviations help like NSW instead of New South Wales (Australia).
St. instead of Street. Ave. instead of Avenue etc.  
I am looking into ways to prevent the postcards from being damaged including different paper or adding the codes myself to the cards. The United States has some of the oldest and most poorly maintained equipment because the USPS doesn't have a budget (thanks a lot email :) but I can't be hard on them. They're doing their best with what they have.

4) The Community Tab is on FIRE! Thank you for sharing your trips to Japan giving your tips and photos to others which makes the trip to Japan even better! So much is not mentioned in guidebooks. The best way is to share in the community, word of mouth! I check it daily now.
5) I am adding a new HIGHER level upon request from a Patreon. You'll see it show up. It's the SHOGUN level and it sponsors a OIJ GO episode on a theme you would like. We have to work together to make it happen and not all themes are possible - permission, travel costs, etc but if it is and I'm going to that area or it's in Tokyo, I can probably do it. The new level will be available from July 10th.
6) I am also working on adding more benefits for your support here including discounts on upcoming merchandise. Some fun new add ons to Patreon make this possible.

I will discuss this on a live stream for this weekend with you in our bimonthly Q&A with SKYPE call in :)
Here's the message from Nick: (send me a message via DM in Patreon if you'd like me to write back to him.)
__________

Hey John,

I'm not certain in regards to  what changes have occurred in the UK. We do charge VAT which is where  the questions about pledging outside the UK or using a VPn are coming  from. We check if a pledge is eligible for VAT (and which country's VAT)  based on the location the pledge is made from. If I was on a VPN  connecting to the internet through the U.K. and I made a pledge I would  be charged U.K. VAT, even though I live in Wisconsin. Would you be able  to send over that patron's email address? I can look for their ticket  and see what was mentioned there and try to get some more insight on  this in case there are some more broad changes in the U.K. that I'm not  aware of.

A patron being marked as  fraud can be a bit of a surprise for both you as the creator and for the  patron. Generally, this is something that our payment processor  (Stripe) flags on their side due to information from the cardholders  bank or whatever systems they use to flag payments as potentially  fraudulent. That can sometimes be location based as well and  unfortunately some patrons get marked as fraud inadvertently. There was  an issue on Stripe's side a month or two ago when they changed their  algorithm for detecting fraud that caused quite a few users (not just on  Patreon) to have declined payments due to being marked as fraud  incorrectly. We can fix that for the patron on our side as we  essentially mark their payment method as "not fraudulent" on our side,  all they need to do is submit a ticket. Since it involves payment  methods, we need to verify certain information with the patron and can  only work with them on that type of issue for security and privacy  reasons. Generally, once we receive the ticket, it's less than 24 hrs.  before it's resolved since it requires a brief review and then marking  it as safe. That should prevent it from being marked as fraud again in  the future, as well.

Phone support or a  callback service may be a long time coming and I wish I had a better  answer here. I've been working in support for 15 years and I fully  understand the benefits that are involved with phone support but there's  also a significant challenge to offering that type of support channel.  It's something we want to consider as an option to creators and their  patrons but figuring out how to implement that in a scale-able way for  the size of our team has been difficult, to say the least.

I'm  always happy to help, John. I'm sorry you've had such poor experiences in the past.

Enjoy your holiday and I look forward to your response!