Why?"Sorry, you don't have access to that topic!"

I’ve got this message “Sorry, you don’t have access to that topic!” I’v alrealy bind my Credit Card to patreon Account.But still can’t download the link.Why?

You need to contact the Patreon support for such a problem. We are just other patreon APT clients.

Jim hasn’t bothered showing his face here since January. He just collects our money. I suggest you stop your support right away.

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Did you file a complaint with Patreon? Doesn’t Patreon offer protection against unproductive or non-show artists?

So it seems Patreon itself has dropped the ball with regards to not protecting its patrons from which it earns a fee with every payment. No activity from an user that has been accepting donations from patrons for 8 months should set off automatic warning flags in the Patreon site software, Such software, in the lax state it is in now, could easily be used to launder money. That’s not happening here with us but Patreon.com has no excuse for not looking into this situation. No posts for visits from the organizer of the Patreon ATP software in 8 months

I also wrote a message directly to the programmer that many of us have been sponsoring for 8 months last month but haven’t heard anything back either.

As I already said I’m sticking around a bit longer but when and if (say the software author returns with many substantial improvements and it seems not so likely and makes me thing they have left the country completely and have isolated themselves purposefully) I do drop patronage I will see if there are any mechanisms made available by Patreon.com to file a formal complaint and then possible with local legal representatives. One cannot abuse the concept of patronage to circumvent consumer protection laws.

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I didn’t know we could do that. I tracked down Jim’s address in Washington and wrote him a letter a few months ago but he never responded to that either. No obituaries. And I would think if he were ill or had an accident, his wife would have at least read the letter. I do stop in everyday, even though I stopped my support, to see if he has shown up. I think the guy scammed us.

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That page is for reporting content violations, doxing, and as a general way to report artists and patrons that violate rules of Patreon.com. It does not specifically discuss artists that promise to produce content but then never do and never leave further indication that they are even trying to produce content.

Personally I haven’t reported him yet because the work he is trying to do is very difficult so I’m not convinced he is purposely trying to take our money via a scam but, embarrassed by lack or progress or not, it would be nice to hear that he was still trying. When I do decide to stop funding I will report but I understand others that have less patience than me after 8 months of no activity and no replies from the artist we have been funding.

I have written him one more message directly but this time using the message function at the Pateron.com website rather than the one at this Artful Physics Tailor community website and told him that I’ve made a link for those in the community that want to complain. We’ve been polite and patient enough.

The direct link to the Patreon ATP page is here:

Perhaps if Jim has lost interest he can release the source code, documentation, and support files for the cloth patterns and such to his Github.com account to share as MIT code:

I doubt that he will reply. I sent him a letter to his home and that didn’t work. What is sad is that I still come here twice a day to see if he has shown up.

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There is nothing wrong with being hopeful that he will follow through on his promises to the patrons despite that you have cancelled your funding. It’s only natural to expect good from people but you are far from the only one to have cancelled funding.

What you can do is subscribe to the threads where he has released past versions and makes announcements of new versions then you don’t have to waste your time with him anymore if he’s just going to ignore you (and us).

I said I messaged him directly once again and will wait til next Tuesday for him to reply and then I will cancel and file a complaint. I will also ask for a personal refund of all 8 months for myself and all patrons of this project. He did promise us a release in February and he did not deliver it. He also talked about going to visit Japan where his son was attending university and have his son look at some of the mathematics of ATP but those posts must have been deleted as they are gone (I’ll check again but I couldn’t find them re-reading all Jim Hugunin’s posts earlier today). So basically, he set a schedule for a release and did not meet the schedule which is in violation of the Patreon rules. His non-attendance to the community’s questions despite saying the he enjoys interacting with the community and wants our feedback for features and that he was planning a release in February and that he has not been active at all on questions about progress developing what he himself called beta software not ready for commercial release should rightly be consider abuse of us as patrons and therefore also violates Patreon’s rules of conduct.

We have given every benefit of the doubt but I’ve been a software engineer in my past too and seen this sort of treatment by software engineers towards their employers and coworkers and it’s not really acceptable. When you employ yourself at a business or via some novel method such a Patreon is is always, always, ‘What have you done for me lately?’

Sometimes people have to move from one’s current professional to another if one doesn’t enjoy the work, big pay or not. We weren’t even a big enough paycheck for him to get a courteous ‘Sorry, I lost interest.’ or ‘Sorry, I failed.’.

I will not fund a Patreon project again unless it has a set week of the month, every month, schedule although Jim stated another beta release in February so he was promising us a schedule.

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I did find his post where he talked about his trip to Japan and his son doing some math for him. I’m not sure why Google Search site: couldn’t find that thread when I used the keyword Japan. He also talked about the next release being delays by a couple weeks so that would of been the 16 Jan release.

For all intents and purposes it looks like he was originally planning on doing a monthly release and gave us that expectation as well but he didn’t follow through on his commitment.

It’s very odd, I hope as you do that he is OK, but I will be canceling my monthly pledge this next Tuesday.

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Yeah! I use to check it at least once a day. Always frustrating. It’s sad to see no news at each time I check. So much potential in this application and nothing, even a short note about what is happening or what had happened.

I’ve subscribed to the ATP new release section of the forum but I doubt that we’ll see any progress.

I’ve canceled my pledge. I’d be surprised to find that Jim is actually too busy at work or elsewhere to work his pledge to his patrons. He would have taken him far less effort to produce what he promised to us than the effort and money we spent in supporting him.

Even more disappointing than Jim Hugunin’s scam of us via the ATP project is Patreon itself doesn’t enforce it’s own Terms of Service and has designed their website such that they avoid answering to their own terms of service when customers attempt to tell them of people and groups that are using Patreon to scam patrons. That makes Patreon a willing participant in all the scams that these “artists” that abuse Patreon too and eventually they will be legally called on that participation. Patreon is more criminal that the scam artists it willingly aids and abets. Patreon in refusing to actively monitor it’s own resources being used is criminally negligent. 8 months of payments and no activity by the Patreon “artist” and Patreon does nothing to intervene. That making Patreon an ideal platform for money laundering and other criminal activity. That is not going to last.

I also recommend, after investigating Patreon and Jim Hugunin more thoroughly, for people to drop support of Jim Hugunin and any other Patreon project. Don’t fund scam businesses or scam artists once you realize that is what they are.

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Jim Hugunin is not a scam artist. He’s a talented programmer who created NumPy, Jython and Iron Python – all of which are freely available. He’s worked as senior engineer at both Microsoft and Google. He doesn’t need the small amount of money this Patreon is generating, and I’m sure it didn’t come close to covering the expensive of his time developing anything for Artful Physics Tailor.

We should be more concerned about the reason for his unexplained absence. It’s possible he’s had health trouble or some other unavoidable impediment to being online.

Certainly you should cancel you’re pledge as he’s not available on this project anymore, but please don’t disparage an incredibly talented and honorable individual.

It’s not honorable to take thousand dollars from innocent patrons for 9 months and counting. Multiple people have written to him and searched to see that he was OK via public records. Nothing indicates he has been jailed, died, or incapacitated in a way that prevents his communication to his very patient patrons.

Not only has Jim Hugunin not answered multiple attempts from multiple people, but Patreon as a business aids that swindling of our time, money, and peace of mind by routing our messages about defunkt Patreon projects to their business’s /dev/null, so they are effectively serving as accomplices…

It doesn’t matter what his original intent was, 9 months later he and Patreon are running a scam and they’ve purposely ignored communication to disable funding to this software project that would have had Jim Hugunin fired from any real business at least 6 months ago.

David, did you read through this thread? I wrote a kind letter to his home address imploring him to pop in and say hello. If he was ill, his wife would have opened the letter and at least, wrote me back. We aren’t just judging the guy and leaving. We have made attempts to contact him and he has failed to answer. That is dirty business. I cancelled my pledge months ago.

Honorable? No, he isn’t.

Anyone who is upset about the money spent, I will personally refund your contributions. Cancel your subscription, and contact me privately, and have a screenshot of a statement or charges or something, and I can paypal or venmo you the balance.

There is simply no reason for Jim to scam a community for “40 patrons for $10 or more a month”, or maybe $400 a month. He most recently worked at Google, probably making $170k+ a year, or about $14k a month. I know, because I sold a company to Google. I was an engineering director there.

I’m far more worried that something unfortunate has happened to take Jim out of communication and off the Internet. Which would be a real loss for the world, because he’s extremely talented.

There are 34 patreons on now still hanging on but there were over a hundred in March and April. David, again, I mailed him a letter in July. I have his address, I know where he lives. But neither he nor his wife responded. I have also tweeted Aleta…no response. Maybe he isn’t scamming us but he isn’t responding to anything. Why isn’t Aleta responding? Why isn’t someone, anyone, saying something? Since mid January??? I don’t care about the money, it wasn’t that much. But I care about someone saying they are going to do something, asking for money then disappearing. To me, it’s the principle. If you know him, please find out what happened to him. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Okay, fortunately, I found a way to reach Jim’s son, and he’s confirmed that Jim is alive and well, and apparently still working on Artful Physics as of Sept 23, 2018.

I still don’t think he’s ‘scamming’ the community, just perhaps being a bit irresponsible about how he’s handling Patreon monthly subscriptions.

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David, could you please ask his son (Jasper?) if he would tell his dad to please make contact with his patrons? I am willing to jump back on the bandwagon if he would just show us some consideration. Thank you very much for letting us know!

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Glad he’s OK but really being a software developer is no excuse for that. I’ll only pledge when I see 3 consecutive months with updates. There are competitor products out there and one in particular I could of bought with twice the amount I paid in pledges to APT.

How many people got there refunds from you? And why are you offering to pay for them and not Jim? You doing so doesn’t lend more credibility to Jim.

It is now 1 year and 6 months since Jim has posted any updates to his project or spoken with some sort of explanation.

You yourself claim to have talked to his son but offer no evidence of having talked to his son or that his son actually stated what he stated. We have proof though that we pledged and paid over many months and that Jim Huginin has not responded in any way for 1 years 6 months and counting.

And even more important than this single instance of Jim swindling people out of their money, Patreon as a platform is designed to help and protect the swindlers and Patreon take of the pledges while they ignore complaints filed by those that pledge.

I don’t recommend Patreon for pledgers.