“It’s Scary And Stressful”: Some OnlyFans Creators Are Complaining About Two-Month Payment Delays
When users subscribe to an OnlyFans creator, a “third-party payment provider” receives the subscription funds and immediately deducts a 20% fee, which goes directly to OnlyFans, according to the platform’s terms of service. The remaining 80% goes to the creator, who can choose the way they’d prefer to receive the funds. Most elect to directly deposit their earnings into their bank accounts — and this method appears to have been the one affected by the recent “technical difficulties.”
In its statement, OnlyFans told BuzzFeed News that during the period of time when payouts couldn’t be accessed, creators had the option of using other forms of payment. But the people interviewed by BuzzFeed News said that those options are limited — and often undesirable.
“I cannot save and pay rent with a prepaid MasterCard,” said Canadian OnlyFans creator Lady Jay Cherie, who is currently waiting for more than $2,000 to be transferred to her bank account. Others interviewed by BuzzFeed News expressed concern about the alternate payment methods, some of which were completely unknown to them, such as e-wallet companies Skrill and Paxum.
Efforts to resolve payment issues have been frustrated, creators said, by OnlyFans’ customer support, which many described as “nonexistent.” Communications are facilitated only through an internal “ticket” system and via email. Crucially, there’s no phone number to connect directly with customer service representatives.
“I feel like it’s a robot just copying and pasting,” Olivia Haze, a 20-year-old creator from Ontario, Canada, said of her communications with OnlyFans support staff. “They’re just repeating the same message over and over and not actually reading what I’m saying.”
Babie called it “absolutely ridiculous” that OnlyFans does not have a customer helpline. “If you’re a million-dollar platform, you have to have some way that people can actually contact you and talk to someone,” she said, “not just email and wait 24 hours, or open a ticket and then have it be ignored.”
It’s even a problem for top-earning creators on the platform. GoAskAlex, a 28-year-old Canadian sex worker, is in the top 1% of OnlyFans account holders but nonetheless spent two months in back-and-forth with the company attempting to access the money in her two online accounts — a sum of more than $20,000. (As of press time, she has been able to cash out the money in one of her accounts but is still waiting for the $3,000 in her second OnlyFans account to be transferred.)
“Creators have earned this company so much money and to not have support that will answer your emails and your questions, to not have a 1-800 number we can call, to just be relying on a handful of [customer service] employees… It’s frustrating,” GoAskAlex said. “It’s really frustrating to see this company, this empire, that has so much money and so much power in the industry, not showing up for the creators.”
When users subscribe to an OnlyFans creator, a “third-party payment provider” receives the subscription funds and immediately deducts a 20% fee, which goes directly to OnlyFans, according to the platform’s terms of service. The remaining 80% goes to the creator, who can choose the way they’d prefer to receive the…
