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Your only power to encourage them to fix this is to do the thing they're begging you not to: dispute the charges. If a threshold of Twilio customers dispute c
by Terretta 4y ago
Your only power to encourage them to fix this is to do the thing they're begging you not to: dispute the charges.
If a threshold of Twilio customers dispute charges, Twilio loses the ability to process credit cards at a lower risk rate, then with all but high risk processors, then may lose the ability to process them at all.
If enough of their customers are getting burned, and enough dispute, Twilio would no longer be able to accept credit cards. They are terrified of that, so begging you not to dispute charges for their lack of fraud prevention.
You accepting anything less than full refund of all fraudulent use they're cascading back on you is a gift to them. You accepting less than a full refund, while not dinging them at all with a chargeback is also a gift to them. If they don't want to give you the full refund for misuse they should be preventing, dispute it, as is your right.
The correct course for Twilio is for Twilio to refund these charges no questions asked while fixing the problem.
- tomesco 4y agoCouldn't Twilio also close and cease providing service to any accounts that initiate chargebacks?
- toomuchtodo 4y agoThey could, but customers could then file complaints with the FTC and their state’s attorney general for the fraud Twilio is enabling. I strongly encourage Twilio customers to pursue this route if Twilio is charging them for fraudulent charges.
- bredren 4y agoThese filings may add up to change at some later time, though are unlikely to provide any kind of near-term actionable remedy.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoSuch is America’s regulatory landscape ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- BonoboIO 4y agoIf they lose the contract with their credit card company... I see people jumping out of windows at the Twilio HQ. That’s like nuclear meltdown.
- Brystephor 4y agoTo lose the ability to process MasterCard or Visa credit cards takes a few months. You can rack up big fines during that time though. If they get put into the probation period that would raise red flags with some execs, assuming people are communicating these things.
- BonoboIO 4y agoMaybe they will get surprised, because people live by „don’t ask, don’t tell“ and when shit hits the fan everybody acts surprised.
- EGreg 4y agoCustomers can do that anyway.
- Terretta 4y agoFurther, the customer has the right to dispute credit card charges thanks to the agreement between customer and card provider and between card provider and merchant. Twilio will get in trouble with Visa/Mastercard if customers say Twilio is dropping them for disputes the card provider finds in the customers' favor.
- Brystephor 4y ago> Twilio will get in trouble with Visa/Mastercard if customers say Twilio is dropping them for disputes the card provider finds in the customers' favor. This isn't true. Visa/Mastercard care about your chargeback rate. You can block a customer who's done a chargeback. I'm sure the card networks have rules around what you cannot do as a result of a chargeback but you can stop providing services to a customer who has done a chargeback.
- Terretta 4y agoDisclosure: I engineered and delivered a high risk payment processing gateway to a firm specializing in being a cc processor of last resort, also working with merchant banks of last resort. To be clear, my views on this are not legal counsel, they are simply from having worked in this area for a decade before becoming CTO at a global bank.
- bragr 4y ago>Your only power to encourage them to fix this is to do the thing they're begging you not to: dispute the charges. I'd check their TOS to see if they offer some kind of arbitration option. As noted in other threads, triggering that process can be a surprisingly effective way to make someone from the company actually engage with the issue. Disputing the charges is always a nuclear option. They may never do business with you after that.
- Scoundreller 4y agoIs there anything in the arbitration clauses forbidding them from cancelling your account if you invoke arbitration (regardless of whether you prevail or fail?).
- RC_ITR 4y agoWell they have to abide by the arbitration and any good arbitrator will put a good faith clause in the agreement.
- idontpost 4y ago[dead]
- Scoundreller 4y agoIs it hard for a big tech company to find a bar arbitrator that won't require that in the initial customer agreement?
- quanticle 4y agoIf they did that, then there would be no incentive for customers to choose arbitration over filing a dispute with their credit card.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y agoArbitration is likely even more expensive than a dispute.
- acover 4y agoThat Twillio doesn't protect you is bad. However, would a court agree you don't owe them the money? This recommendation seems like abuse of disputing a charge and will just get you banned from Twillio.
- helsontaveras18 4y agoAnd then you switch to another SMS provider, which may be costly from an engineering perspective, but clearly worth it if you’re getting slammed with botnets and Twilio doesn’t care. Absolutely, dispute the charge.
- acover 4y agoWhich providers don't have this problem? Does AWS prevent you sending SMS to premium numbers?
- PenguinCoder 4y agoAlmost any provider will have these sorts of problems. In my experience though, SignalWire has been great for customer service and working with.
- gghffguhvc 4y agoYou don’t even have a viable option for court as they have forced arbitration clauses.
- Terretta 4y agoThe court doesn't have to agree, only the card provider does. The customer has the right to dispute credit card charges thanks to the agreements between customer and card provider and between card provider and merchant. Twilio will get in trouble with Visa/Mastercard if customers say Twilio is dropping them for disputes the card provider finds in the customers' favor. This is why you always pay for sketchy merchants with a card, it's one of the few consumer powers you have.
- 4y ago
- saghm 4y agoThere was an online service subscription I had several years back (not Twilio, but something somewhat similar) that I stopped needing. I forget if there either wasn't any way to this on their website or if it was just broken, but after repeatedly trying and failing, I ended up just disputing the charge the next time the monthly payment came up, and my bank stopped the transactions from that point on, so I forgot about it. A while later (probably around 6-12 months), I got an email from that company asking me to go back and tell my bank that the transactions were fine. Given that it had been so long and I only disputed the charge due to their website not giving me the ability to cancel through them, I didn't think it was worth trying to talk to someone at the bank to figure out how that would even work. It left an impression on me because it was the first time that I felt like I actually had any power in my relationship with a company as a customer rather than just having to hope that the company would chose to do right by me with nothing forcing them to.
- Pxtl 4y agoFrom both a user and provider perspective I hate that individual companies are implementing 2FA at all. I don't want another database with my phone and a password in it. I wish Mozilla Persona had took off, or any other auth standard.
- rapht 4y agoI'm not sure I agree. You chose to require an SMS OTP for your customers. It is not straightforward at all that the burden of filtering your customers would fall on your provider and not on you -- actually, if the provider you chose does explicitly not provide that filtering, it's effectively on you. (I have to say that if I were Twilio, I would not have added the "fraud prevention" toggle, because now they can be deemed to be providing that service.)