Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twilio’s toll fraud problem

billychasen.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 221 posts

Re: Twilio’s toll fraud problem

#211

Post by aaaaaA3 »

Terretta wrote: post #88
acover wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 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.

The 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…

>The court doesn't have to agree, only the card provider does.

If it's a sufficiently large amount, Twilio will collect the money from you via other channels. Them losing a credit card dispute does not release you from liability.

>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 simply not true. Chargeback blacklists are standard and not prohibited by merchant agreements.

Re: Twilio’s toll fraud problem

#212

Post by aaaaaA3 »

charcircuit wrote: post #103
Terretta wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 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…

Why would the card providers be in the customer's favor. The customer paid for a text to be delivered to a phone number and Twilio did that and then charged the customer for it. If you pay someone to mow your lawn, then they mow your lawn and charge you. You can't just chargeback after the fact to get that service for free.

The people adjudicating disputes at card companies are akin to content moderators hired by social media companies, they aren't experts and do not spend much time reading up on the dispute. The decisions are more or less random, with a heavy bias towards the customer.

Re: Twilio’s toll fraud problem

#213

Post by julianilson »

Same thing happened to us, same day. We're now on the hook for $3,500. When Twilio PROFITS from known fraud, they have no incentive to stop it even when it's obvious. (In our case, tens of thousands of premium SMSs to the same number within the span of a few hours). They aren't issuing a refund for us. As an unfunded startup, this is incredibly deflating. We feel robbed, and Twilio should feel ashamed for pocketing a juicy kick-back from the robber for letting them continue their robbery without making a peep.

Re: Twilio’s toll fraud problem

#214

Post by 0xWiz »

I trust those with more expertise on the matter understand they nuances and difficulties here better than most or any of us do. This is Twilio we’re talking about - they turned down a ton of money in 2022 political advertising to protect their customers from campaigns that were overly aggressive and had ignored customer requests to opt out. They’re not money grabbing thieves. That’s all to say I imagine this issue is more complex than most of us understand.

I will say though this isn’t a great look and hopefully Twilio addresses it. Perhaps there are significant trade-offs to enabling this option by default, but it does _seem_ (from an admittedly naive perspective) like perhaps it’s better to start folks with the training wheels on and make sure they know how to ride the bike before you let them go in the street.

Re: Twilio’s toll fraud problem

#215

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

zamadatix wrote: post #191
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arbitration is likely even more expensive than a dispute.

At the individual dispute level but in the long run arbitration means you don't lose your risk level which will almost always cost you a lot more than whatever the actual arbitration/credit disputes cost.

I suspect (but may be wrong, I don't know how trigger-happy the risk level changes are) the absolute number of events needed to trigger a risk level loss at the scale of Twilio would also represent a catastrophic number of arbitration cases.

Re: Twilio’s toll fraud problem

#216

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

Scoundreller wrote: post #171
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arbitration is likely even more expensive than a dispute.

More choice of arbitration firms than credit card arbitration firms (for them, not you!)

Doesn't help if each arbitration case costs a low triple-digit amount in arbitration fees + creates an expensive case in the legal department.

The arbitration is painful because of the costs (financial and staffing/handling) of the process, not the outcome.

Re: Twilio’s toll fraud problem

#217

Post by dima_vm »

francislavoie wrote: post #210
dima_vm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do: https://www.twilio.com/blog/2015/08/introducing-max-price.ht...

Do you happen to know which MaxPrice number would make sense for simple SMS? Figuring it out a reasonable value to use from Twilio's pricing pages is proving quite tricky, because of the amount of dimensions to their pricing.

No, sorry. Wondering that myself.

Re: Twilio’s toll fraud problem

#218

Post by ender341341 »

kalleboo wrote: post #201
ender341341 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask where? I'm in the US and any of the big carriers offer unlimited texting as a baseline, and we have pretty crappy carriers compared to a lot of the world.

It costs me around 3 cents to send a domestic SMS and 40 cents to send an international one, on an unlimited data 5G plan in Japan. That said, I don't care, since I literally can not remember the last time I sent an SMS. It must have been years ago.

That makes sense, I guess I forgot that lots of the world effectively moved on from SMS to other messaging/apps.

Re: Twilio’s toll fraud problem

#219

Post by TheHappyOddish »

jspaetzel wrote: post #21

Twilio managed to convince everyone that SMS based auth was a good idea but it's always been a bad idea. Drop twilio and go back to using passwords and use a different 2fa method.

Like Authy (owned by Twilio)? Or give them all to (totally not evil) Google?

Re: Twilio’s toll fraud problem

#220

Post by MinorTom »

ender341341 wrote: post #71
eitau_1 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> premium rate number costs 10 cents wut, the absolutely most ordinary (in the realm of single telecom) text costs me ~6.5 cents

Can I ask where? I'm in the US and any of the big carriers offer unlimited texting as a baseline, and we have pretty crappy carriers compared to a lot of the world.

In Germany the standard price for an SMS is 9 cent, of which somewhere around 2-3 cents are paid to the recipient's carrier. Unlimited plans are common, but only because nobody texts anymore (same applies for phone calls).
Post reply on HN