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Twilio is erroneously over-billing and suspending accounts

status.twilio.com

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Re: Twilio is erroneously over-billing and suspending accounts

#101

Post by gknoy »

benjamincburns wrote: post #73
RobSpectre wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you very much for that. We came up way short for you this morning - committed to making it right.

Seconding Willie's comments. I'm not your customer today, but seeing how y'all are handling this would make me feel confident to use Twilio should the need arise. When you get some time (I'm sure you have none right now), read some of the Dreamhost discussion below. You folks appear to be doing an excellent job responding to this.

I completely agree. I've seen several public instances like this one over the past year here where Rob and the Twilio team have done what appears to be the Right Thing (from a customer service perspective). It's inspiring to see them do this, and to see that it is indeed possible to execute very well with a focus on customer happiness and "making things right".

Re: Twilio is erroneously over-billing and suspending accounts

#102

Post by aarondf »

btucker wrote: post #5

I'm glad they (and most of us) are not in the business of making insulin pumps or other software where such bugs could have potentially lethal consequences.

ah, so that's why my insulin pump looks and acts like a pager from the 90s? I suppose that makes sense. Better an ugly pager than an accidental 10x bolus.

Re: Twilio is erroneously over-billing and suspending accounts

#103

Post by frankdenbow »

benjamincburns wrote: post #73
RobSpectre wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you very much for that. We came up way short for you this morning - committed to making it right.

Seconding Willie's comments. I'm not your customer today, but seeing how y'all are handling this would make me feel confident to use Twilio should the need arise. When you get some time (I'm sure you have none right now), read some of the Dreamhost discussion below. You folks appear to be doing an excellent job responding to this.

Agreed, its a tough situation that Twilio is genuinely apologetic about. It happens but I'm sure it will be fixed.

Re: Twilio is erroneously over-billing and suspending accounts

#104

Post by dayjah »

mischanix wrote: post #33
benjamincburns wrote: post #29

For people commenting about overdraft charges, Dreamhost went through this a while back. I was in college at the time, and didn't realize they'd drafted a second charge to my account. A series of small transactions later, and I was $300 in the red with very little income to fix it. They offered to reimburse overdraft fees for those affected, but I never was reimbursed. This is also great as a "how not to tell custome…

I'd say, as a general rule, don't put engineers into a PR role and expect it to go smoothly.

I think this very much depends on the empathy of the developers. We've a pretty strict rule that PR are not allowed to comment on technology; each time they have they've gotten it wrong and we end up looking "stupid". Now we have devs and PR work closely to get succinct and technically accurate updates out to our community.

Re: Twilio is erroneously over-billing and suspending accounts

#105

Post by mikeash »

superuser2 wrote: post #69
benjamincburns wrote: post #29

For people commenting about overdraft charges, Dreamhost went through this a while back. I was in college at the time, and didn't realize they'd drafted a second charge to my account. A series of small transactions later, and I was $300 in the red with very little income to fix it. They offered to reimburse overdraft fees for those affected, but I never was reimbursed. This is also great as a "how not to tell custome…

This is, interestingly, a good reason to use a credit card (and pay it off in full every month) rather than a debit card. With a credit card, you at least have a layer of insulation between your bank account and an erroneous charge.

He who has the money has the power.

With a debit card, an erroneous charge means the other guy has the money, and you have no power.

With a credit card, you still have your money until you pay your bill, so up to that point, you still have the power.

Re: Twilio is erroneously over-billing and suspending accounts

#106

Post by mikeash »

sjtgraham wrote: post #68
screwt wrote: post #60

Apologies for nit-picking at punctuation, but occasionally it matters :-) "Twilio is over-billing ..." = Twilio is charging more than they should. "Twillio is over billing ..." = Twilio has given up on billing. It's so over. Just my personal bugbear - but sometimes it's worth getting this sort of thing correct. Apologies if this is just a US/UK difference, also (I'm in the UK).

Not a single person was confused by this, including me, a British dude sitting in the middle of London.

The fact that two of your sibling comments are from people who were confused by this is just hilarious.

Re: Twilio is erroneously over-billing and suspending accounts

#107

Post by mikeash »

RobSpectre wrote: post #40

Rob from Twilio here. We are still actively working on this incident and aware that erroneous auto-recharge billing and account suspensions have occurred for a number of customers. If this has happened to your account, please send an email to help@twilio.com where we have our support team working on making this right for everyone affected. We are spinning up additional resources to make sure every customer issue gets…

I'm not a customer, and barely know what Twilio even is, but I'd like to say that this is a great example of an apology done right. Short, simple, to the point, describing in basic terms what you're doing, and acknowledging that you screwed up. So simple, yet so rare to see.

Re: Twilio is erroneously over-billing and suspending accounts

#108

Post by freehunter »

lftl wrote: post #76
nkozyra wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is unlikely to happen given most cards report monthly with a 30-day delay. Assuming you're able to contest the charges there would be no effect on your rating. Debit/bank users are definitely the most susceptible.

Additionally as far as I know there is no credit rating penalty for repeated attempted charges above your limit. That sort of information isn't even on any report I've ever seen. The increased balance may impact your credit score, but as you've noted it's unlikely this would make it onto your credit report unless Twilio is rather slow to resolve the issue.

However, running close to your credit limit does impact your credit score, at least according to everything I've seen on the subject.

Re: Twilio is erroneously over-billing and suspending accounts

#109

Post by sjtgraham »

mikeash wrote: post #106
sjtgraham wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a single person was confused by this, including me, a British dude sitting in the middle of London.

The fact that two of your sibling comments are from people who were confused by this is just hilarious.

My apologies, I clearly underestimated how many pedants comment on HN.

Re: Twilio is erroneously over-billing and suspending accounts

#110

Post by aberkowitz »

aarondf wrote: post #102
btucker wrote: post #5

I'm glad they (and most of us) are not in the business of making insulin pumps or other software where such bugs could have potentially lethal consequences.

ah, so that's why my insulin pump looks and acts like a pager from the 90s? I suppose that makes sense. Better an ugly pager than an accidental 10x bolus.

You should check out some of the newer pumps in the past few years - specifically the Tandem t-slim and the OmniPod. A lot more functionality, and a lot less pager like.
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