<story><title>Twilio’s toll fraud problem</title><url>https://billychasen.medium.com/twilios-toll-fraud-problem-28b3aef39243</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Terretta</author><text>Your only power to encourage them to fix this is to do the thing they&amp;#x27;re begging you not to:  &lt;i&gt;dispute the charges&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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 &lt;i&gt;for their lack of fraud prevention&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;You accepting anything less than full refund of all fraudulent use they&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;t want to give you the full refund for misuse they should be preventing, dispute it, &lt;i&gt;as is your right&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;The correct course for Twilio is for Twilio to refund these charges &lt;i&gt;no questions asked&lt;/i&gt; while fixing the problem.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>saghm</author><text>There 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&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;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.</text></comment>
<story><title>Twilio’s toll fraud problem</title><url>https://billychasen.medium.com/twilios-toll-fraud-problem-28b3aef39243</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Terretta</author><text>Your only power to encourage them to fix this is to do the thing they&amp;#x27;re begging you not to:  &lt;i&gt;dispute the charges&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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 &lt;i&gt;for their lack of fraud prevention&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;You accepting anything less than full refund of all fraudulent use they&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;t want to give you the full refund for misuse they should be preventing, dispute it, &lt;i&gt;as is your right&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;The correct course for Twilio is for Twilio to refund these charges &lt;i&gt;no questions asked&lt;/i&gt; while fixing the problem.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bragr</author><text>&amp;gt;Your only power to encourage them to fix this is to do the thing they&amp;#x27;re begging you not to: dispute the charges.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;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.</text></comment>