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 with a card, it's one of the few consumer powers you have.
>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.
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.
In your analogy it would be more like paying someone to mow your lawn because your neighbour got it done for $10, then being charged $100 because your house number is even.
It might be in the terms and conditions, but it’s bad faith to not give any warnings or controls before the services are rendered.
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.
And 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.
