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Comment by bragr | Hacker News Reader

>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.

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> Disputing the charges is always a nuclear option. They may never do business with you after that.

This is something that I think needs to be regulated. I'm not saying that this should be the case for a company the size of Twilio, but I definitely think that a company the size of Apple/Google/Samsung should not be able to ruin your life because you had temerity to stand up to them and dispute a charge.

Also twilio … they’re the industry standard for enterprise communications

Twilio has a neat platform, but their standards are very low or nonexistent when you experience jitter, large audio buffers or routing issues.

Providing PCAPs and reproducing routing issues doesn't result in support addressing these issues. Many other IPES and CLECs will actually fix these issues when documented.

It’s a shame that regulation has failed to keep up with tech. It’s not exactly the first time we’ve had a gold rush or a lawless wild-west situation.

The west still prospered when consumer rights were given priority over business.

The irony is that this whole mess is caused by "sender pays" EU style regulations. Be careful what you wish for.

As I see it, the problem is that those companies are effectively monopolies in fields most of us depend on. If Apple or Google refuses service to someone previously reliant on their services, they could be locked out of accounts on a plethora of other services, have their payments to third parties disabled, lose access to major means of communication, and more.

The last generation of big tech monopoly never had that kind of power. Microsoft couldn't even do much to block someone from using its products as most of them were sold through third parties and didn't require network services to operate.

I’m particularly afraid of it on Amazon, where a $20 dispute could nix my 800+ book Kindle library.

I would strongly recommend cracking the DRM on those when you have the chance.

Dude just get DRM free copies of them. Don't live in fear.

Shouldn't have "bought" them in the first place. Buy physical books, or DRM-free books on sites like gumroad, or just pirate. Don't give in to the rent seeking business of pretending to sell you what you can't own. If you like your Kindle device, you can use KOReader to read epubs and reduce dependence on Amazon. If I sue the bookstore, they can't just take all the books away, but if you dispute a charge with Amazon, they'll do it because the ToS says they can. At the very least, try downloading and de-DRMing all the books you received from them: https://github.com/noDRM/DeDRM_tools

> Buy physical books

No.

> DRM-free books on sites like gumroad

I like specific authors.

> or just pirate

I like specific authors and want them to get paid.

> I like specific authors and want them to get paid.

Rent the book on Amazon as you already are. But then download a DRM-free copy from somewhere, uhhh, free.

Is there anything in the arbitration clauses forbidding them from cancelling your account if you invoke arbitration (regardless of whether you prevail or fail?).

Well they have to abide by the arbitration and any good arbitrator will put a good faith clause in the agreement.

Is it hard for a big tech company to find a bar arbitrator that won't require that in the initial customer agreement?

If they did that, then there would be no incentive for customers to choose arbitration over filing a dispute with their credit card.

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.

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.

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