Ordinarily this is where I'd put any interesting code I figured out about
Twilio's Super SIM product, but all I have is a dumb story about how neither
of us wanted me to play with one.
Twilio offers an interesting SIM product, called Super SIM. They can tell you all about the reasons it's cool, I thought it was interesting, and decided I would like to get one. It costs $3 to order one.
In order to buy a SIM, I had to upgrade my account from free tier and set up billing. They were strangely insistent on loading at least 20 bucks to get started, that seemed OK, I'll probably use it up pretty quick if the SIM card gets useful
So I loaded 20 bucks and used $3 of it to purchase a SIM card to play with.
Twilio started sending me emails requiring increasingly detailed, invasive, and time consuming demands about what I was doing with Twilio. These emails each required a response within 72 hours, or my account would be suspended.
When i stopped responding after the third email, with no indication they had read or acknowledged my responses to the first two, they suspended my account, sent me a 4th email demanding my linkedin or github or whatever i can do to investigate myself for them, in order to become unsuspended. My $20 vanished, and I got an email from billing telling me my account was overdrawn by $3.
At this point I became no longer interested in becoming unsuspended, and accuse them of stealing my $20 dollars, and invite them to "go jump in a lake".
They respond with an apology that their onboarding hasn't met expectations, and a promise to give me my money back. But for some reason they still want to know if i would be able to provide my personal LinkedIn profile, GitHub or any publicly available information.
So, here it is, my Github, for you. This specific repo should validate that it is, in fact, my Github.
This is also for anyone that is interested in buying a Super SIM from Twilio, and wonder how the experience was for others.
I gathered all the stuff they asked for across all of the emails. This is from purchasing a single $3 SIM, while it was in the mail, didn't even get to activate it. I've omitted surrounding email fluff and the 72 hours to respond language, this is just their requirements, in order.
1) Are you exploring Twilio for personal use? Or will you be using Twilio in a professional capacity to engage your clients and/or their customers?
2) If you plan to use Twilio for personal use, skip to question 3. Otherwise, help us learn more about your business!
* What is the legal name of your business? Please provide a link to your website or app.
* What products and/or services do you offer to your customers?
* What is your role with the business, and do you have a publicly available online source that displays your association such as a LinkedIn profile or business registry?
3) What Twilio products do you plan on using? Please outline your use case or what you intend to build.
* If you’re planning to use Twilio for SMS, please provide a sample message.
1) If using Twilio for SMS, can you share with us the types of messages you will be sending/receiving using Twilio services?
* Please also confirm who the recipients and/or senders of the messages will be along with a sample message for us to review.
2) Have you created a website or app for your project? If so, we'd love to take a look and learn more about what you're building!
1) We need to verify the identity of the account holder listed as [my name] May you please, provide your LinkedIn profile link or publicly available information that will help us verify your identity. This may include any social media pages (Github, Fiverr, Instagram, etc) or websites that you are associated with.
2) If using Twilio for SMS, share with us the types of messages you will be sending/receiving, and a sample for us to review.
1) A detailed description of your use case of how you intend to use Twilio's services. For example, if you plan to send marketing SMS to your customers, what is your opt-in/out process. Please include:
* links to the website/URL for this process
* screenshots or a scan/copy of the opt-in/out process
2) If you wish to use Twilio for your business, please provide a link to your website or app. If applicable, please provide your email address from your business domain for verification purposes.
3) If you have created other accounts or projects at Twilio previously, please provide a complete list of emails you have used to sign up with so that we can effectively review your profile.
1) Would you be able to provide your personal LinkedIn profile, GitHub or any publicly available information that will help us verify your identity? This may include any social media pages or websites that you are associated with.