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Question

RE: Important changes to SMS by Zapier

  • 19 February 2024
  • 5 replies
  • 127 views
F

This post was split from the topic: Important changes to SMS by Zapier

Three things:

  1. By referring Zapier users to Twilio, you are expecting your paying customers to pay for a third-party service to do something that was previously included as part of our not-inexpensive monthly Zapier fees?  As in “to bad, so sad, that’s the way it is”?
     
  2. This is the part that really irks me: if you knew that these changes were upcoming, and you KNOW who uses what numbers (since YOU provide the numbers to us users), why in the world did you not send notification about these changes WELL IN ADVANCE OF THE DEADLINE?  What you have done is broken our critical business workflows, expecting us to fix that on a long weekend.  This breaks any level of trust we once had toward Zapier as a reliable vendor.
     
  3. You can stamp your “important changes” post by blaming T-Mobile, but has anyone at Zapier stopped to consider how this could have been handled better.  For instance, we are in Canada, where T-Mobile does not operate.  We have absolutely no idea what mobility provider you use for the outgoing SMS numbers that YOU (I repeat YOU) provided.  Do you really expect end users to interpret your “T-Mobile, T-Mobile, T-Mobile” alarms and figure out how that applies to us when YOU have that data in your systems and presumably we are paying you for your ability to handle your integrations?

We are a long-time user of Zapier, and a long-time booster of your services to developers and business owners, but with outages, issues, declining support quality, and price increases in the last couple of years, we’re reconsidering relying on Zapier.  This SMS issue just might be the last straw.

I hope your management takes this feedback to improve how you operate, because in our experience with Zapier lately has been sinking rapidly.

5 replies

Troy Tessalone
Userlevel 7
Badge +14

Hi @Frosty 

Here’s a help article about how to use Twilio Lookup API to determine the carrier of a phone number.

 

 

⚡ Troy Tessalone - AutomationAce.com | Premier Certified Zapier Expert | #1 Zapier Community Contributor
F

Thanks but how to look up a carrier misses the point.  The point is that the way Zapier has handled “Important changes to SMS” verges on contempt for us customers.

It’s interesting how I commented at https://community.zapier.com/troubleshooting-99/important-changes-to-sms-by-zapier-32121 but my comment was split from that post (which is now closed for comments) and is now in “troubleshooting”.

This isn’t a troubleshooting post.  This is a post about how sloppy Zapier has been about this topic.  It would be appreciated if someone from Zapier would reply to my points.

SamB
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Hi @Frosty,

Really appreciate you taking the time to share this candid feedback here in the Community. I’ve passed your comments over to the relevant teams to ensure that your voice will most definitely be heard on this.

I’m truly sorry about the short notice and for all the hassle caused as a result of these changes. I know it doesn’t in anyway excuse it but I did want to clarify that we ourselves received very little notice of the changes, and reached out to customers as quickly as we could via email and announcements in the Community and Help Center. We always aim to give as much advance notice of changes as possible but in this instance sadly we were unable to give any advance notice.

Totally understand the frustrations caused here but please know that there is never any contempt or ill will intended towards our customers. And we are still exploring ways to restore support for T-Mobile numbers again in the future.

On the subject of the incorrect category, your post was moved from an announcement post in the Troubleshooting category and that category was kept when it was moved over. I’ve moved it into the How do I category instead which is a slightly better fit but again not perfect as we don’t have a category for this specific sort of post.

Thanks again for voicing your concerns here. We’ll do better in future! 

F

Thanks for replying.

I don’t understand how an organization of the size and with the experience of Zapier -- in the business of automating and making things run smoothly -- could be caught off guard and didn’t have a proper way to communicate the issue to affected users in a clear, direct, and helpful way.

Is it too much to expect communication along the lines of “you are using phone number ###-###-#### in your Zaps, this is how you are affected, this is the timeline, these are the consequences, these are your specific options...”  The email we eventually received was “T-Mobile numbers are no longer supported”.  Is that supposed to mean something to us?  At no point in using SMS By Zapier for several years was it indicated that we were using a T-Mobile number, so that point is irrelevant for us.  What’s relevant is that you provide SMS through your service, and we rely on your services and on your team to be diligent and proactive and manage your business so we can manage ours.  We’ve been forced to spend time interpreting what you mean and evaluating next steps to fix our workflow.

And this isn’t the first time this has happened.  A similar issue with SMS by Zapier happened last year, where apparently a range of numbers stopped working, including the one that you provided to us that we rely on.  It took several days for your support to either realize what the issue was or bother to relay the information to us -- while our mission-critical workflow was impacted.  Again, no notice; no orderly relaying of information or providing thoughtful help.

SMS by Zapier is a key service that we have been paying for for years.  Now Zapier is suggesting that we use Twilio or a different paid service.  Since you are essentially removing a key service, will you also be reducing the rate we pay every month?

I’ll re-iterate that these points of friction have left a bad taste toward Zapier.  It’s not clear that the decision-makers at Zapier have thought through the impact of these decisions, actions, and lack of actions on customers.  I have been a Zapier booster but now it’s a challenge to think positively toward Zapier.

SamB
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Thanks for your reply and for your continued patience here @Frosty. 

To clarify, the SMS by Zapier app uses Twilio to send out text messages. We received little notice of the changes, so were unable to give advance warning. I understand how the situation and the affect it’s had on your Zaps has negatively impacted your trust in Zapier. Communication of the recent changes and past incidents could have been better and we’ll definitely be taking your suggestions on board. 

I can see that you also reached out to the Support team about this and after further investigation they found that carriers outside of T-Mobile were also being blocked inadvertently. 

That issue has since been resolved and any failed runs of Zaps affected by that issue should replay successfully now. Further details of the changes can be found here: https://help.zapier.com/hc/en-us/articles/24178576809613/

If you have any further questions about this it would be best to continue the conversation with Support directly over email as they’ll have more context and insight into the affected Zaps in your account. 

Reply


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