Due to the volume of messages processed and the need for accurate billing based on registration scores, Aloware implements a 24-hour delay in charging A2P fees.
While message costs are deducted from your account in real-time, the associated A2P fees are consolidated and charged the next day. This delay may cause your balance to drop overnight and trigger an auto-recharge.
Example:
Let's say your text rate with us is 1.0¢ per message, and you want to send to 30,000 contacts. Also let's assume the A2P fee for each message is 0.3¢ across the board (in reality, these depend on the contact's carrier). Your account balance is currently $100.
When you send your campaign at 10 am, on Dec 3rd, we deduct SMS charges against your balance as messages go out, so in a few minutes, when 1000 messages are out, your balance declines by $10 to $90. While your campaign is ongoing, you'll see your balance slowly paying for the messages until it reaches below your auto-recharge threshold.
Having reached that auto-recharge threshold, we perform an auto-recharge (for $250). So in the end, your account will look like this:
Starting balance | Cost of 50k messages | Auto recharge amounts | End balance |
$100 | 30,000 x 0.010 = $300 | $250 | $100 - $300 + $250 = $50 |
Now, normally we would expect all those 30k messages to be hit by a 30,000 x 0.003 = $90 fee and another auto-recharge to kick in to cover the fees as they go. But as we explained above, this is not the case - Aloware aggregates all those fees and applies them the next day. Hence you'd see your balance dropping to -$40, and another auto-recharge to cover for it.