Originally (i.e. before that blog post on Mar 30, 2011), Dwolla said transactions were irreversible, both in their marketing and TOS. They knew ACH chargebacks are possible, but they must have either been planning to eat fraud losses (keep in mind they're charging less than 1% fees) or perhaps they thought their anti-fraud system could prevent fraud from happening in the first place.
Then Dwolla started getting hit with chargebacks from banks. Reminiscent of Madoff, Dwolla was faced with a choice between going out of business or breaking their own rules. People become very ethically flexible when survival is on the line. It's possible that their code and schema didn't even have the concept of reversing transactions. It's possible that they hand-edited their database to reverse transactions, which didn't leave proper audit trails.
Soon after that, they officially changed their TOS and stated that transactions would be reversible from then on. This shifted all risk from Dwolla to their customers, causing some Bitcoiners to immediately drop Dwolla. Others kept using Dwolla and got screwed later.
Interesting. If that's true, then Dwolla comes off very very badly here.
Look, I understand their position: They're a young and hungry startup, they have an awesome plan, and it doesn't quite work; they end up needing to pass the chargebacks on. I'm okay with that. But it needs to be communicated to their clients, with a date (and not in the past) when the change will take place.
If they changed it without clear communication (or, worse, announces the change retroactively) then they've screwed over their customers, and may well be legally liable. And that brings us to the press release, dated today, where Dwolla is claiming that "we’ve always had something in our terms of service about chargebacks since Day One." In other words, they're saying there was never a change - and if your information is correct, then this is a boldfaced brazen lie that destroys all credibility they might ever have had[1]. I kind of hope you're wrong. :(
[1]: Alternatively, they could be playing word games - maybe they had "something" in their TOS since day one. After all "no chargebacks" is "something", right? In which case they still have destroyed all credibility they might ever have had. And I don't think I'm exaggerating here; so far Dwolla is doubling down and claiming that they've done nothing wrong. Either they're completely right and everyone else is wrong, or their reputation is toast.
We've always tried our hardest to be the Good Guys, to not put burdens on our clients. Unfortunately, we're seeing a large amount of fraudulent activity that has forced us to implement chargebacks. We're sorry, and despite this we will continue to fight as hard as we can and then some for you, our clients. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Then, you're clear. You may lose some clients, but you won't be the assholes who sold your product as, "X, but without the terrible Y!", then went behind your clients' backs and implemented Y after you realized the big boys did it for a reason.
Then Dwolla started getting hit with chargebacks from banks. Reminiscent of Madoff, Dwolla was faced with a choice between going out of business or breaking their own rules. People become very ethically flexible when survival is on the line. It's possible that their code and schema didn't even have the concept of reversing transactions. It's possible that they hand-edited their database to reverse transactions, which didn't leave proper audit trails.
Soon after that, they officially changed their TOS and stated that transactions would be reversible from then on. This shifted all risk from Dwolla to their customers, causing some Bitcoiners to immediately drop Dwolla. Others kept using Dwolla and got screwed later.