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You might be surprised who is actually making an offer to whom legally speaking. I am with @deank here just sue them and find out. I very much doubt you'd get anywhere.
so much this! finally someone who knows what an "invitatio ad offerendum" really is ;-)
In fact they often don't know the reason. They put the transaction data into an opaque statistical model, a number comes out the other end, and if the number is above some risk threshold they decided, they decline the purchase and that's that.
There is a book about this called "Weapons of Math Destruction" which describes various horrible consequences of this for people when applied to higher-impact areas like job applicant screening. But for vps hosting, meh.
Unsure what you mean that they don't have to produce any information under the GDPR. Any personal information they stored can be requested by the data subject, this is called Right of access: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/right-of-access/
However, I'm not sure they store any 'personal data' once you get denied access as it lets you try to open account immediately after with the same email and details.
Anyway my account was authorized after sending them an email, so I'm happy as the pricing for the specs is extremely good. NVMe, 20tb bandwidth, 4GB ram for an amazing price.
You seem to enjoy people getting rejected from VPS providers. Do you get a kick out of it?
Of course, I do.
aha :-) have you tried Hetzner? Very impressed with the VPS performance for the price on initial testing.
I am not a consumer.
It's a general problem. I have been rejected by a few places for technicalities or no reason stated and they all don't care about you and won't change their decision no matter what. You could offer to visit Hetzner in person and pay a 1k cash deposit, but they won't accept you because fuck you. It's their rules. That's why.
Even though I think it's super cringy and unwise (the value of a business relationship probably exceeds the cost of an extended verification for the few who really really want a server), it's best to just move on.
Hi LET readers, Sorry for not responding earlier. I can't always check LET every day. I will try to respond to as many comments as possible. Forgive me if I miss anyone's questions/criticisms.
It may sound terrible, but a server has the potential to cause a great deal of damage in the wrong hands, just like a controlled substance or a weapon. It's our responsibility to help protect the community, and we take this very seriously.
The GDPR, to my knowledge, does not include any provisions that companies are legally required to state why they deny a potential customer service. You can make a request with our data protection officier for any information that we have, but I imagine it would be very little if you were a customer who was denied an account. This information would not include the details of why you were rejected. But it might include some score from the risk assessment software that we use in the first level of our process. The rest of the assesment is done manually by our staff. We don't record the team members's thought process. Their ultimate decision of whether your information looked fake or legitimate would be marked. (But I am not sure if they use those particular words in their notes.) To my knowledge, they do not note the cause for their decision. The email to our data protection officer is [email protected].
Any IDs we use for the authentication process are immediately deleted after we confirm your ID. The rest of your customer information is kept in accordance with our policy listed here: https://www.hetzner.com/rechtliches/datenschutz/ (See "Registration data".)
Please understand that the vast majority of orders are rejected. For every 100 orders where we ask for additional ID, we don't receive any response for 90 of those. It would be a waste of resources to provide reasons for all 100 cases. But we do not provide details on purpose. In the past, when we did provide details, it lead to scammers/spammers fixing the small problem. Then they would abuse the servers. In the new system (which is indeed non-transparent) we have much, much less abuse.
There are many things that could lead to an order raising flags as a false positive. My colleague joked with me the other day that the name of my hometown, Niceville, might even look suspicious despite the fact that it's a real place. Even when I still lived in the US, I had orders rejected because of this. But I was always able to clear the matter up by calling the company and speaking to a support representative.
The truth of the matter is that real people who are rejected are 1) capable about thinking why they are rejected 2) fixing that information 3) or providing us a logical explanation for why their information might look suspicious.
But even then, there might still be a very small number of false positives. So if you're rejected multiple times, we assume that you will be upset. We know we have lost your business. But we accept that. But as @torrbox says, "it's best to just move on".
We understand that our non-transparent process is frustrating. For that we are sorry. We truly do not mean to cause offense to anyone. --Katie, Marketing
At least it isn't Smallville!
Wow, those are really shocking statistics! I never realized that the fraud (or attempted fraud) rate was so high. I'm in a totally different business than you, where the assumption is that new clients will be legitimate and honorable, and in 95%+ of cases, that's what happens. If my business had the same amount of issues with "bad actors" as yours, it would certainly be a game changer.
Thanks very much for providing your perspective, Katie. I think it'll help people to understand what large, reputable providers like Hetzner are up against.
Hetzner signup went smoothly for me, whole process took 2 hours or less. I'm from one of those risky countries and all the documents i sent were in my local language.
The worst signup experience i ever had was with SYS, after waiting 5+ days they denied validation and asked for a selfie holding my ID. By the time they reviewed that and validated my account, server was out of stock and had to pay a little extra and go with hetzner instead.
Do as what they say in the mail if u want it so bad buddy.
It's normal that deactivation just happens. Do as what they say in the mail to activate it again. Deactivation is not equal to deletion.
Seems like the deactivation mail is sent automatically after a certain time. Happened to me before I was verified.
Micro necro. Somebody wants postcount.
What country are you from? Did you sign up using a VPN? Have you ever signed up before?
I signed up to them when I was at home in Lebanon and didn't get denied entry. They give you the server before you even pay, so they need good fraud protection!
where is @eol ?
eol has reached his End Of Life.
what caused it ? man flu ?
U see, eol is a form of mushroom whose lifespan is only 14 days. Once it dies, a new eol will be born on its former corpse.
To sum it up, it will be back soon.
I'm here.
Don't worry.
LOL.
Not yet.
hetzner thread and eol not there ?
Thread is older than me.
oh
ohhhh
I also get rejected after sending my ID. Maybe I'm from "risky" country in their list and my ID is not in English but I don't bother to ask because I know they would not response and like other people say, you should just move on because they are not the only hosting provider.
However I think they should have more constructive information beforehand when they want a user to send them verification information, like require those information in English or ask user to translate their ID card (as in first page they said they did not have international staff). This would not harm their non-transparent system I guess.
They also ask me to send $20 by prepaid card or Paypal to confirm as the second method. I just don't know if this method is more efficient than ID card, and how long I would receive my money back if I will get rejected.
i've created an account with Hetzner just a few months ago.. didnt even got asked to send in an ID or any other confirmation as far as i know..
i've created an account with Hetzner just a few years ago.. didnt even got asked to send in an ID or any other confirmation as far as i know..