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It is still illegal when they market one price in German to Germans and another price in English to customers from other countries.
yeah which they don't do. that's the twist with different products. as long as everyone can buy both product equally and also visit both sites and information equally, it's most likely no legal issue.
anyway, as always: you don't like it? don't buy it.
That doesn't mean that everyone is proficient enough to answer support queries in English.
Largely theory. Just random pick 20 people who graduated 5 or 10 years ago and you'll see how much of what they learned at school still is present in their brains ...
Plus what they learned in school is rather basic English but to work in support one needs quite a bit more. Plus "I learned X in school" != "I master X quite well and am comfortable to actually doing it professionally".
Plus anyway knowing another language quite well is an extra qualification and in real life employers have to pay extra for that in one way or another.
@turdski Also in EU its ilegal to ask someone their Address or ID while your are not delivering them physical means. How can we know what will they do with our Data ? This is a violation of privacy in the EU.
Nearly no company in Western Europe hires support staff that only speak their local language. Decent English skill is nearly always a requirement to get a support job. A third language such as English or French is a plus in some companies.
Are you sure about that? Can you provide sources?
I'd say you'll have to make sure you are using the correct VAT rate, so you need some evidence of where your customer resides, otherwise you might get into trouble with the tax authorities.
You can not avoid this law by selling the same product in another name and product number on a different website.
And if you compare the specs, you can see that it is the same product.
Hmm, I don't think that this is true. Any reference for this?
I think that it's perfectly legal for a hosting provider in the EU to ask for the address of a potential customer in the EU.
This is not correct. A company has to get your address duo to tax and vat laws.
The only exception is the rules for simple receipt in a physical store.
And they can freely ask for ID.
This is a stupid argument. GDPR and other laws regulate this.
maybe you want to quote the law in question, so we have a source to discuss if it applies or not? not just referring to something as 'it is' without a proper source.
maybe, maybe not, this probably would be subject to a court/judge to decide.
that's the thing with marketing. obviously there are grey areas and if you want to avoid prejudices, you should stick to the words... or sue to get clarification.
PS: and even if it is more or less the same product, please find the law that is against selling the same product for different pricings.
if you are successful, you can easily sue a lot of providers that run promotions on here, but sell for regular pricing on their website to other people not knowing about LET.
again: there is only the distinction on product/listing/price here. no distinction on clients or their origin. the latter is just a conclusion or claim that has been pictured into the posting from external people.
The Europe you are talking about seems to be quite different from the Europe I live in. Here most employees in most companies speak English in between basically not at all and mediocre. And that's no problem, because most companies target local or regional markets.
Also even large e.g. german hosters did get big by selling mainly to german customers and only at a later stage, when they already had become (regional) heavy-weights served or even targeted the global market (at which point they could afford and it made sense to have the multilingual support people needed). Usually they didn't target the global market in their first years.
Also keep in mind that netcup plays in the "bang for the buck" market where one must keep an eye on costs and keep costs low. Not serving international customers or asking a higher price from them can be a smart move because human resources is one of the major cost factors.
Finally, I know I know, hard to even imagine for many, not every company strives to grow without limits. Some companies, and netcup may well be such a company, have a certain size in mind and prefer to be an attractive company of a certain size. Hint: the fact that netcup doesn't happily accept everyone as a customer suggest that they have a certain image of how (incl. how large) they want their company to be and it seems that their target is something like "good quality for a really good price and without a lot of trouble".
Hope they don't get stuck with too many idle servers after the crypto crowd moves on. With that in mind 2x-ing the price isn't enough.
Are you drunk?
That's why LET has been invented.
The price increase has nothing to do with the distinction between german and international customers. (or english support etc.) The problem is an influx of customers buying servers to run validators for some crypto. This was caused by the official site of the crypto recommending netcup root servers for running validators. Netcup probably does not want these customers and this temporary price increase is their way of keeping these people away.
Check out what Advin said about flux in the previous page.
sure. are you?
Fluxing assholes.
Sorry to burst your bubble here, but Contabo asked for proof of my address before my server being delivered. They also asked for passport/national ID card or a utility bill with the address and name matching.
In fact, almost every German provider I know asks for ID.