New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Comments
Ok its atleast a dick move.
Great, good luck when you sue them.
I'll agree on that!
dick move means that hetnzer moves further then moves back to the original point?
Customer didn't do anything bad (one side of comments), but at the same time its not illegal for Hetzner to just don't extend the monthly contract (second side of comments). Both sides are valid.
I call that dick move and false advertisement because they don't say they have "fair use" anywhere. Its straight up "unlimited". If its unlimited then it should be unlimited.
Imagine if you would get dedi with Ryzen CPU, you would use 100% of it and then provider would complain that you are using more electricity than others and its not "fair-use". Of course I would be less cost-effective than customer that uses only 5% of CPU and they COULD not extend my contract... but that is "dick move", because they don't want me just because I use what I should get according to sales page!
It seems that people from the US generally find it sexy to be ripped off, aruguing about the contract terms without having any real law knowlege, this while the EU population of this board don’t and argue that it’s false advertising.
Maybe a difference in culture, the US is generally more pro-business, which I find to be a good thing generally, but this attitude might be the side-effect.
What? Both sides are right when one of the side is saying they did nothing wrong, yet you acklnowledge what they’ve done is illegal?
Bruh.
I wrote
The other thing to remember is that, as various people have said on both sides of the argument, the vast majority of people do not need unlimited or anywhere near it. However, it is a very useful safety net.
The people who have been hit by this are using excessive amounts of bandwidth, and obviously not even for a business use, as they were discussing their tor stats compared to other Hetzner users in this very thread.
It's also important to note that Hetzner haven't set a cut-off limit of 250TB for what is reasonable, although that was inferred by many people. However, let's use it as a guide for now. Keep in mind, that 250TB is approximately 80% of 330TB.
I actually see a few classes of users with high bandwidth who could be impacted here:
I don't think Hetzner has any interest in the first category.
The second category is probably the most likely situation, however, adding a single €32 server to the mix, e.g. another haproxy instance and load balancing between the two IPs, will half their bandwidth per server and they are comfortably within the limit.
The third category with many servers are probably already relying on haproxy already. But adding an extra €32 server for every 4 servers would also keep them comfortably below 80%.
Both of these last two options, really don't seem large a terrible deal when you've got a really big and successful site. If you have big enough servers to run that kind of bandwidth whilst doing actual work, you're already going to probably have a fairly high spec configuration. Adding an extra AX41 into the mix most likely won't break the bank.
And so the final categories who are coincidentally the group that is doing the complaining. They can get away with the very cheapest servers because they're basically doing nothing except stream encryption and forwarding packets.
The people running large scale VPNs should be able to afford an extra 20% on server costs (an extra AX41 for each 4 they already have), because they're charging for their services. An extra €32 server will support a LOT of paying users.
However, the people running tor, adding another AX41 represents a doubling of their costs AND they probably can't justify that cost because they're only using up the bandwidth because they can and they're not making any money from it. However, they're happy wasting Hetzner's bandwidth, simply because it doesn't cost them anything to do so.
I can totally see why Hetzner doesn't want the tor types around. They cost massively more to look after than anyone else, and they're probably running at a loss. Why should they keep a customer who makes them lose money. The people who run VPNs, they probably would be break even at this 250TB or whatever (actually, I still suspect the break even is a lot lower). Everyone else with bigger servers, they probably don't care so much about as they'll still be making good profits. I suspect people with those servers might not even be getting these emails.
As a customer, it's better to have the safety net of unlimited, but knowing that excessive users will get kicked off, because ultimately doing so reduces the costs for everyone else.
If Hetzner was forced to keep them, the prices would go up for everyone else.
If Hetzner is forced to introduce an official limit (and then people will be targeting exactly the limit), I wouldn't be surprised if it'd have to be lower than 250TB. Again, the people who'd suffer are the normal customers who might occasionally have a spike.
I really don't see what advantage anyone gets from Hetzner moving to one of these two outcomes, except the tor users (who'll be leaving anyway) getting to exact some revenge on their way out.
Yes, and then you wrote:
Which is illegal.
You really should make your mind up.
'Bait&switch' strategy is both legal and false advertisement at the same time and that's what Hetzner did. If thats illegal then why 90% of politicans aren't in jail yet? Its exactly what they do most of the time xD unreasonable promises
Hetzner baited with "unlimited" and then when you're invested heavily and have data with them they change terms for NEXT period just for you, even tho you didn't break anything.
For me its dick move & false advertisement and I know nobody can sue them, because they just don't extend contract, they don't cancel existing one. Trick move, but if someone has data in Hetzner he cant just move all of it in one second, especially when there's traffic limit...
Spoken like a true lawer. "It's both legal and illegal at the same time".
You clearly have no idea what you're on about.
Everything old is new again. Hetzner is not the first. This same argument has been going on for decades. I have seen it over and over again.
Example:
I saw these same arguments about 20 years ago when my DSL provider had similar issues. Fewer than 5% of customers were consuming more than 95% of the available bandwidth. In those days, the abusers were downloading pirated videos all day and all night. The abusers were affecting quality of service for everyone in a negative way. Contract wording or no, the provider took measures to throttle the abusers. In that case, once monthly data usage reached a certain threshold, the system would slow the data rate way down for that customer. The throttled data rate was acceptable for email or a simple web search, but made video downloading impractical.
There was a hue and cry from the abusers. I saw the same comments about contract wording and so forth. Honestly, there was little sympathy for the abusers' arguments from the general public. Nobody cared whether they were legally right or wrong. It was more a matter of common sense and fair play.
(The provider was SBC, a very large "merger" company that included our former Pacific Bell. SBC eventually acquired AT&T and became the AT&T that we all know today.)
I don't think this is a "false advertisement".
Seriously, you know that you're being a dick when you use 250TB of monthly bandwidth from your 30 euro/mo server.
Hetzner didn't make any false claims - they provided the service as written on your contract and they're aren't trying to break the contract. They just don't want to extend it since you're being a dick.
Seriously, this is like going to an all-you-can-eat buffet, eating all the food, and claiming it's a "false advertisement" to a store telling you not to come again.
They have a right to choose who to do a contract with - you cannot force them to make/extend a contract with you.
You have already finished the food - which you paid for.
Very bad parable considering food doesn't come with setup fees based on a promise not held up.
It's much more like all you can eat, every day, for 10 bucks a month, as long as you pay a lot more the first time.
And after a while, they decide it's no longer worthwhile, and kick you out.
Don't know if OP paid a setup fee, didn't read, but those who did are now limited in a way not advertised paying the fee.
As in, the contents of the food might not even be consumed.
I'm sorry but the "Setup fee" doesn't make any difference.
A setup fee isn't a we-will-keep-your-contract-available-forever fee. It's for the initial service setup - not a confirmation for lifetime contracts. If you're not happy with your contract being extended by one month, why not pay it in two-year increments?
Besides, Hetzner doesn't even charge you a setup fee these days. So it doesn't matter anyway.
And seriously, even if OP paid a setup fee of 100 euros, I'm pretty sure the OP paid less than what the OP should pay for using 250TB of traffic per month.
lol, there are people think you can advertise whatever you want, to attract users to pay. And then tell the users "hey you should know with the amount you paid, you will never get what we advertised, you fool!". Of course those people and their services will be on my blacklist.
Wrong, since there shouldn't be a cost, since it's advertised as unlimited.
As I wrote earlier, the keyboard lawyers here agree that false advertising isn't illegal if the contract is monthly. It's a very weird way of looking at things, to say the least.
At the risk of restarting this pointless circular argument, the argument is that they're not actually limiting anyone during the duration of the contract, so it's not false advertising because they got exactly what was advertised.
Well the contract doesn't matter. False or fail advertising doesn't matter.
It's exactly like this: "Hey become our customer, you can do x y z 69.. etc"
---> "You shouldn't do 69, we don't want you as our customer anymore"
It's legal somewhere, illegal somewhere else, doesn't matter.
It's just everyone's own opinion about 69. It's just a limit point. It's just a break of something, Hetzner broken.
If Hetzner had terminated the service(s) with no/unacceptable notice due to excessive traffic usage then of course it's false advertising as they are breaking their agreement with the customer (even with an argument of impairing regular operating behaviour under section 2.7).
However, right now they haven't done anything other than express that they may terminate the rolling contract going forward (providing a reason of excessive usage, which they didn't have to do and has done more harm than I suspect was intended). Whether this is false advertising is arguable, as can be seen by the differing opinions here, due to section 2.6 and the contract having no minimum/maximum period for either party.
Are you acknowledging that "fair use" and 250TB limit are not actually anywhere in the terms or offer?
ralf is UK, afaik. US people are used to fine print limits, they definitely don't think Hetzner is right. But I can't argue about Apple users.
Jesus, you're mixing goods and promises? You're off the path..
No, bait and switch is generally illegal, depending on specifics.
To me, this shit wouldn't fly in Canada. Easily. Can't speak for Germany.
We need to recognize this is a commercial datacenter and not a city with miles and miles of cables and infrastructure. The city has shared resources designed such as business usage is predominantly in the daytime and home usage in the evening and night. And even then, traffic isn't symmetrical.
The datacenter is designed for 24/7 commercial use. The ability to upgrade and increase capacity is leagues easier than your city.
Every time I hear a story of someone being refused at a buffet, it's after years of providing the buffet at a loss. It's never after 1-2 times.
The solution for the buffet is reduce the time allowed and in Hetzner case, throttling speed so capacity limit is reached. That's actually what fair use means.
Nope, false advertising has nothing to do with their contracts, but everything to do with their advertising.
Advertising that a VPS costs 5 bucks, then charging you 10, because it said they'd charge 10 in their contract, is according to that logic, not false advertising because the contract was accepted.
It's an extreme example, for sure, but the point is that contract law and advertising law is seperate, it's not the same thing. A contract can be legally valid in it's own, while it's legality combined with a false claim can be questioned.
No one has claimed that Hetzner breaks their own Terms of Service, you're arguing about something that no one believes.
What we believe is that it's false advertising to say something is unlimited, and in reality, it's really not because you can't be a client if you override their limit, which you can't - if it's unlimited.
Come to think of it, this is the default LET reaction.
Even weirder when he, in the same message, writes that it's both legal and illegal.
With the level of mental gymnastics practiced here, you'd easily believe it's an exercise forum.