alt Hacker NewsHi there, as some untrue news is making its way about this case: There was a notice of termination via email with a deadline in accordance with our T&C, on 30 October 2024. Our team has already been in contact with this customer several times and we also have the transmission protocol of the communication. You can all rest assured that we do not close accounts randomly. There is always a specific and legitimate reason for doing so, such as abuse of our services, not following our terms and conditions, etc. So please make sure you comply with our T&C: https://www.hetzner.com/legal/terms-and-conditions/. --Katie, Hetzner Online
Replies
Hey Katie happy to hear from you. I'm glad you can finally document the communication (and not just when people start making noise on the internets). You should have our address but just in case it's been, uh, misplaced, please forward your email dated 30 October to contact @ kiwix.org
This below is where we got started - the ref number should make it easy for you to sort: > Procedure: L0020649F > Person: [redacted] / Kiwix > Cause: Hello, > > Starting this morning (December 1st at 00:00 UTC), our servers went down. > We received zero email nor notification of any kind from you. > Looking for a way to contact you, I looked into this Unlock tab that list an incident > that matches the time the problem started. > > It's been close to (12) hours already, without a single message from you. Our services > are down. > > In the Robot dashboard, there is no server listed. In the Traffic statistics page, it > says we have no IP. > In the Cloud dashboard, we cant even enter, it says Access Denied. > > What's going on? The billing page is reachable and it indicates we paid all our > invoices and the next one is to come in 5 days. So it's not a payment issue. > > I checked > https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/dedicated-server/troubleshoot... > > I am not sure if we're locked because the traceroute does not lead to > blocked.hetzner.com > Because the server is not listed, we cant use the whitelist or any other tool. > > Please restore the service immediately. > Please let us know what kind of issue there is if there is one. > > Only restoring SX65 #2453510 (135.181.224.247) is urgent. The two cloud ones can be > sorted out later.
We got two more emails from Hetzner the day after that (Monday 2) but none addressing the root issue. Our account access had been locked by then anyway so we had to call up Germany; you should be able to document that as well.
Not sure HN is the best place to compare notes but hey, happy to meet you where you feel comfortable responding.
Kicking off customers due to vague T&C violations is on thing, but deleting their data without giving them a chance to get it out is something else entirely, especially if you only notified the customer via email without confirmation of receipt or attemps to use alternative communication methods. Is permanently deleting data as soon as services are shut off standard procedure for your company?
Could we get some more information on the matter?
Over the past years there have been numerous people online which have claimed that Hetzner closes accounts without giving a reason. I'm sure most of those claims intentionally omit some details to make it look like they didn't infringe the T&C.
However as a Hetzner customer (a small one, to be fair), I'd still like to know that those complaints are baseless, and that I can still trust your company.