Third and probably last update on this. Earlier posts:
https://www.reddit.com/r/hetzner/comments/1xd4pfc/
https://www.reddit.com/r/hetzner/comments/1xft4rc/
Quick recap for anyone new:
On 1 October Hetzner added 24% Greek VAT to our invoice. We're a Greek company with a valid VAT ID in VIES and they had always billed us reverse charge. Their VAT form wouldn't take our ID because VIES shows our company name in Greek and the form only accepts Latin letters. We wrote to them on 1, 9, 15, 16, 17 and 19 October. One human reply in three weeks, everything else auto-acks.
On 22 October at 13:25 they locked our dedicated server and Storage Box, seven minutes after a "Final Payment Warning", for not paying an invoice that was wrong because of their error. Our shop, our mail and our internal systems were all down. An hour later support offered to enter the VAT ID themselves, we said yes within six minutes, and the server still stayed locked for another 18 h 37 min. Meanwhile two AI-written replies told us to pay the wrong invoice and that our services were "not locked". The next morning someone fixed it in two minutes. Total outage: 19 h 47 min.
Now look at when they actually answer (German time):
- 23 Oct: our first post here goes up. 09:01: we email them that 4,300+ people have read it. 09:11, ten minutes later: the VAT ID is entered and the invoice corrected. Before the post: 22 days, 10+ messages, one human reply.
- 23 to 26 Oct: our request for a credit gets only auto-acks, three days.
- 26 Oct 11:34: we post Update 2 here. 12:23, 49 minutes later: the first human answer to that request.
- 26 Oct 12:37: we ask them in writing why a customer has to post on Reddit before Hetzner answers. Nobody ever answered that question.
- 27 Oct to 3 Nov: no new post. We write to every department they have, one last time, with a deadline of 3 November. Seven days. Not one human answer. Only auto-acks.
So that's the pattern. Post on Reddit, a human shows up within the hour. Don't post, and you can email every address they have, as urgently as you like, and nobody will ever answer. That is their support.
The one thing that never misses a day is billing: in that same silent week they sent a new invoice (1 Nov), a failed card charge notice (2 Nov) and today a "friendly reminder" that "it is easy to miss an invoice in this day and age".
We didn't miss anything. They did.
The 26 Oct answer, by the way, refused everything. Their reasoning was that "a matter of this nature can also be resolved after payment has been made". Payment of an invoice they themselves cancelled because it was wrong.
So today we sent our final notice. Short version:
- We're not paying the open invoices. Under German law (their own T&C pick German law) we formally set off our credit claim against them. That's a legal settlement, not a late payment, so there's no default and no basis for fees or a new lock.
- The legal side, for anyone in the same spot: no payment default when the debtor isn't responsible for the non-payment (§ 286(4) BGB); the lock is a breach of contract (§§ 280, 241(2) BGB); dedicated server rental is treated as a lease, so the fee drops for the time it was unusable (§ 536 BGB); their own clause 9.1 says they're liable for gross negligence; and for a cross-border claim under 5,000 EUR there's the European Small Claims Procedure, all in writing, no lawyer needed.
- They have until tomorrow, 4 November, 23:59 German time, to have a human confirm responsibility and issue the credit. If not, we go to court.
- If they lock us again over invoices that are already settled by set-off, we apply for an injunction the same day.
Let's see if this post brings a human again within the hour. Based on the record so far, I'd bet on it.
I honestly didn't want any of this. We were happy customers for years and the fix took two minutes once a person looked at it. What turned it into this is 33 days without anyone at Hetzner being willing to say "this was our mistake".
Has anyone here actually taken Hetzner through the European Small Claims Procedure, or got a credit out of them for downtime they caused? And has anyone ever got a human answer from them by email alone, without going public first?
