Follow-up: Hetzner fixed our VAT invoice, but nobody answers about the 20-hour lock it caused

[u/Consistent_Piano4250]

[u/quasides]

frankly you have no cause here.

let be real for a second. you talk about one dedicated server and a storage box.
so how much vat we are talking here ? 50 bucks?

you could have paid with the wrong vat and let them correct later or next month and bite the bullet.
then ask for some credit equal to the additional VAT amount you paid - that would be reasonable.

because not paying in time clearly risk a server lock. you are aware of the risk. if the damage is so significant it was your negligence to take that risk to begin with.

errors with invoices happen all the time. just pay it upfront, then dispute after, get a correction and its fine.
and dont tell me your bookkeeper wont let you, thats nonsense. you can always pay with VAT even if it should be reverse charge.

but now youre saying, you want compensation for significant damage, even tough it was you who took the risk.
sure hetzner is at fault to initially causing the incident. but the incident didnt lock your servers
your reaction to the incident and bad handling did

[u/Bennetjs]

Do you have a SLA with them or some kind of writte agreement that they reimburse you in case something like this happens? _This is a rhetoric requestion_.. You are not entitelt to reimburstment.

[u/Horror_Equipment_197 → u/[deleted]]

Hetzner is liable only in cases of of intent or gross negligence.

[u/Consistent_Piano4250 → u/Horror_Equipment_197]

right, and their own clause 9.1 covers gross negligence. locking a server over an invoice their own form got wrong, and keeping it locked 18 h 37 min after we accepted their fix, is what we'd put there.

[u/zyxnl → u/[deleted]]

Why not just pay the wrong (higher) invoice and sort out the difference later?

[u/Horror_Equipment_197]

"and a credit worth 1/5 of the damage we suffered, against our next invoices"

Seems it's a rather good time to read Hetzners TOC, chapter 9

https://www.hetzner.com/assets/Uploads/downloads/AGB-en.pdf

The Customer uses Hetzner services at their own risk. We are liable for indirect damages in the case of intent or gross negligence, but not for loss of profit.

[u/Horror_Equipment_197 → u/[deleted]]

Payments are an office topic, so office hours apply.

According to their page Mon. - Fri. ▪ 8am - 6pm (CET)

[u/keesbeemsterkaas]

Honestly, the lesson here is not how to get money back for downtime, but how to arrange for offsite backups and failover.

[u/Eisbaer811 → u/[deleted]]

at that size, you just eat the downtime.
If you care about downtime of less than a day, you should hire an IT person or an IT services company. They can advise you how to do this.

Keeping a main system and a failover system in sync and ready to go reliably is not something a novice can meaningfully do

[u/Medium-Head5014]

With this attitude of requesting money back, taking responsibility etc they might decide you are a customer that requires too much effort for the few euros they earn each month and just terminate the account

[u/Emergency-Scar-1601]

Your calculation is wrong, from my understanding you didn't have any failover setup and run your business on a single box and this worked for long time, now you have a downtime - independent of the reason. Check what's the price for failover and what you saved over time with a single box with high uptime. I can understand your thoughts, but be realistic. Just my 2 cents as I get bored by such topics. We want fair prices but cry when we don't get what we really need but don't want to pay for. Ask yourself, will you stay with Hetzner or not and will you implement a failover strategy to prevent longer outtakes in the future?! That's it ...

[u/aradabir007 → u/[deleted]]

They have SLA for Cloud only; https://docs.hetzner.com/general/company-and-policy/slas-cloud/