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The fuck off contact page

(www.nicchan.me)
484 points OuterVale | 3 comments | 08 Dec 25 08:57 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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pjmlp ◴[08 Dec 25 10:05 UTC] No.46190515[source]▶
As someone that works on this space, with the kind of products that want this kind of contact pages, they forgot to mention that even behind login walls, in some products you only get to create a support ticket if there are enough developers with the right level of certifications and partnership.
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Imustaskforhelp ◴[08 Dec 25 12:05 UTC] No.46191305[source]▶
One issue in web hosting companies which I see is that to get support through ticket, you need a login page and you cannot complete the login process until you sign up with a credit card

That literally annoyed me so much even on something like hetzner.

Hetzner team if you are reading this, although I love email platform, is there any way that your support stops being AI (which annoyed me) but rather you can have an discord,matrix (preferred),telegram, heck IRC or even slack for what its worth where I can message the team if I wanted a custom solution on top of hetzner etc.

Fwiw, Upcloud provided support and heard me out even if I didnt share my credit card info so massive respects to them and I am sure that my experience with hetzner has always been positive (they responded to me once on hackernews which was peak) but maybe if they are reading this (then hello!) and yea, please hetzner I hope you change your contact page to be more suitable or hear my complaints as I like hetzner a lot too

Personally, I am starting to value contact support which I thought didn't matter a lot nowadays. It doesn't matter if its cheap or not but rather if I can talk to their team once about any product and see if I can match their terms of service and similar basically or other issues in general too.

Also Hetzner, another point, I would love to be able to write articles for you and get the 50$ (I will read it again to see if I can "write" according to the conditions but yea) and similar but once again I need a hetzner account which required credit card/debit card validation.

replies(2): >>46191957 #>>46192133 #
Hetzner_OL ◴[08 Dec 25 13:44 UTC] No.46192133[source]▶
Hi there, First, we are currently in the process of unifying our user interfaces, so it is helpful to get feedback like this. We do have an AI chatbot on our website because that tends to work well for most basic sales questions. Depending on the questions it gets, it will also steer users to other ways of reaching out to us. We have a contact form for Custom Solutions, and real humans answer those. https://www.hetzner.com/custom-solutions/ The same is true for general sales tickets that go here: https://www.hetzner.com/support-form/ You do not need to already be a customer, or give us your credit card info, to use those two forms. The reasons we steer our people who are already customers to use their account: 1) We can protect their data better there. 2) We can send the question to the right queue/team more easily. 3) We can quickly ask follow-up questions. The credit card information on new accounts is a step to prevent abuse and fraud. Depending on a user's location, once they create an account, they will likely have other billing options and they may change depending on their location. There are certain aspects of other platforms that make it a bit easier for companies to respond to customers/readers. We actually try really hard not to fish here on HN, and therefore only really respond if someone mentions us directly or if I see incorrect/misleading information. I imagine it is the same with other providers. --Katie
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1. Imustaskforhelp ◴[08 Dec 25 15:01 UTC] No.46192970[source]▶
Very interesting, thank you for your response Katie. I might do the support-form request but since you are here, I think I am comfortable enough asking it in the public too and I don't mind it as this might be the best way

But imagine if a PAAS (platform as a service, well technically its still just an idea which can take a long time to work but just a theory but yes), wants to build on top of hetzner, I am extremely worried that since hetzner has a very strict abuse policy, they might not understand PAAS use case which can include some abuse from downstream lets say and might block my account impacting all the other PAAS solutions.

I wish if there was a way that some time could be given lets say 24-48 hours for the product lets say to work with abuse as I am just a single guy but I haven't coded the implementation mostly, quite frankly wanting to building upon hetzner but worried that It can fail due to any misunderstanding etc.

What are hetzner's opinion on platform as a service basically, I see some people using hetzner as providers but can hetzner understand the thing which I am saying basically and can it still be the right tool for the job essentially?

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2. Hetzner_OL ◴[09 Dec 25 08:44 UTC] No.46202697[source]▶
Hi again, Yes, it is fine to resell our services in the form of a PaaS. However, you as the customer are ultimately responsible for everything that happens on the server. If you use our infrastructure to run your own business, you need to be responsible for what your business does. That entails monitoring your systems, vetting your customers, securing your server, and of course, communicating quickly and openly with our Abuse Team if you receive a report. We also have managed services (web hosting, managed vServers, managed servers) if you feel less confident with the sysadmin side of things and need more technical support. --Katie
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3. Imustaskforhelp ◴[09 Dec 25 09:25 UTC] No.46202989[source]▶
Thank you for your response which I really appreciate but I have still some doubts regarding it which I hope you can clear.

Basically Katie, I am not worried about the sysadmin confidence side of things which are actually an delight for me to work with but rather that to me the problem feels as if even if I vet some of my customers, if someone truly wants to shut down my business lets say, all they need to do is create an account and be faithful if I vet them and then just run malicious servers basically to gain a lot of abuse reports, maybe given directly to hetzner who from what I've heard can shut down your whole account if done.

Can you understand the dilemma I am presented with? I am willing to cooperate with hetzer team a lot and I am a single person team right now so I am interested in what are some response times that you want from me if I someday report abuse regarding this situation.

So my questions are:

1. Can an account be suspended if abuse reports come in, if so, is there any way to strike a mutual deal of understanding where I can cooperate to literally any amount with hetzner team for them to understand my use case perhaps

2. How early do you expect a response from lets say any abuse report, would 24 hours be an reasonable amount?

I just want, Katie, the ability where if any issues/report come, you might transfer it to me and I can fix them but the ability of deleting my server becomes hard as I am worried about that a single bad apple can ruin it for all my other customers basically and its this worry which is making me worry if hetzner can be the right choice because maybe hetzner team might not understand my use case and it might hurt the business and I am waiting for your response basically, if hetzner can be the right choice for me (which I genuinely want it to, hetzner feels so good and I would love to be your customer!)

Have a nice day Katie! And I hope that we can come to an understanding from both sides (I am willing to cooperate and go a long way as much as I can as a single person) and I hope hetzner team can cooperate too so that we can build something together!