More explicitly stating the limits would be good, but declaring “fraud” is rather exaggerating.
You go with Hetzner knowing you’re getting bargain prices, so they’re cutting corners somewhere. This would be like saying Walmart are committing fraud when it turns out their ham is not “finest quality”.
Fraud is when you tell a lie to get business. It doesn't really matter if the victim can be blamed because they should have totally known better. Yes, if Walmart advertises ham for an impossibly low price and then proceeds to sell a product that's labeled ham but is actually 95% chicken by volume it's still fraud even if the customer should have known something was up.
> This would be like saying Walmart are committing fraud when it turns out their ham is not “finest quality”.
Just to be pedantic, without disputing your broader point about what customers should expect:
Phrases like "finest quality" are known in marketing as "puffery" and companies aren't liable for these claims. From a quick search, specific factual claims like "unlimited 1Gbps" might be held to a different standard, depending on whether "no reasonable person" would take the claim seriously.
> The Second Circuit explained, "Puffery is an exaggeration or overstatement expressed in broad, vague, and commendatory language. Such sales talk is considered to be offered and understood as an expression of the seller's opinion only, which is to be discounted as such by the buyer."
> One type of puffery is a non-specific claim that one product is better than another The Second Circuit explained it as, "a general claim of superiority over comparable products that is so vague that it can be understood as nothing more than a mere expression of opinion."
> Looking at Starbucks's advertising, the court held that statements such as, "Best coffee for the best you," "taste of inspiration," "Starbucks or nothing," and "heart, soul, craft, pride, love; you won't find that in any other cup of coffee" are all puffery. The court wrote, "These statements vaguely assert that Starbucks's coffee is better than its competitors' in a manner best "understood as an expression of the seller's opinion only." They aren't, the court said, specific enough to "misrepresent an inherent quality or characteristic of the defendant's product."
They are very explicitly stating the limit: it's 1 gigabit per second. And they're knowingly and specifically advertising that as the only limit on bandwidth, even though what they're actually willing to provide (when averaged over a billing period) is much lower.
Not even Walmart, hetzner is the ABSOLUTE bottom of the barrel on pricing for no-SLA dedicated servers, this is more like buying a kitchen knife from Dollar General for $1.75 and then complaining it doesn't stay sharp very long.
While they are very cheap I have never had a problem with the quality of their service. Just saying that comparing with dollar general cutlery might not be fair.
Eh, the customer should get to know where they are cutting corners aka what they are paying for. A better example is a Walmart selling spam as ham. How does your example make false advertisement okay?
“We’ll of course they are cutting corners!” doesn’t seem like a defense at all to me.
If you buy ham from a bargain supermarket, you are effectively buying spam. I’m ok with that, yes. As a consumer, I should my use my judgement as to why the price is what it is.
I find it bizarre that you are okay with misleading sales, so long as the price is low. The only judgement you should need when making a purchase is what the product claims to be. If it claims to be one thing, but turns out to be another, then that is fraud. It's not okay to lie to your customers because you're not asking for as much money as your competitors.
Is it still ok if the ham is made from cats and dogs? It's not like you're paying premium for it, so can you complain? Please note that nowhere on the packaging it says anything about cat and dog meat.
Your analogy is just flat out wrong. This is like Walmart saying their ham is 100% pork and then it turns out there is 20% chicken in there. And then there are apologists going around saying "oh but if it was 100% pork it would be more expensive, you really should expect your counterparty to be dishonest and cheat you at that price point."
If the sales page says "1 gigabit unlimited", I don't care about any other considerations. It either is or isn't "1 gigabit unlimited". If any part of that statement is untrue, then the the provider should be honest and say so.
I'm so fed up with the normalization of this slimy behavior.
Then don’t buy from cheap providers! Those who won’t use anywhere near the traffic cap get cheaper prices, you get more certainty from your supplier. Everybody wins.
cheap is not a license to lie. I don't understand why people are defending this, if these companies weren't lying about what they're selling then nobody would be complaining. "1gbps for 250TB" or whatever it is simply the honest way to sell a product.
I believe it is probably "merely" unethical, as I'm sure that was stated somewhere in the fine print. However, I personally don't believe the distinction matters to the kinds of discussion we're seeing in this thread, which seems to be a lot of "everyone does it, so it's really the customer's fault that they didn't expect the party on the other side of the transaction to be deceptive."
The way I see it, this conduct is antithetical to the spirit of the free market and harmful to society at large, regardless of whether or not it can be defended in court.
I wouldn't buy from them if they were honest with what they are supplying... It's because that they're dishonest that they get business when it should really be prohibited practice.
You go with Hetzner knowing you’re getting bargain prices, so they’re cutting corners somewhere. This would be like saying Walmart are committing fraud when it turns out their ham is not “finest quality”.