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Comment by lannisterstark | Hacker News Reader

It's not a cultural thing to accuse customers of committing fraud their first interaction.

Not being an absolute insane jerk off is a good expectation of people.

I'm not advocating for anyone being a nasty person, but there are significant cultural differences again for what it means to be rude. In Japan the cultural expectation is that saying "no" is rude in a customer service situation, which is far beyond the expectations of most of the world. This is particularly tricky when the answer is actually "no".

If you're used to American customer service, you may find European customer service to be blunt or curt, and many people would perceive that as rude even though it is not intended that way. Again, if they aren't trying to win every customer, this isn't really a problem.

"Try again, and this time provide real data" would be considered very rude even in Germany.

Well, we haven't seen the data.

Without reading the actual wording sent, and knowing which culture the sender was from, this is all just speculation. I'm more interested in challenging the assumptions that we have about our own expectations in customer service being universal. From the rest of this thread it sounds like there is a commonly held opinion that Hetzner customer service is blunt, and my point is that that may be fine and maybe customers should not expect to be treated in a particular way all the time.

Since I wasn't there I can't say what happened. Can be a language thing too, I can imagine that the intended meaning would be "Try again, making sure you spell everything exactly as the data on the card" but it came out as "Try again with the real info". In germany the English language is very optional, it's not needed for any media consumtion since everything is being dubbed and/or translated. This leads to less experience using the language.

>This is particularly tricky when the answer is actually "no".

If the answer is actually "no", then the customer service person will tell you it's "a little difficult". You're supposed to understand that that means "no, we can't do it". Of course, many foreigners don't get this, so then they'll change gears and just say "it's impossible".

>If you're used to American customer service, you may find European customer service to be blunt or curt

I don't see accusing your customer of fraud as simple bluntness or curtness.

>Again, if they aren't trying to win every customer, this isn't really a problem.

If they don't want to expand their business outside of Europe, I guess that approach is OK.

> It's not a cultural thing to accuse customers of committing fraud their first interaction.

In my experience a lot of German businesses are like that, they'll woosh you away for any slight (perceived or real). So it is definitely a cultural thing. Of course my small sample doesn't mean anything in regards to german culture, but at the very least it proves that this corporate culture is indeed a thing.

If that ticked you off, Hetzner support would tick you off even more. Within ~45 minutes of opening a ticket, you get an actual engineer to look into your case, and they are constantly blunt and semi-irate both because of the German work culture and the nature of network/hardware engineering I guess. They fix your stuff fast, and they keep being short, blunt and concise while doing it. No "I'm sorry to hear..." or "Thank you for contacting us with..." blahblah like in the US. All business, no fluff.

Aside from knowing their sh*t and being available at short notice, you'll get along very well after you learn how to communicate with them. By being concise, precise, and blunt of course...

Hahaha, I promise you it is. Not saying that's a good thing, but.

If this is exactly what they said it was probably either language barrier, like mis translation of "try again, making sure it's all spelt correctly" OR just that you really did use fake information, in which case here, folks will just say that. You can get told off for not saying please when ordering coffee, I like it but can understand how anyone conditioned to american customer service would be horrified.

> Not being an absolute insane jerk off is a good expectation of people.

have you met the internet yet

Really? In France you're treated most of the time as a potential fraudster first, then maybe when planet aligns as customer in some services like train, tramway, post, banks (the state mandates to justify things like moving and using your own money you already paid taxes on) and various administrations.

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