I wonder why this wasn't at all mentioned in their initial email... note i don't remember signing a contract for hosting where the price is dynamically calculated on commodity prices...
Does the contract mention anything about connection and service costs that might fluctuate, or who is responsible for them ? I have OVH servers but haven't ever had a price change. But if there was no notification etc, I would first check there.
In fairness, I've never had a price change from Hetzner either in the years I've had service there.¹
If power prices keep increasing as they have everywhere in Europe², no doubt other providers will be forced to adjust some of their pricing too. Hetzner is not the first. Many of those auction boxes are older machines that will be relatively power hungry which I'm sure makes a difference too, if you look at what is available not only have they changed some prices but some really old units that used to float around the list have gone completely³.
[1] and in fact haven't been told of one for my current service yet (not sure if that means I won't or if the emails are going out in batches and mine hasn't been sent yet)
[2] though more in some countries than others
[3] unless they have coincidentally all been rented and no others re-released back into the pool
yeah, although with zero transparency in regard how they ended up with the new price(s). because so far the new prices (especially in function of the old) are all over the place...
We have recently sent affected customers another statement via email with more information. The new Server Auction prices differ from model to model depending on the type of hardware they have. Only some servers in the Server Auctions were affected. (That's why unaffected customers did not receive an email.) The affected servers were being run at operating costs before the electricity prices in Germany increased over the last several months. Despite this, we understand that the price changes might seriously affect some customers. That's why, in our last email to affected customers, we presented an alternative option. The prices for our new/current dedicated root servers and cloud servers will remain unchanged. --Katie, Hetzner Online
I assume it has something to do with what the minimum for similar servers on current Robot auctions is. The servers I’m paying €21 for certainly never seem to hit lower than €29 these days.