[sarabande]

It's your personal preference to be addressed with _Sie_, but languages change and German is seeing shift to the use of _Du_ even for transactional business [1]. Target audience, region, familiarity etc. will all affect which word is used. Claiming the use of _Du_ in customer relationships as "wholly inappropriate" again is an expression of personal preference, not fact.

[1] https://www.abendblatt.de/wirtschaft/article233949947/firmen...

[kelnos]

Isn't personal preference the entire point, though? If the aforementioned German aunt is offended enough by how a company addresses her, she might stop doing business with them. That's a loss for the company and is something they might want to think about. (Or maybe not, but who knows.)

[shellfishgene]

It got a lot more common during Covid, the social distancing rules in Supermarkets etc. were often written with the informal "Du", I guess to foster a sense of community and "we're all in this together".

[regularfry]

I have a personal preference for wearing clothes in public. I think people would rather that was respected, certainly in my case.