I can see why that's a bad experience for you, but IMO Hetzner did the right thing here.
What if I forget to pay my AWS bill for a week and, because of that, all my resources get deleted? IIRC AWS will inactivate your account after 3 months without payment, so the same thing would've happened there. 3 months is a nice trade off between "forgot to pay my bills" and "no longer use the service".
ETA: for sure it sucks they sent the bill to collection. Uncalled for, they could've attempted to settle directly with you first.
What if I forget to pay my AWS bill for a week and, because of that, all my resources get deleted? IIRC AWS will inactivate your account after 3 months without payment, so the same thing would've happened there. 3 months is a nice trade off between "forgot to pay my bills" and "no longer use the service".
ETA: for sure it sucks they sent the bill to collection. Uncalled for, they could've attempted to settle directly with you first.