Partial bilinguals who were born and brought up in diaspora communities sometimes face pragmatic failure when interacting with native speakers of their heritage language. This article examines encounters among heritage and native speakers of Greek, centering specifically on how the former conceptualize politeness, and how expectations may vary. Differences have been distinguished between Modern Greek and English: e.g., the negotiation of the communication norms of a positive politeness society, – the management and alleviation of face threatening acts, the use of diminutives and terms of endearment, and the use of politeness markers and formulae. This inquiry examines how Greek and English politeness norms are conceptualized, experienced and managed by Australian-born heritage speakers of Greek. In semi-structured interviews of 1–1.5 hours’ duration, evoking both general beliefs and small narratives of lived experience, Greek Australian participants were asked to reflect on their experiences communicating in Greek in a set of interpersonal contexts, covering visits to Greece. The pivotal concepts to appear were directness, consideration and generosity, and respect, manifest in both behavior and language. Findings propose that politeness expectations are at least partly shaped by experiences of communication with other members of the diaspora and with local and/or native speakers encountered during visits to Greece. A model is presented for a series of situated interactions emerging from the data, which it is proposed can influence politeness behavior and belief.