The German group buying ticket dodgers out of prison
bbc.com
bbc.com
It's a nice subsidy for those of us who were already or were considering paying 60-100/mo for commuter tickets in our regions, but is still too much for a lot of the people who couldn't afford that, much less car ownership, in the first place.
There are lots of smaller programs like Schülertickets, why not just make it universal?
I feel very strongly that states should be able to run limited-time, limited-cost experiment, even big expensive ones like this. That requires that people accept that the experiment ends, and do not expect it to be a new norm. If people expect an experiment to last forever, then it'll be too difficult to agree on what the next experiment may be.
Besides, I feel that it's stupid to think that the terms/rules which were chosen quickly for an experiment happen to be the best ones for the long-term future. If anyone says so, I think that implies that they haven't really studied what happened in the experiment.
edit: Thought I’d add some numbers:
Dienstwagenprivileg (de-facto tax subsidies for company cars that are used privately) 3.1 - 5+ billion Euro [0]
Current Deutschlandticket cost 3 billion Euro [1]
Sources are both in German
[0]: https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/steuerverguenstigungen-...
[1]: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/mobilitaet/hohe-koste...
edit2: Had the Deutschlandticket cost wrong for a few minutes, 3, not 1.5 billion.
Worth noting that in Germany the very same companies face 0 legal repercussions for the serial offense of not meeting their duties to the regular person, whether it's DB (the national railway operator), Lufthansa (national airline), or the local public transport systems.
They repeatedly cancel trips without any compensation for ticket holders, and the default stance is that you have to chase them forever with forms sent via snail mail (!) even for the basic refund of the ticket, not even speaking of actual compensation. Or they will go on strike for days or weeks and have very low level of service or complete interruptions and in this case there is 0 recourse for any kind of refund even when a monthly public transport pass was 100+ EUR. Or the plane/train will be hours late costing you further expense, or the train stuck in the field for hours at a time due to malfunctions, they happen on a daily basis with 0 repercussions.
They are literally allowed to repeatedly lie in the information to you during the resolution of such complaints and many times the only recourse is to involve a lawyer. The absolute worst that can happen to them in this situation is to have to fulfil their legal obligation (refund/compensation). There is no concept of anyone on that side being prosecuted for such things.
At least with the new 50EUR Deutschlandticket people will suffer the same but for less money.
You have been able to file the compensation claim online for at least a decade. Since a few years, you can do it with two taps in the app.
There is compensation for monthly ticket holders, but it is capped at 50% of the ticket price.
All that is very strictly enforced by the ministry. You just have to know your rights.
> You have been able to file the compensation claim online for at least a decade. Since a few years, you can do it with two taps in the app.
This [0] is the actual procedure to do it with printed out forms that have to be mailed to them, as documented by Deutsche Bahn.
[0] https://int.bahn.de/en/contact/passengers-rights-claim-form
In January this year DB cancelled all ICE trains one day because of ice (in winter, of all times), less than 1h before my departure time. Every other operator (TGV, Swiss SBB, smaller regional ones) was still running so I managed to get a combination of 3 other trains to get home 8h late. I had to mail those forms 3 times because they insisted "the replacement trains I used arrived on time so why am I asking for a refund". Eventually only refunded me the price of the new tickets after I threatened with a lawyer. No compensation for the lower quality of service though (direct ICE vs. 3 lower grade trains), for that I have to actually get a lawyer which costs more than what I can get back.
Last evening Lufthansa cancelled my flight to Florence which was supposed to be tomorrow morning (so less than 48h notice). After almost 2h on multiple calls with them, many of which unexpectedly disconnected, I found out that they can look into options but there is no commitment on when they have to come back to me, and later that I can be rescheduled on a flight 2 days later. The compensation for this? Nobody knows anything, have to file a complaint.
When I had a flight cancelled 1h before takeoff due to strike they scheduled me on a flight with 2 stops the next day. No compensation because it was one of the many strikes affecting Lufthansa.
> You just have to know your rights.
Why do you think there's a market for companies that recover your money from airlines in case of cancelled flights? Because rights mean nothing without power to enforce. If it requires a lawyer and a lot of chasing that costs money and time which you pay. So a lot of people will just give up. As an individual getting money from them is like getting blood from a stone. They increase the friction and delays to the max knowing that the absolute worst case scenario is they give you what you’re owed and nothing more. Best case you give up.
Why is it that a person can go to prison for riding the bus with no ticket (repeatedly), or be prosecuted even if they paid the fine but the company gets to at most do its job?
For the strike situation they are considered extraordinary circumstances and have a specific carveout that releases the company from the responsibility.
For the regular cancelled flights, I have a long trail of evidence where with Lufthansa call center we got to the point of agreeing on the refund and providing the banking details, and then they went silent. Had to go to one of the companies helpfully doing the same for just 30% commission.
Again, the strongest evidence that it's difficult to recover money from Lufthansa (airlines in general) is that there's a whole cottage industry of companies who exclusively deal with this. No customer would agree to pay 30+% recovery fee if the airlines were forthcoming with fulfilling their legal obligations.
Otherwise, I don't know what to tell you except that it's generally unproductive to mistake one's own bad experience for an objective insight into a system. The ombudsman for rail for one finds the claims management of DB satisfactory - even if they wish that the process was automatic where it can be.
Am I the only one affected? [0] [1] [2]
What do I do about a paper ticket bought outside of the app? What if I'm a foreigner just incidentally using the service? How about when, as per my example above, I bought tickets to TGV + SBB + regional line to replace the DB one which was cancelled and need a refund on those? Use the app right?
> The ombudsman for rail for one finds the claims management of DB satisfactory
The appeal to (pseudo)authority. Here's why that's not helpful: As per the article the German legal system puts people in jail for taking the bus without a ticket. So you say that's proof the practice is fine.
The effort it takes to have your legal rights respected by these companies is the abuse that you find excuses for.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/20/trains-on-time...
[1] https://www.deutschlandfunknova.de/beitrag/kritik-an-bahn-wa...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/xtpnkr/why_are_peo...
There. Online. App. Easy.
I didn't think you'd assume that I lie, so I didn't bother doing the googling for you. You're welcome.
Of course you won't find mention of the app process that is only about three years old in your hastily googled article from 2018. One piece of advice: never Google for links to support your point first. First try to find evidence that contradicts you. That's how I know that the ombudsman and pro Bahn approve of the process (if not the frequency in which it is needed)
Notice how your initial claim was "compensation is only possible via snail mail" and is now "people who don't use the website or app can't use the website or app to file a claim".
The important difference is that the latter claim can only strenuously support the implication of incompetence and obstruction.
Just by the way, it has always and is still possible to go to the service center and instantly get compensated. So even when you don't have a bahn.de account you never need to mail anything.
Furthermore their mistakes are absolutely not punishable, as confirmed with a lawyer. When they repeatedly make a mistake in the assessment of those paper forms they don't get referred for prosecution despite each mistake costing the customer hundreds of EUR in unrecovered ticket expenses. So when they "mistakenly" assessed 3 times (!!!) that they don't need to give me back hundreds of EUR it can no longer be accidental. That's 10 times more money than an unpaid bus fine (and many, many times more than a few bus tickets) and not only do they do their best to wiggle out of meeting their legal obligation, they are also not pushed at the end of the process. Unlike the poor lady in the article who went to prison for riding the bus without a ticket (10-15EUR in total!).
The excuse that it's not abuse unless all the customers are abused is like saying it's not rape if you just force the tip in. You are absolutely not posting in good faith at this point. I don't know if you just can't get the point, if you can't accept being wrong, or have some hidden agenda, but defending such abuse is inexcusable especially when faced with the evidence that the very same companies who abuse their customers like this have 0 tolerance for being abused by their customers. And Nazi-era remnants of the society and legal system allow a person to go to jail for unpaid bus ticket but completely shield the bus company from any repercussions from unpaid compensations to a person.
That isn't giving me back the weeks I loose each year to it. By now I travel a day early because I had 4 out of 4 trains fail on me repeatedly and I still risk getting stuck in the middle of nowhere after the last connecting train left.
> There is compensation for monthly ticket holders, but it is capped at 50% of the ticket price.
Unless they pay an "enhanced ticket price" that is a cheap cop out without consequence.
> All that is very strictly enforced by the ministry.
The ministry should enforce punctuality and not the cheap "trains that don't arrive at all aren't late" version the DB uses in its statistics.
He also runs Frag den Staat, a (the) platform for freedom of information requests at the German Open Knowledge Foundation.
He's the brother of the reasonably well known Comedian / Activist / EU-politican Nico Semsrott and somewhat involved in CCC circles (I walked by him at Camp).
In Berlin I remember just two "undercover" guys getting on the subway to check tickets, here in Brussels it's a squad of at least a dozen uniformed goons with multiple attack dogs. These groups are easily spotted and there's social media channels where they leak their locations. Sometimes you'll see an entire bus empty cause someone just announced that there's checks at the next stop. Meanwhile the employees of the company just watch the whole thing laughing.
Nobody can't not afford public transport in EU, it's just that they choose to spend their money on something else and then scream poverty when they get caught.
There are rules, this isn't Vietnam!
> Nobody can't not afford public transport in EU
This is a ridiculous take and I really invite you to examine your surroundings better.
> There are rules, this isn't Vietnam!
You even managed to close with a completely random racist remark.
This law is actualy a remnant from Nazi Germany, and the german equivalent of last week tonight also reported on it.[2]
1: https://www.weser-kurier.de/bremen/politik/schwarzfahrer-sol...
Like, if you're caught without a ticket, you automatically buy a more expensive ticket via invoice or something and if you don't pay for it, then some debt collector will take care of it.
I didn't know that law was so specific.
Sounds quite excessive for such an offence.
More people in buses and such, less of them in cars on the street. It's just a good business for any congested city, which is pretty much all of them.
Sort of related, I can think of NYC charging $1 for a subway card, you don’t see discarded subway cards on the floor of the stations.
Multiple machines for different Bahn companies, zoning that's not very well explained, multiple checking machines etc...
In the Netherlands there is a single system for the entire country where you can just tap your transit or debit card and it goes.
I'll keep your tip in mind next time, though. :)
https://www.bvg.de/en/subscriptions-and-tickets/all-apps/tic...
So it doesn't really change my original point that "use an app" is not a straightforward universal answer to the complexity. If it were a trustable libre app and you squinted to ignore the table stakes inherent to any mobile computing device, that could be a different story.
I wonder if there's some correlation between that kind of attitude and how the system works...
You're part of the reason that everywhere eventually ends up with ticket gates. Because people can't be trusted to do the right thing.
Because most people have a long term ticket. (is that the correct term in English? I mean one that's valid for a week, month or year)