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I went to catch a cross-country train in Berlin and was surprised to find out that it had unexpectedly left ~30 minutes earlier than planned, something I have never experienced in any mode of transport in any country, ever. I wasn't notified even though DB had my email address from my booking of a seat on that particular train. I had to get a later train and buy new tickets for my connecting Thalys trains at considerable expense.

Are you sure that wasn’t the train from earlier leaving late?

Absolutely sure. The conductor of the train I ended up boarding explained the situation and showed me the updated timetable on his phone.

That's just not true.

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.

What's not true?

> 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?

Why didn't EU261 apply to your flights? They seem like they should have qualified and you would have gotten a few hundred euros in addition to the new flight. There are a number of services which will pursue Lufthansa on your behalf for a part of the compensation you are awarded. Or is Lufthansa somehow exempt from EU261?

> Why didn't EU261 apply to your flights?

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.

I have filed dozens of these claims online and a few in the app. It's just not true that you have to mail them.

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.

I find it baffling that you counter the actual link to the process as described by the company itself with unsupported words about your experience of doing it in some other way that somehow works. Even taking this at face value, still no word on how that applies to any of the many cases which don't involve the app. Then, even more bafflingly, you shoot down my personal experience and justify it with your own experience. Talk about unproductive and lack of insight.

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...

https://www.bahn.de/service/informationen-buchung/fahrgastre...

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)

Ah, that requires that you bought the ticket through the app and is otherwise about as useful as the DBs falsified statistics.

Need any help carrying those goal posts?

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.

cedilla, from my very fist example I talked about cases where your solution, even if it existed, was completely useless and despite your best efforts to back up your counterpoints you still came up short. And you continued to carry water for a company despite now knowing that there are so many cases that consist of abusing intentionally arcane and archaic systems that create just enough friction to convince the person to drop it. Are telling us that a company which has been using ML (for some definition of that) since years to do predictive maintenance of their trains can't transition from a paper form in snail mail to digital scans and an email address?

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.

>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

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.

That's what happens when infrastructures are massively underfunded