[HN Gopher] Dark patterns: Buying a Bahncard at Deutsche Bahn
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Dark patterns: Buying a Bahncard at Deutsche Bahn
Author : ketzu
Score : 84 points
Date : 2025-10-09 12:17 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ketzu.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ketzu.net)
| johndoe0815 wrote:
| "Deutsche Bahn, the fully state owned railway company, is a well
| liked company".
|
| Eh, nope. It's a horribly mismanaged entity with permanent
| delays, bad service and outrageous pricing...
| ketzu wrote:
| Sorry, I have a hard time holding back my sarcasm when writing
| while being annoyed, I thought the link to the 1.2 trust pilot
| rating gave it away.
|
| As this was mostly written as anger management, the writing is
| pretty poor. :)
| thedanbob wrote:
| Don't worry, some of us got it. That part made me chuckle.
| PetitPrince wrote:
| Yes, plus the rest of the article makes it clear this link
| was done in sarcasm.
| tombardier wrote:
| All is clear; I enjoyed that bit :)
| sneak wrote:
| It wasn't you, the sarcasm was obvious.
|
| Germans generally don't understand sarcasm, written or
| spoken.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Most times the issue is that Germans do never break out
| from being sarcastic.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| >I thought the link to the 1.2 trust pilot rating gave it
| away.
|
| It did. Worry not.
| sammy2255 wrote:
| I recall I was once on a Deutsche Bahn train, it was delayed
| more than an hour (not that I cared I wasn't in a rush). One
| worker came around handing out envelopes, since everyone was
| entitled to a partial refund, I had to sign it, and then mail
| it back to them? What the fuck? Not even Hitler would've
| allowed this
| Hackbraten wrote:
| This was fixed just a couple of years ago. (Not the delays,
| but at least the refund process was streamlined.)
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| Does a worker now hand out envelopes filled with cash?
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Now they are not allowed to accept the refund and you can
| only mail it to their bureaucracy.
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| It's an automated process nowadays if you purchase your
| tickets via their app. (Which in turn acts as KYC and makes
| it impossible to travel anonymously.)
| thehias wrote:
| how can you not get this joke and sarcasm lol
| sva_ wrote:
| Poe's law
| Antibabelic wrote:
| And people think the government has their best interests in mind.
| juliangmp wrote:
| Ironically, the folks here that have made experience with the
| state operated railway (Deutsche Bundesbahn) back when it
| existed (until 1993) say mostly positive things, especially
| compared to today. The modern German railway is a combination
| of both the state and a private company. So we get a for-profit
| monopoly that's ripping you off but also gets subsidized by the
| state. The worst of both worlds.
|
| This model of kind-of privatization is used in Germany in a few
| areas and it's god awful for everyone involved, like with the
| hospitals.
|
| I don't like falling politics especially here on HN but I
| cannot for the life of me understand why this model is still
| being defended by some people.
| mlinhares wrote:
| Same reason journalists are defending fascism, they stand to
| make a profit (or think they do). You can always follow the
| money to find out why people are making decisions that are
| seemingly stupid.
| juliangmp wrote:
| Oh there's definetly people profiting from it but I think
| there's also plenty of cases where Hanlon's Razor applies.
| Philipp2398 wrote:
| I think it has less to do with the corporate structure and
| more to do with the cumulative effects of decades of
| neglected investments
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Which happened due to the corporate structure.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| I don't know anyone who thinks that.
|
| What I think is that a system which has as its goal extracting
| profit for investors doesn't work for public services which do
| not respond properly to market forces.
|
| Natural monopolies, services in which profit is extracted at
| the cost of benefit, and inelastic services which are bound to
| wellbeing are some examples.
| Zak wrote:
| Once, long ago, I ended up buying the wrong ticket from Deutsche
| Bahn. I no longer remember whether this was my fault or theirs,
| but I do remember that support was completely unhelpful.
|
| My credit card provider was considerably more helpful when I
| solved the problem with a chargeback.
| randomtoast wrote:
| I once bought the wrong ticket, got checked, and the staff told
| me I had to leave the train at the next station. The ticket I
| purchased was actually more expensive than the "SuperSparPreis"
| for the correct ticket. So, I ended up paying more and twice
| for this journey.
| teekert wrote:
| This is the type of staff that can easily be replaced by
| computers.
| aleatorianator wrote:
| unless there's a union
| teekert wrote:
| Yes but I mean, they are so inhuman. My wife was once
| refused migraine medication because the dokter made some
| mistake on receipt, they could see her in pain in the
| car. But computer says no.
|
| Sure, they'll be in trouble perhaps when going against
| the computer, but then if no one can go against the
| computer, why bother with humans?
|
| To be clear: I prefer the humans. But self-thinking ones.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| I bought the wrong ticket for a plane once and they wouldn't
| even let me on until I spent an absolute fortune on a walk up
| fare.
| hobofan wrote:
| Yes, DB tickets should only be booked via a payment provider
| that allows for chargebacks.
|
| I know of instances where the end result of a more than half a
| year support escalation process of the highest instance said
| "you (the customer) did everything correctly, but our support
| provided wrong advice. Bad luck though, as we don't consider
| ourselves accountable for mistakes in the support process.
| Please stop contacting us."
| brummm wrote:
| It's not fully state owned, it's semi-privatized. You get the
| worst of both worlds, so to speak.
| ketzu wrote:
| It is privatized, but it is fully state owned. The country of
| germany owns 100% of the stock.
|
| > Sie [DB AG] befindet sich zu 100 Prozent im Eigentum des
| Bundes
|
| https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/Standardar...
| xp84 wrote:
| Non-German here. What's the point of this setup? I guess in
| some ways this isn't too different than USPS, which is self-
| sufficient and doesn't face tax dollars nor give its profits
| to the Treasury, but in our case they didn't bother going as
| far to separate it as it sounds like DB did.
| ketzu wrote:
| After reunification there were two railway companies, and
| they got reorganized into an AG. At least later, when they
| restructured the company into a holding and subsidaries,
| they planned to privatize them completely and disolve the
| parent company. They never did go through with that
| however.
|
| Why they went with an AG in 1993, I don't know.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| The plan was to sell the DB after privatizing but something
| (if I remember correct financial crisis 2008) went between
| it so they (politics) decided to keep the stocks.
| freehorse wrote:
| It is typically midway to full privatisation. It goes from
| being a public company (not as in publicly traded but
| actually of public interest) to being for-profit company
| but state owning all the shares. Then the state sells the
| majority of the shares and it becomes actually private.
|
| Typically, on the way, there is also a separation between
| the "good piece" and the "bad piece" of the company, ie the
| company that operates the trains (and makes profit out of
| the passengers etc) and the one that maintains the
| infrastructure. The state then can sell the profit-
| generating part of the company to the private sector, and
| continue operating the non-profitable one itself, so the
| private capital can enjoy the best of both worlds (having a
| privatised train company, but still having the state eat up
| the economic burden of maintaining the infrastructure that
| the former operates on). Not sure where germany stands in
| this roadmap, but this is what has happened in other places
| (and no it did not improve the experience of passengers to
| any degree).
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Not sure what your definition of "privatized" is... fully
| state-owned means it isn't privatised at all.
|
| The issue is one of legal status. In most countries you can
| be a commercial company or essentially a branch of the
| government (leaving aside coops and charities).
|
| So in general you have companies (legal status) but they are
| fully owned by the state, hence "state-owned company".
| "Privatized" means the government decided to sell most or all
| the shares to the public.
|
| Counter example is the USPS in the US, which is an agency of
| the Federal government.
| ketzu wrote:
| > Not sure what your definition of "privatized" is
|
| Maybe this is a language barrier issue. Companies organized
| as AG, GmbH etc. under private law, in opposition to
| branches of the government or special institutions of
| public law. This is commonly called "Bahnprivatisierung" in
| Germany.
|
| The Deutsche Bahn was "privatized" in the sense that it was
| moved from public law to private law based organization.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Yes, that's exactly what I explained in term of legal
| status, but that's not what "privatized" means.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| "Bahnprivatisierung" is the official term for what
| happened to the German railway in the 90s. I think this
| it what the term means.
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| Its still a private company, well 245 of them, billing each
| other while trying to cooperate.
|
| This company structure was the result of the neoliberal
| thinking of having as much free market as possible, with the
| beneficial side effect of creating many highly payed board
| chairs for former politicians.
|
| Today, the problems, mainly caused by cutting cost on
| maintenance, are so close to the surface, that even the most
| head-in-the-cloud establishment politicians cant spin it
| anymore, so the new DB ceo (Palla), tasked with "fixing it",
| came up with a long term plan. For decades, from every side,
| DB/german governments was critized for not having an
| articulated goal of the minimum public service that should be
| provided. The german governments were not directing, so 100%
| state _owned_ is technically true but obscures the
| complexity. The former ceo Mehdorn, that started this down
| trend did exatcly what any short-term-gain ceo would do and
| is, despite this blatantly failing infrastructure, still well
| regarded.
|
| Today, one primary goal of this plan to fix it all, is to
| "reduce delays". Cuting schedules and lines will make this
| number up too! And so the next round of ceo bonus payments
| are secured and the shit show continues.
|
| What else could you expect? A solution to fix vital
| infrastructure and strengthen trust in politicians and
| governments to cost money?! Haha.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| > The former ceo Mehdorn [...] is, [...] still well
| regarded.
|
| Citation needed.
| InfinityByTen wrote:
| Oh yeah, I've had one of those several years ago. It was a Bahn25
| and I got a new one in 2 months and got sent a bill for it. Then,
| I called them because I couldn't cancel and I tried to tell them
| about this. At least at that time, the customer support knew
| about this sneaky practice, and would, on request, allow you to
| cancel it manually.
|
| I did get a debt collectors post about my unpaid bill and I had
| to send around emails to them as well that I was pardoned and I
| didn't use the card at all. I don't remember if I got a
| confirmation about it and that's why I still have it on my
| records. After like 7 (8?) years, who knows when they would go
| under and then come up to me that I owe them like half a million
| in unpaid debt.
| sva_ wrote:
| I think after 3 years it is "verjahrt."
| sixtyj wrote:
| Every cent counts.
|
| What is wrong is that this behaviour is being perpetrated by an
| organisation that one would not expect to see it.
|
| Edit: Every 500 euros count...
|
| " Today is about dark patterns that cost me 500EUR for
| nothing."
| mr_mitm wrote:
| When they owe _you_ money, they refuse to pay up if it 's
| less than 4EUR: https://preview.redd.it/danke-db-es-geht-mir-
| nicht-um-die-3-...
|
| However, if I try to explain to them I cannot purchase
| tickets costing less than 4EUR for reasons I simply keep to
| myself like they do, they hit me with a 60EUR fee.
| sixtyj wrote:
| Every 3.99EUR counts... It sucks. Last time I had similar
| dispute with IRS :)
| thesimon wrote:
| Can complain to your local MEP about that. They updated the
| passenger rights regulation recently, but still kept this/
|
| Regulation (EU) 2021/782
|
| > Railway undertakings may introduce a minimum threshold
| under which payments for compensation will not be paid.
| This threshold shall not exceed EUR 4 per ticket.
|
| Sadly the MEPs cared more about railway companies than
| passengers.
| sneak wrote:
| So many subscription-based things in Germany are outright scams
| that would be criminal elsewhere.
|
| Mobile phone contracts, internet service contracts principally
| among them. Two year contracts that auto renew and can only be
| cancelled in small windows a long time before auto-renew.
| thesimon wrote:
| > and can only be cancelled in small windows a long time before
| auto-renew
|
| any examples?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Many commercial leases run in 5-year increments with 2 5 year
| auto-renewals and a 90-180 day window in which to exercise
| the opt-out of auto-renewal. That window is often not set to
| end coincident with the end of the lease term for obvious
| reasons.
| winged wrote:
| Parship used to do this (not sure about their current
| practices, this was years ago): I once had a six-month
| subscription that would automatically extend by a year if you
| didn't cancel at least three months in advance (by letter or
| fax!). Especially dodgy in that line of business, because if
| you get lucky shortly before subscription runs out, you're
| literally giving away a year's worth of subscription that
| you're not going to use at all.
| sva_ wrote:
| > Two year contracts that auto renew and can only be cancelled
| in small windows a long time before auto-renew.
|
| This is not the case anymore due to an EU law. It can only
| renew for 1 month at a time after the 24 months now.
| kalleboo wrote:
| Japan was like that with mobile contracts until about 5-10
| years ago, when the government finally put an end to it.
| lxgr wrote:
| Vote with your wallet and get one that's month-by-month. There
| are so many of these available by now.
| sshine wrote:
| Last year I got a yearly membership for the Copenhagen Zoo.
|
| As time was running up, I was reminded to renew the membership.
|
| If I didn't, the membership would get cancelled.
|
| If I did, the membership would turn on auto-renewal.
|
| So they auto-renew memberships once you've paid twice.
|
| This ensures that people who get auto-renewed but forgot about it
| at least liked renewing once.
|
| Auto-renewal of subscriptions supposed to be a feature for
| veterans of a service, and not something to cheat people out of
| their money after they never get a good return of investment the
| first time.
|
| Just to give Kagi some credit here: They have a friendly reminder
| every month that my subscription is about to renew. Every month
| I'm given the chance to cancel, and every month I'm reminded of
| what a decent service that is. It surely does mean they'll lose
| some customers. But it also means that those who stay, stay
| forever.
| bluGill wrote:
| Auto-renew should be on first use within the month of the
| renewal. renewing something that someone doesn't use is bad,
| but if they are using it that is good. Better yet, if someone
| didn't use the subscription enough to be worth the yearly fee
| get confirmation they want to.
| sksksk wrote:
| I never sign up for subscriptions anymore without using a
| virtual card. Once I've paid the yearly fee, I immediately
| cancel the card. When it comes to renew, they'll be very keen
| to let me know that my card needs updating.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| My favorite trick by various German service providers is
| impossibility to cancel. Like literally it's impossible. You
| cancel, you show deregistration from current address but they say
| "rejected, you can still use our service at the new address". Got
| fuck yourself and rot in hell.
| netsharc wrote:
| I wonder if they'll accept registration forms foreign
| countries, e.g. of "Herr Muller is now a resident of
| Timbuktu"...
|
| Or apparently it's possible to deregister moving to a foreign
| country with "address unknown", but I guess it'd have to be
| plausible when you claim "Oh I'm going to cycle around the
| world for 5 years"...
| sunaookami wrote:
| Speaking of experience from a friend that moved from Germany
| to another country and wanted to cancel his phone provider:
| No, this doesn't work, you can't cancel prematurely and you
| must pay the full amount. I think it was Congstar (subsidiary
| of Deutsche Telekom).
| slybot wrote:
| Couple of years back, I made a mistake on trusting Deutsche Bahn.
| I took a regional train from Dusseldorf, hoping to get at some
| connection hub (never reached and don't remember, possibly
| Cologne), I have to ICE to reach Brussels. It was evening and at
| some point the train stopped in the middle of nowhere and an
| announcement followed 20 minutes later, saying the train went
| through the wrong tracks and it cannot return! And, we need to
| wait couple of hours before the rails are cleared and then we
| will need to get of the next station, a tiny town where only few
| trains run per day and none after 10pm!. Genius idea to leave
| people there, conductor also puts his unsatisfaction because
| apparently he also needs to get off there and request a ride. Let
| alone, I missed my connections. I had to either wait there until
| morning or get a ride. Never used Deutsche Bahn again, I feel
| less stressed by driving, even I really enjoy train rides in
| general.
|
| Did I get compensation? Yes I did after four months for the
| ticket price only (around 40 euros), but after ridiculous process
| of that I need to send them forms and tickets via regular post,
| with a stamp that can only post within Germany. Nice try by their
| side..
| hagbard_c wrote:
| I use DB a few dozen times per year for international trips and
| as such have quite a bit of experience with the problems of
| train travel in the former _wirtschaftswunder_. Yes, ICE trains
| are more often than not delayed and time tables are better
| treated as wish lists than accurate depictions of when you 'll
| get where. Having said this I do not agree with the depiction
| of the restitution process, probably because I ignore the
| typically German paper/stamp/copy/snail-
| mail/triplicate_authorised_stamped_and_approved bureaucratic
| route and use the DB Navigator app or the bahn.de site for
| restitution requests for all my (many) restitution requests.
| Thus far I have had no problems in getting restitution for
| hotels, alternative transport options and the 25% (> 1 hour
| delay)/50% (> 2 hour delayed, all to frequent on my longer
| international trips) ticket price restitutions.
|
| DB is far from perfect and the backlog in rail and rolling
| stock maintenance seems to drag them down more and more but
| they are a godsend when it comes to booking and managing
| international train travel. It is both far easier and generally
| far less expensive to book an international trip through DB
| than it is through e.g. the Dutch, Danish or Swedish railway
| operators or one of the middle-man sites like omio.se etc.
| ketzu wrote:
| > Having said this I do not agree with the depiction of the
| restitution process [...] and use the DB Navigator app
|
| Iirc they only started this possibility in june 2021. So
| anyone, especially foreigners, that experiences this system
| before then, will still know the paper only version. And 2021
| is quite late to implement a digital version of that.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| That is possible, I started taking the train for these
| trips during the SARS2 unpleasantness so I have no
| information on how things worked before that time. I am 'a
| foreigner' (Dutchman living in Sweden) and I suspect that
| factor only makes it more likely for customers to use
| online claim requests since it is customary for
| international customers to interact with DB through the
| 'net instead of through physical locations where they keep
| stacks of those grey claim envelopes with forms at the
| ready.
| netsharc wrote:
| Ah, the DB app. I remember seeing on a ticket envelope
| (when ticket envelopes were still a thing), DB proudly
| promoting their new app, "now with delays information!".
| Great and sad at the same time.
| notTooFarGone wrote:
| Also you can cancel your Deutschlandticket only before the 15th
| of the month. And somehow getting a Deutschlandticket not
| starting at the first of the month is impossible.
|
| It's all around scams and it's utterly embarrassing that 210k
| people are actually employed in Germany for this. There are
| people who get payed for implementing dark patterns as a
| government service to get a little bit more money.
| cyxxon wrote:
| That seems to me to be a direct result of too many actors
| involved in the creation of the Deutschlandticket actually
| ebing against this ticket, and so those in favor tried to
| appease them and created this absolut disaster of a booking
| process. There is no other reason for this otherwise, and it
| would be trivial to sort this out by e.g. having a validity
| period of 31 days, or always going until the end of the month
| and costing only a percentage. But that would be too easy.
| lxgr wrote:
| Just get your Deutschlandticket from a more customer friendly
| reseller.
|
| There are a few that let you cancel before the last day of the
| month, and even let you add the ticket to Apple/Google Wallet
| so you don't need to depend on some mediocre app having a good
| enough day to display your ticket during an inspection.
| sunaookami wrote:
| Ah yes the DB app where it's adviced to screenshot your
| ticket because it WILL disappear when you get checked and you
| will be blamed and are at fault...
| Honga wrote:
| They'll send debt collectors and affect your credit rating if you
| don't pay for your renewal, even though it's not valid until you
| pay. You have to post a filled form to cancel the membership.
| rarisma wrote:
| I went to germany and got a DB card, for some reason despite
| giving them my card details, they instead asked me to pay them
| within 14 days (after the ticket has expired) via bank transfer
| or they would fine me an extra 50eur
|
| (I checked, they never took the price of the ticket from my
| account initally, why not is bizzare)
| baphomet88f wrote:
| Was Tablet Magazine syndicated article in the vein of Huxley's
| somatic aspect of transcription.
|
| Alternatively, Wender's credits, for the American Friend was the
| procuring of a series of gaffers to film the long-shot of
| Hamburg.
|
| [1]:https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-
| letters/articles/nat...
| clippy99 wrote:
| I love that subscriptions in the US are (usually) immediately
| cancellable. Germany is the wild west of predatory subscription
| plans, and unfortunately the legal framework weighs heavily in
| favor of the businesses issuing these contracts and not the
| consumers.
| kalleboo wrote:
| To elaborate - in the U.S., you can usually get out of a
| subscription by telling your credit card to cancel the payments
| (or cancel the card, etc). In Germany, it's not uncommon for
| them to start sending you to collections if you do that, since,
| after all, you never cancelled the contract properly. They're
| not technically wrong but it's still extremely customer-
| hostile.
| lxgr wrote:
| I guess there are some upsides to litigation being
| horrendously expensive.
| illiac786 wrote:
| >Deutsche Bahn, the fully state-owned railway company, is a well-
| liked (Trustpilot: 1.2/5) company running most major long-
| distance railways in Germany
|
| Very confusing, the irony/sarcasm of the second part is not
| clear: yes it is 100% owned but 1.2 is a really bad score,
| Germans hate DB. That sentence if even more confusing for a
| German, because in Germany 1 is a good score and 5 is a fail (at
| school at least).
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| Everyone hates db. They're a laughing stock across Europe.
| Switzerland have started banning them from running trains due
| to the knock on affects. If your long distance twin is under 2
| hours late that's a good day.
|
| The only people who thing db are good are idiotic Brits who go
| "privatisation is bad we should run our railway like Germany
| with twice the subsidise and half the reliability".
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| In English the sarcasm is quite obvious.
| outloudvi wrote:
| I'm worried about the situation when Dark Patterns are not widely
| recognized enough as a malicious practice for users.
|
| Half a month ago I see someone on Twitter defending its own
| product design as "transparent and nothing hidden" - the "$0 now,
| then $15/month in 14 days" description where all text after "$0"
| are small and in grey. I don't think it maintains trust between
| the product and users, and thus it doesn't seem like a good
| thing.
| ketzu wrote:
| > "transparent and nothing hidden"
|
| That's the response I got on from quite a few people on german
| speeaking reddit, also calling me an idiot :)
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Don't let reddit idiots gaslight you. There are aot seriously
| deranged people running around on reddit, who are eating up
| mainstream corporate propaganda and lies without any
| questioning at all. I some subreddits they are the majority
| and paying attention to what those clowns thing can only be a
| negative for your own health.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| OMG yes this keeps biting me in the ass and is so absolutely
| infuriating, I feel scammed every time I fail to cancel it
| (probably needs a blood/urine sample, sent by post). There are no
| words for how much I hate Deutsche Bahn, Germany's 2nd biggest
| shame.
| mckirk wrote:
| I think 'ending up with an accidental BahnCard and losing a
| painful amount of money because of it' might be almost a rite of
| passage at this point.
|
| Happened to me as well; I had a 'youth' card for people below the
| age of 27, even remembered that some cards auto-renew and checked
| online to see if mine would, because I wanted to make sure I
| wouldn't just get upgraded to the regular and much more expensive
| BahnCard... couldn't find a renewal date and thought I'd be fine.
| But apparently I didn't check thoroughly enough, and only got
| informed of now having 200EUR less and a shiny new BahnCard by
| email. Also emailed support, also didn't get anywhere.
|
| Later I mention this to a friend... and he says 'ah, yeah, same
| with me'.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Commenting from neighboring Poland: my sense is that the dark
| patterns are less a result of deliberate manipulation and more a
| result of crappy publicly funded tendered software development.
|
| It's, like, when the designs are made in a perpetual bureaucratic
| Kafkaesque then the results are like this. They're only building
| to specification, there is no UX research.
|
| You're not going to not take the train. Not like the ticket
| experience is going to make a big difference with another train
| provider.
| ketzu wrote:
| > more a result of crappy publicly funded tendered software
| development.
|
| I would be more willing to buy that, if their support response
| would be different, and if it hadn't been an issue for years,
| including fighting legal battles to keep conditions close to
| what they are now.
|
| One has to assume they are fully aware and unwilling to
| improve.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > > more a result of crappy publicly funded tendered software
| development. > One has to assume they are fully aware and
| unwilling to improve.
|
| Both can be true at the same time.
| 47282847 wrote:
| I recently decided to upgrade to BC50 again after some years of
| less travel and a subscription of a BC25. I went to the DB site,
| logged in, manually provided my BC25 card number in the order
| process even though it's right there in my profile. And ended up
| with a second subscription: I now own both a BC25 and BC50 in
| parallel, which makes no sense as you can of course only use one
| of the two.
|
| ...
| _pgu wrote:
| This hits so hard. I just looked up my own BahnCard 25, turns out
| that I'm a week too late for cancellation. Another year it is
| then.
| stockresearcher wrote:
| I was going to be in the Munich area next month and was planning
| on using the DB Bavarian regional day ticket quite a bit. Is this
| a bad idea?
| ketzu wrote:
| No not necessarily. But it might be more cost effective to get
| the deutschland ticket if you can still get one for this month.
| (You don't have to get it from DB, some allow cancellation much
| later.)
|
| Ticket sales are generally quite straight forward with DB
| online and the area tickets are usually a good value compared
| to local tickets.
| lxgr wrote:
| You can always get one for the current month and (except for
| maybe the last day) immediately cancel it with some sellers.
| usr1106 wrote:
| D-Ticket is a subscription only sold for calendar months.
| The basic terms are set by law, but some sellers have more
| generous terms, that is allowed. You need to cancel before
| the 10th of the current month in order not having to pay
| for the next month. If you buy after the 10th you are
| charged for 2 months right away. Most sellers require a
| German bank account, but e.g. HVV supports Paypal (worked
| for me) and in theory credit cards (did not work for me). I
| don't know any seller that accepts cancellations after the
| 10th, but I have heard a couple should exist.
| lxgr wrote:
| That's not the case with [1], for example. They allow
| pausing (and then canceling) the subscription any time
| before the last day of the month. It works as advertised
| in my experience.
|
| [2] seems to be offering the same, but I haven't tried it
| myself. [3] looks interesting too.
|
| [1] https://www.ticket-plus.app/en/
|
| [2]
| https://www.mopla.solutions/de/tickets/deutschlandticket
|
| [3] https://deutschland-ticket.store/autobus-
| oberbayern?lang=en
| stockresearcher wrote:
| See, this is not making me feel good about the deutchland
| ticket.
|
| My understanding is that the Bavarian day ticket can
| still be purchased as a piece of paper from a kiosk at
| the station and we would print our names on it (2 adults,
| 3 kids). This seems so much easier than worrying about
| starting and stopping a subscription!
|
| https://int.bahn.de/en/offers/regional/regional-day-
| ticket-b...
| sarpdag wrote:
| Sadly, Deutsche Bahn has become, for me, a symbol of how Germany
| is going downhill.
|
| I got a BahnCard 25 for 3 months, and one month before it
| expired, it automatically renewed for a full year. Even though I
| canceled it, I still had to pay for the entire year.
|
| I bought a train ticket to Austria, and they announced strikes
| just five days before my trip. They didn't refund my money
| directly. I had to fill out a form in person at DB, and I only
| got 80% of the money back.
|
| The trains are unreliable; they are often delayed.
| iammjm wrote:
| I bought a BahnCard 50 subscription last year, for 12 months.
| After 11 months (=before the current subscripion expired) they
| automatically renewed the subscription by additional 12 months.
| Seeing their confirmation email I contacted them within 30mins of
| receiving it, politely requesting to please cancel the
| subscription because it was renewed without my knowledge or
| confirmation. My request was declined and they "offered" to
| cancel my BahnCard for the next year, in 13 months! Very
| annoying, as I even had a calender remainder set, but I didnt
| think they would renew before the current subscription expires.
| Who does that?? Also I am a good customer that has already spent
| thousands of EUR on DeutscheBahn.
| croisillon wrote:
| they did the same to me, 20 years ago, i complained and got my
| money back, i thought this was not leagal anymore
| ahartmetz wrote:
| The trick is to cancel stuff immediately after signing up if
| you don't firmly plan to continue using it. It becomes
| effective after the minimum duration.
| lxgr wrote:
| I started doing this for almost all subscriptions a while
| ago.
|
| Presumably in response to this, some services now show a very
| ambiguous warning when canceling, leaving it open whether the
| cancellation will become effective immediately or at the end
| of the first subscription period.
|
| Subscription management really ought to be taken away from
| the companies providing the service to the payment method
| (not that that's ever going to realistically happen without
| legislation though, due to the incentives).
| ahartmetz wrote:
| I got that from Amazon Prime (free month of Prime, I never
| paid for it). I don't recall other services doing that, but
| I've also never subscribed to many of the popular ones like
| Netflix and such.
| lxgr wrote:
| Apple's various services do it too, but not consistently,
| and usually only for free trials (in which case, fair
| enough to be honest).
| kwanbix wrote:
| This is a very German thing. Most contracts are yearly
| contracts the first two years, and you have to cancel at most 3
| months before the next year starts.
|
| On the third year, the contracts become monthly contracts.
| However, if you do any change in the contract, it starts again.
| For example, if you have internet for 5 years, and request a
| speed change, it starts again to count the 2 years.
|
| Absolutely crazy from my non-german point of view. In my home
| country the first year is a full year, and it becomes monthly
| cancelable afterwards for things like internet, where they
| subsidize the installation and the modem. But in Germany, I was
| charged 120 dollars for the installation, and had to pay for
| the modem.
| meta-level wrote:
| Also, when you buy the BahnCard via PayPal, only the first time
| you'll be charged via PayPal. You get an invoice later, which
| looks like advertising but actually tells you to provide your
| bank details to charge you for the subscription.
| Tarsul wrote:
| I actually made money accidentally with a BahnCard subscription.
| I canceled my BahnCard 50 within the first 14 days (which they
| have to conform to due to laws) via email (btw: before the
| starting date so I did not use it). They confirmed and send me
| back 100Euros too much money. Why 100Euro? I had originally used
| a coupon code that saved me 100Euro. Good guy as I am I told them
| via mail that they sent me too much money back. What did they
| say? No, can't be, Bahncard50 costs are the higher amount, the
| banking statement that I sent them must be of something else.
|
| I was like... alright, no sense in arguing with them anymore.
| zb3 wrote:
| If the incompetence works in this direction too, then at least
| we're sure this is true incompetence and not malice..
| Tarsul wrote:
| Oh, actually it started with incompetence, too: I wanted to
| order the BahnCard25 but payment didn't went through (and
| thus, I did _not_ finish the order process). When I tried
| again, the coupon that I wanted to use for the Bahncard25 was
| exhausted. (which is why I went for BahnCard50 afterwards)
|
| And why did I cancel the subscription anyway? Because the
| trip that I planned (Hamburg to Paris) and that was listed as
| buyable was of course everything but buyable. Always failed
| at the last step of ordering with some indistinct error
| message. Well, they _really_ did not want my money, that much
| I can say.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| "Soft" factors matter when it comes to public transit
| attractiveness.
|
| A mix of various forms of customer hostility and stupidity (from
| not providing data about some transit connection to Google Maps
| to an insanely convoluted ticketing scheme to inflexible fare
| rules if you don't want to pay insane amounts) resulted in me
| taking a car for a trip that could and otherwise would have been
| done by public transit.
|
| I hate driving (why would I spend an hour doing work/paying
| attention when I could read a book), and would still consider
| doing it again for that connection just to avoid dealing with the
| bullshit.
|
| Meanwhile, in Switzerland one ticket mostly gets you from A to B,
| even if that involves a boat, a tram, a train, and a bus. Oh, and
| they'll be on time too.
| s4mbh4 wrote:
| FYI: Unlike what you expect: bahncard50 only gives you a 50%
| discount on the 'flex price' and not the 'sparpreies' class of
| price(there it's still 25%). Flex adds some cancellation and
| other conveniences but is generally more expensive.
|
| Thank you for reminding me to cancel my bahn card.
| elcapitan wrote:
| Thanks for the reminder to cancel my Bahncard, last time I
| forgot.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| My personal two cents: They refused to send my an invoice, so I
| didn't payed after their auto-removal on time. I did pay later.
| Then they send me to some random collections company AFTER they
| received my payment, according to their own data. Now they refuse
| to hand out a ticket to me that I payed for. I needed to travel
| and had already bought a ticket that relied on the Bahncard.
| Therefore I bought a second Bahncard, because provisional
| Bahncards can be handed out by the staff directly, but it's not
| valid for the whole direction I bought it. I expect them to still
| refuse to hand me my ticket and they also didn't confirm that I
| canceled my first Bahncard.
| junto wrote:
| I was caught out in the same way. I now take out a BahnCard
| subscription online and immediately cancel it. I know I have the
| BahnCard for one year, and have the security that it should not
| automatically rollover without me having the choice.
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