German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

On the one hand, I think Schufa is collecting a lot of unnecessary data that they should'nt have access to. For example, when I bought a pre-paid SIM card in Germany the provider did a Schufa check. No idea why.

On the other hand, I get why a credit score can be useful for larger purchase decisions. If I was a bank, I'd like to know if the person I'm lending 400k for a property, has in the past defaulted on any loans.

I genuinely don't know what a good middle ground is though.

Currently in Germany, yeah... we paid the Schufa tax twice over because we're two people renting together, and the GDPR data export thingy conveniently omits the credit score they've computed about you...

Was considering whether one can make use of the 14-day return thing, but they've thought of that: it uses a sealed envelope that's hard to open without leaving evidence (under a guise of having a nice opener mechanism).

But they also provide what's essentially a vanity service where they give you a more detailed breakdown of the information they have on you. They're also allowed to charge for that.

The issue is that under the GDPR, they're also required to provide all the information they have on you, for free.

Now this obviously conflicts with their nice side business, so they're trying to herd people towards the paid offering.

I don't think making the free GDPR export more prominent would threaten their core service. After all, businesses interested in your creditworthiness don't want to make too many complex decisions themselves, so they'll continue to rely on Schufa's stamp of approval instead of wading through the details of your financial history. (And how do they know you're not hiding something from them?)