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German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

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Re: German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

#81

Post by bombcar »

hocuspocus wrote: post #55
pjmlp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only know something like Schufa here in Germany, never needed something like that in Portugal, UK, France, Switzerland.

In Switzerland for a proper lease, you likely need to provide a (clean) record from the debt collection register. But it's a government run agency, as it should. No score. Debt collectors can file claims a bit too easily and there are errors, but you can also challenge them easily.

Most countries have something allowing liens against property; liens against persons are harder to keep track of (hence things like credit burros spring up).

Re: German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

#82

Post by bombcar »

calmoo wrote: post #14

Some fun features of SCHUFA in Germany: 1. If you apply for a loan, this affects your credit rating. Yes - not get a loan, or default on a loan, simply by applying for a loan, your SCHUFA can be affected negatively. Especially if you are shopping around for loans, this is infuriating. This happens because your SCHUFA is affected simply by another entity checking your SCHUFA score. This is also really annoying because…

Applying for a loan in the US can affect your credit score for awhile, because the system isn’t instantaneous and it’s trying to handle someone requesting (and getting) multiple loans at once.

There are “soft pulls” and “hard pulls” that affect this differently. Usually it doesn’t matter much in the long run of things.

Re: German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

#83

Post by odiroot »

In the process of renting a flat in Germany, SCHUFA is not even the biggest travesty.

The worst part is potential tenants handing over full dossiers about their background to the prospective landlords. Passport copies, payslips, account statements and more. And as a tenant, you have no way of knowing when does it all end up.

At best it will be dumped into a paper recycling bin. But who knows if all these documents aren't sold further.

You also have no choice, you comply or you lose any chance of getting a flat.

Re: German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

#84

Post by odiroot »

tietjens wrote: post #41
ArmandGrillet wrote: post #37

Finally. Germany combines some of the worst aspects of the US (credit ranking, complicated abortion process, private healthcare if you want decent treatments) with the worst aspects of Europe (low digitalization, high taxation, recursive federalism: within the country and within the EU). A country like the Netherlands has its own issues (mainly housing) but doesn't have the myriad of pain points you can find in Germa…

Hello from Germany. No lies detected. Don’t forget about a working culture where process always ranks above results, and leaders commonly lack confidence to make pragmatic decisions.

> Don’t forget about a working culture where process always ranks above results,

And where tenure ranks above skills or experience. Especially if unions are involved.

Re: German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

#85

Post by anovikov »

tietjens wrote: post #41
ArmandGrillet wrote: post #37

Finally. Germany combines some of the worst aspects of the US (credit ranking, complicated abortion process, private healthcare if you want decent treatments) with the worst aspects of Europe (low digitalization, high taxation, recursive federalism: within the country and within the EU). A country like the Netherlands has its own issues (mainly housing) but doesn't have the myriad of pain points you can find in Germa…

Hello from Germany. No lies detected. Don’t forget about a working culture where process always ranks above results, and leaders commonly lack confidence to make pragmatic decisions.

Well, this working culture makes result slow and expensive, and as a result, in many cases uncompetitive, but it does a good job of avoiding fuckups and while slow and expensive, things usually get done predictably, on time and on budget. Which probably makes it better than American reckless "fake it till you make it" approach in most of the complex projects.

Re: German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

#86

Post by ClumsyPilot »

harha wrote: post #36
f6v wrote: post #6

I don’t know how it’s in other countries, but Schufa is a monopolist and feels like simply paying a tax. You have no choice. Interestingly, I didn’t need a credit check to rent in Belgium and Denmark.

might be worth fixing the problem all together by making it easier to kick out people who don't pay rent.

Because landlords have never abused their power for financial gain, malice or outright to get sexual favours from desperate tenants

It took nearly 10 for my previous landlord to face the justice.

She was completely outrageous and shameless in her crimes - blatantly in violation of registration for HMC, violation of planning permissions, squalor, disrepair, the houses had rats and literal hole in the wall for rain and wind. She would harass gullible and naive students, illegally evict them, etc. and all her crimes were on written record.

And she was doing it with impunity for years. For all that, her punishment is a slap on the wrist - https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/news/article/266/rogue_landlor...

Re: German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

#87

Post by mns »

panki27 wrote: post #68
fabian2k wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an overly negative and hyperbolic view. Nothing is entirely wrong here, but you're painting every single point in the most negative way possible. You can certainly argue about how good the healthcare system is in the end, but it isn't categorically inaccessible. And if you pay 400 EUR/month you're earning enough money and can choose the private health system if you prefer that. The credit ranking also works in…

While choosing to be in the private system is an option, it only "makes sense" if you make at least 70k€ a year, so definitly not for everyone. The issue is not getting in - but getting back out before you retire and don't have enough available income to pay the rates anymore.

Even if you get in, it's scummy. Once you get to a certain age, the payments are crazy. Not to mention people "selling it", like a colleague of mine got scammed into going private, he had some eye issues a couple of years before, and when the issue came back, the insurance refused to pay because it was an existing condition, making his treatment unaffordable and having to literally quit, leave the country for a while and come back just to get back to public.

Re: German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

#88

Post by odiroot »

pjmlp wrote: post #19
f6v wrote: post #6

I don’t know how it’s in other countries, but Schufa is a monopolist and feels like simply paying a tax. You have no choice. Interestingly, I didn’t need a credit check to rent in Belgium and Denmark.

I only know something like Schufa here in Germany, never needed something like that in Portugal, UK, France, Switzerland.

In the UK, it's usually the landlord (or their agent) doing the background checks on you. And they pay for it.

Re: German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

#89

Post by ffsm8 »

generic92034 wrote: post #53
ffsm8 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> public healthcare inaccessible despite paying more than 400€/month for it as a single individual. That's a pretty new thing though (been getting worse for the last 10 yrs). And the person responsible for the legislature that caused this change is the current health minister. Also... 400€? It's a percentage of your salary. And you're omitting that the employer pays the same amount, so you're effectively paying 800€…

> And the person responsible for the legislature that caused this change is the current health minister. Could you please explain that a bit more?

He revamped pretty much evey monetary incentive a few years ago, which directly caused the "gold rush" privatization of hospitals etc, making a lot of treatments uneconomical. There has been a lot of coverage about it over the years - both by official channels and independent YouTubers and journalists, I'm not going to do it justice by summarizing it in a comment here.

A somewhat recent German video (2yrs old) is "Pflege katastrophe - exposed". But ARTE , DW and ZDF all have reported on it at this point

The controversy about diabetis patients getting amputations over simple treatments is a pretty well known symptom of this revamp, as operations get a very high payout

Re: German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

#90

Post by sofixa »

ArmandGrillet wrote: post #37

Finally. Germany combines some of the worst aspects of the US (credit ranking, complicated abortion process, private healthcare if you want decent treatments) with the worst aspects of Europe (low digitalization, high taxation, recursive federalism: within the country and within the EU). A country like the Netherlands has its own issues (mainly housing) but doesn't have the myriad of pain points you can find in Germa…

> Europe (low digitalization, high taxation, recursive federalism: within the country and within the EU).

A decent chunk of those are exclusive to Germany, or at least far from the norm in the EU or Europe in general. For instance digitalisation varies wildly between countries, but Germany is definitely one of the most embarrassingly behind countries. Taxation also varies (e.g. Bulgaria and Estonia have flat income taxes). Federalism isn't a thing in most European countries too.

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