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.
Dark patterns: Buying a Bahncard at Deutsche Bahn
41–50 of 140 posts
Re: Dark patterns: Buying a Bahncard at Deutsche Bahn
#42I 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)
Re: Dark patterns: Buying a Bahncard at Deutsche Bahn
#43Last 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 b…
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.
Re: Dark patterns: Buying a Bahncard at Deutsche Bahn
#44Was 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...
Re: Dark patterns: Buying a Bahncard at Deutsche Bahn
#45I 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.
Re: Dark patterns: Buying a Bahncard at Deutsche Bahn
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the type of staff that can easily be replaced by computers.
unless there's a union
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.
Re: Dark patterns: Buying a Bahncard at Deutsche Bahn
#47>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).
Re: Dark patterns: Buying a Bahncard at Deutsche Bahn
#48I'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.
Re: Dark patterns: Buying a Bahncard at Deutsche Bahn
#49Also 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.
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.
Re: Dark patterns: Buying a Bahncard at Deutsche Bahn
#50I 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.
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.