71–80 of 140 posts
>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).
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.
It's not fully state owned, it's semi-privatized. You get the worst of both worlds, so to speak.
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...
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ign…
> 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
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.
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).
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.
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"...
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 "of…