81–90 of 140 posts
And people think the government has their best interests in mind.
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.
I was like... alright, no sense in arguing with them anymore.
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...
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 dec…
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.
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…
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 mon…
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...
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.
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…
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.