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Dark patterns: Buying a Bahncard at Deutsche Bahn

ketzu.net

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Re: Dark patterns: Buying a Bahncard at Deutsche Bahn

#111

Post by stockresearcher »

lxgr wrote: post #109
usr1106 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

D-Ticket is a subscription only sold for calendar months. The basic terms are set by law, but some sellers have more generous terms, that is allowed. You need to cancel before the 10th of the current month in order not having to pay for the next month. If you buy after the 10th you are charged for 2 months right away. Most sellers require a German bank account, but e.g. HVV supports Paypal (worked for me) and in theo…

That's not the case with [1], for example. They allow pausing (and then canceling) the subscription any time before the last day of the month. It works as advertised in my experience. [2] seems to be offering the same, but I haven't tried it myself. [3] looks interesting too. [1] https://www.ticket-plus.app/en/ [2] https://www.mopla.solutions/de/tickets/deutschlandticket [3] https://deutschland-ticket.store/autobus-o…

See, this is not making me feel good about the deutchland ticket.

My understanding is that the Bavarian day ticket can still be purchased as a piece of paper from a kiosk at the station and we would print our names on it (2 adults, 3 kids). This seems so much easier than worrying about starting and stopping a subscription!

https://int.bahn.de/en/offers/regional/regional-day-ticket-b...

Re: Dark patterns: Buying a Bahncard at Deutsche Bahn

#113

Post by scotty79 »

ketzu wrote: post #58
scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #54

Commenting from neighboring Poland: my sense is that the dark patterns are less a result of deliberate manipulation and more a result of crappy publicly funded tendered software development. It's, like, when the designs are made in a perpetual bureaucratic Kafkaesque then the results are like this. They're only building to specification, there is no UX research. You're not going to not take the train. Not like the ti…

> more a result of crappy publicly funded tendered software development. I would be more willing to buy that, if their support response would be different, and if it hadn't been an issue for years, including fighting legal battles to keep conditions close to what they are now. One has to assume they are fully aware and unwilling to improve.

> > more a result of crappy publicly funded tendered software development. > One has to assume they are fully aware and unwilling to improve.

Both can be true at the same time.

Re: Dark patterns: Buying a Bahncard at Deutsche Bahn

#116

Post by kmoser »

> Unfortunately, we cannot accommodate your requested date, as termination is only possible up to four weeks before the end of the term.

The phrase "up to four weeks before the end of the term" is misleading and can be reasonably interpreted different ways. Let's say you buy a ticket today (October 10, 2025) and it renews October 11, 2026 (one year later). Four weeks before the end of the term would be September 13, 2026 (i.e. October 11, 2026 - 4 weeks).

Since we just established that "four weeks before the end of the term" is September 13, 2026, then "Termination is only possible up to four weeks before the end of the term" can be interpreted to mean "Termination is only possible up to September 13, 2026" which means I should be able to terminate any time between now and September 13, 2026, i.e. I have a max of 11 months after date of purchase to terminate the auto-renew.

Re: Dark patterns: Buying a Bahncard at Deutsche Bahn

#117

Post by OKRainbowKid »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #55
illiac786 wrote: post #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).

Everyone hates db. They’re a laughing stock across Europe. Switzerland have started banning them from running trains due to the knock on affects. If your long distance twin is under 2 hours late that’s a good day. The only people who thing db are good are idiotic Brits who go “privatisation is bad we should run our railway like Germany with twice the subsidise and half the reliability”.

DB is privatized though?

Re: Dark patterns: Buying a Bahncard at Deutsche Bahn

#118

Post by turkeywelder »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #55
illiac786 wrote: post #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).

Everyone hates db. They’re a laughing stock across Europe. Switzerland have started banning them from running trains due to the knock on affects. If your long distance twin is under 2 hours late that’s a good day. The only people who thing db are good are idiotic Brits who go “privatisation is bad we should run our railway like Germany with twice the subsidise and half the reliability”.

Idiotic Brit here.

Not exactly how we think. We're frustrated that our private railway is worse than DB in terms of lateness and cancellations but also hugely, massively more expensive for us to use.

We'd be happy if it was publicly owned because then at least the insane profit from ticket sales might possibly just maybe make it into investment in the railway instead of someone's bonus.

Re: Dark patterns: Buying a Bahncard at Deutsche Bahn

#119

Post by ketzu »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #92
ketzu wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure what your definition of "privatized" is 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.

Yes, that's exactly what I explained in term of legal status, but that's not what "privatized" means.

Now I get it, thanks for the effort of clarifying. I thought it was a misunderstanding of a niche meaning of "privatized" but it turns out, english and german do not share that meaning. Unfortunately I can't edit the comment to change the word anymore.

It seems "privatization" in english is still a very murky word, even though it does not include this meaning :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatization I'll try to stop calling deutsche bahn "privatized" in english.

Re: Dark patterns: Buying a Bahncard at Deutsche Bahn

#120

Post by ketzu »

scotty79 wrote: post #114

How much of this could be prevented by having pre-paid visa card that usually has 0 euro on it, and you charge it just before paying for something, so if something accidentally turns out to be a subscription it won't be able to auto-renew?

German companies usually will send you to collections in the case of failure to pay for renewal with the provided process. I don't know how successful they are at it though.
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