German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

Post by shellfishgene » Fri, Feb 16, 2024, 3:51 PM UTC

beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #98

odiroot wrote: post #83

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 ar…

It is incredible the amount of private information that gets exchanged in Germany to access certain things. You brought up landlords, but I've heard crazy stories about job applications or applications to services that "require" an incredible amount of private information (often even including pictures too!) handed-over for completely obscure reasons with no recourse if your application is denied or simply ignored.

Post by jimcsharp » Fri, Feb 16, 2024, 3:54 PM UTC

mcmcmc wrote: post #118

formerly_proven wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High taxes with no matching value behind them is undeniably a negative.

Unless you want to get into the nitty gritty of economic policy analysis and measuring market externalities, value of public goods is pretty subjective. A healthy person might not see much value in public healthcare and a single adult with no kids might not care about education. Just because you don’t value something in the same way doesn’t mean it’s not highly valued by the people who voted on and implemented the po…

Post by amelius » Fri, Feb 16, 2024, 3:54 PM UTC

ttyyzz wrote: post #12

You can request a free “data copy in accordance with Art. 15 GDPR”, which according to them “contains information that you should treat sensitively.” and further: “SCHUFA therefore advises against passing it on to third parties.” The product they market, the “credit report”, costs €30 and, according to them, is “forgery-proof” and “up to date” (lolz). I don't know the main differences to the free "data copy" - probab…

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Feb 16, 2024, 3:57 PM UTC

mint2 wrote: post #130

Nextgrid wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's my problem with high taxation, as someone who got burnt by it by virtue of living and paying taxes in the UK. I don't mind paying my fair share of tax if it means I get good value out of it, but the state of our healthcare here means that in practice the public healthcare system is no longer fit for purpose, so we are being forced to pay for a system that doesn't work and end up having to go private (and…

Except there’s a lot of services that are unsuited to being delivered by competitive markets as it’s nearly impossible to prevent monopolization.

Post by dkekenflxlf » Fri, Feb 16, 2024, 4:01 PM UTC

fabian2k wrote: post #101

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or public healthcare inaccessible despite paying more than 400€/month for it as a single individual. This is super close to my early 2010's ACA experiences. Even when a poor earner could scrape up enough to buy a plan, the deductible made it unusable. Policy pricing was exorbitant for $12k/yr earners but dropped enough for 22k/yr that a few plans were buyable. The challenge was coming up with another $somethingthou…

There are no real deductibles in German public healthcare, though some areas are excluded almost entirely like glasses and certain dental work. The cost is also scaled to income, the 400 EUR (which is only 50% of the cost, the other 50% pays the employer) here are what you pay when you earn ~70k EUR per year and are essentially the maximum for public health care. So it is much cheaper if you earn less money. One of t…