Dark Patterns: Buying a Bahncard at Deutsche Bahn

“Deutsche Bahn, the fully state owned railway company, is a well liked company”.

Eh, nope. It’s a horribly mismanaged entity with permanent delays, bad service and outrageous pricing…

And people think the government has their best interests in mind.

Once, long ago, I ended up buying the wrong ticket from Deutsche Bahn. I no longer remember whether this was my fault or theirs, but I do remember that support was completely unhelpful.

My credit card provider was considerably more helpful when I solved the problem with a chargeback.

It's not fully state owned, it's semi-privatized. You get the worst of both worlds, so to speak.

Oh yeah, I've had one of those several years ago. It was a Bahn25 and I got a new one in 2 months and got sent a bill for it. Then, I called them because I couldn't cancel and I tried to tell them about this. At least at that time, the customer support knew about this sneaky practice, and would, on request, allow you to cancel it manually.

I did get a debt collectors post about my unpaid bill and I had to send around emails to them as well that I was pardoned and I didn't use the card at all. I don't remember if I got a confirmation about it and that's why I still have it on my records. After like 7 (8?) years, who knows when they would go under and then come up to me that I owe them like half a million in unpaid debt.

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.

Last 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 be a feature for veterans of a service, and not something to cheat people out of their money after they never get a good return of investment the first time.

Just to give Kagi some credit here: They have a friendly reminder every month that my subscription is about to renew. Every month I'm given the chance to cancel, and every month I'm reminded of what a decent service that is. It surely does mean they'll lose some customers. But it also means that those who stay, stay forever.

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.

Couple of years back, I made a mistake on trusting Deutsche Bahn. I took a regional train from Düsseldorf, hoping to get at some connection hub (never reached and don't remember, possibly Cologne), I have to ICE to reach Brussels. It was evening and at some point the train stopped in the middle of nowhere and an announcement followed 20 minutes later, saying the train went through the wrong tracks and it cannot return! And, we need to wait couple of hours before the rails are cleared and then we will need to get of the next station, a tiny town where only few trains run per day and none after 10pm!. Genius idea to leave people there, conductor also puts his unsatisfaction because apparently he also needs to get off there and request a ride. Let alone, I missed my connections. I had to either wait there until morning or get a ride. Never used Deutsche Bahn again, I feel less stressed by driving, even I really enjoy train rides in general.

Did I get compensation? Yes I did after four months for the ticket price only (around 40 euros), but after ridiculous process of that I need to send them forms and tickets via regular post, with a stamp that can only post within Germany. Nice try by their side..

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.

I 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.

>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'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.

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 ticket experience is going to make a big difference with another train provider.

I was going to be in the Munich area next month and was planning on using the DB Bavarian regional day ticket quite a bit. Is this a bad idea?

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 "offered" to cancel my BahnCard for the next year, in 13 months! Very annoying, as I even had a calender remainder set, but I didnt think they would renew before the current subscription expires. Who does that?? Also I am a good customer that has already spent thousands of € on DeutscheBahn.

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 money back. What did they say? No, can't be, Bahncard50 costs are the higher amount, the banking statement that I sent them must be of something else.

I was like... alright, no sense in arguing with them anymore.

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?

> 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.

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.

This hits so hard. I just looked up my own BahnCard 25, turns out that I'm a week too late for cancellation. Another year it is then.

Was 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...

OMG yes this keeps biting me in the ass and is so absolutely infuriating, I feel scammed every time I fail to cancel it (probably needs a blood/urine sample, sent by post). There are no words for how much I hate Deutsche Bahn, Germany's 2nd biggest shame.

I didn't expect, and you probably don't imagine how difficult is to buy Deutsche Bahn ticket. For sanity I was buying with cash at the ticket office. The queue was long, the service was rude, but at least I bought the right ticket. For international travel I was always buying online on the website of the other railways - magically it was not only easier but also cheaper.

My personal two cents: They refused to send my an invoice, so I didn't payed after their auto-removal on time. I did pay later. Then they send me to some random collections company AFTER they received my payment, according to their own data. Now they refuse to hand out a ticket to me that I payed for. I needed to travel and had already bought a ticket that relied on the Bahncard. Therefore I bought a second Bahncard, because provisional Bahncards can be handed out by the staff directly, but it's not valid for the whole direction I bought it. I expect them to still refuse to hand me my ticket and they also didn't confirm that I canceled my first Bahncard.

Also, when you buy the BahnCard via PayPal, only the first time you'll be charged via PayPal. You get an invoice later, which looks like advertising but actually tells you to provide your bank details to charge you for the subscription.

i swear the biggest gangsters on the planet are deutsche bahn

I recently decided to upgrade to BC50 again after some years of less travel and a subscription of a BC25. I went to the DB site, logged in, manually provided my BC25 card number in the order process even though it’s right there in my profile. And ended up with a second subscription: I now own both a BC25 and BC50 in parallel, which makes no sense as you can of course only use one of the two.

…

FYI: Unlike what you expect: bahncard50 only gives you a 50% discount on the 'flex price' and not the 'sparpreies' class of price(there it's still 25%). Flex adds some cancellation and other conveniences but is generally more expensive.

Thank you for reminding me to cancel my bahn card.

I 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)

I was caught out in the same way. I now take out a BahnCard subscription online and immediately cancel it. I know I have the BahnCard for one year, and have the security that it should not automatically rollover without me having the choice.

Thanks for the reminder to cancel my Bahncard, last time I forgot.

I think 'ending up with an accidental BahnCard and losing a painful amount of money because of it' might be almost a rite of passage at this point.

Happened to me as well; I had a 'youth' card for people below the age of 27, even remembered that some cards auto-renew and checked online to see if mine would, because I wanted to make sure I wouldn't just get upgraded to the regular and much more expensive BahnCard... couldn't find a renewal date and thought I'd be fine. But apparently I didn't check thoroughly enough, and only got informed of now having 200€ less and a shiny new BahnCard by email. Also emailed support, also didn't get anywhere.

Later I mention this to a friend... and he says 'ah, yeah, same with me'.

Here near Cologne we are just calling dealing with Deutsche Bahn (DB) "DBakel" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/debacle

"Soft" factors matter when it comes to public transit attractiveness.

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.

The part about them being a company "with no reputation to loose" really hits home. If you know your customer is going to hate you, because you suck at being a reliable service provider, then them hating you also because you scammed them for 500 Euros is no loss at all. The actual difference in reputation is marginal.

They also do not really suffer any financial damage. They do not have competition and no matter how badly run their business is, their losses are paid for by the tax payer.

Sadly, Deutsche Bahn has become, for me, a symbol of how Germany is going downhill.

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.