49€ Ticket to come and worry about slashing rail services

[LNW-GW Joint]

Well, it's a season ticket for commuters, funded by German taxpayers. Making it convenient for tourists is not part of the goal. I guess for residents too, the idea is to create permanent change in travelling habits, not that people buy it for one big trip and then go back to driving everywhere afterwards. Yes, it's dissapointing after the convenience of the €9 offer, but it was always clear that that was a kind of giveaway and not a long term solution.
By comparison, the Austrian KlimaTicket must be purchased for at least 6 months, bringing the minimum outlay to about €500.

As I understand it, the cost of the Deutschlandticket (€3 billion) is funded for 3 years (the federal government paying the regions and transport associations for loss of revenue).
It is not a permanent offer, at least not yet.

 

[Austriantrain]

Are these the same tourists who have to pay a 7% hotel tax on top of 19% VAT for the privilege of staying in the likes of Dortmund?

I doubt they pay even the tiniest percentage of the cost of financing the 49€-ticket.

Introduce a 49£-ticket for all public transport in the UK except long-distance trains, then we can talk cancellation policies.

By comparison, the Austrian KlimaTicket must be purchased for at least 6 months, bringing the minimum outlay to about €500.

And rightly so. It is a ticket financed by Austrian taxpayers for Austrian residents. It’s not meant for tourists.

 

[Watershed]

Introduce a 49£-ticket for all public transport in the UK except long-distance trains, then we can talk cancellation policies.

I think we are well aware that the political environment is heavily biased against public transport in the UK, and so pigs will fly before any such ticket is introduced. In most continental countries, a much more sensible attitude prevails.

And rightly so. It is a ticket financed by Austrian taxpayers for Austrian residents. It’s not meant for tourists.

I don't really see any merit in this argument. Surely the same considerations apply in relation to tourists as "normal" residents, in terms of encouraging the use of public transport. Or is it somehow better for the environment when the people driving cars live abroad?

The €49/Klima-Ticket are first and foremost environmental measures, as I see it, and so they should be targeted as widely as possible in order to be effective.

 

[duesselmartin]

Der

Perhaps the definition of fraud is different in Germany, but there's no way it would be fraud in the UK. It sounds rather alarmist to me and I also don't see how it has anything to do with a credit score.

Anyway, coming back to the matter at hand, clearly it's best to use a retailer that is more flexible and allows you to cancel your subscription as late as possible.

Only Germany could come up with such a good offer and then ruin it with silly red tape!

If you enter a contract and don't Plan to fullfill it, it is fraud in any country.
If you don't pay your bills you get a bad credit score in Germany which will affect your ability to get enter new contracts with direct debit in Germany.
The €49 is criticised Germany because people with3a negative credit score cannot get it .

I cannot believe that with such a good deal anybody here even thinks of finding loop holes.
Yes that does make me very angry. In the end, the tax payer fills the gap.

 

[johncrossley]

The €49 is criticised Germany because people with3a negative credit score cannot get it .

Why is a credit check required? You always pay in advance and if you don't pay they can cancel the ticket. There is no credit risk. It is not like a mobile phone contract where you make a commitment to pay every month for a year or two years.

 

[AdamWW]

I don't really see any merit in this argument. Surely the same considerations apply in relation to tourists as "normal" residents, in terms of encouraging the use of public transport. Or is it somehow better for the environment when the people driving cars live abroad?

The €49/Klima-Ticket are first and foremost environmental measures, as I see it, and so they should be targeted as widely as possible in order to be effective.

Quite. Not to mention the fact that visitors pay taxes directly (VAT) and indirectly (income. corporation tax etc. from organisations they purchase things from).

Or the fact that traditionally visitors often get reduced fares by using rail passes not available to residents.

 

[yorksrob]

Perhaps the definition of fraud is different in Germany, but there's no way it would be fraud in the UK. It sounds rather alarmist to me and I also don't see how it has anything to do with a credit score.

Anyway, coming back to the matter at hand, clearly it's best to use a retailer that is more flexible and allows you to cancel your subscription as late as possible.

Only Germany could come up with such a good offer and then ruin it with silly red tape!

I suppose the Germans might say "only the Brits could come up with such a shambolic system where you have to book months in advance to get anything like a decent offer and even then its not guaranteed" or something along those lines.

 

[duesselmartin]

Why is a credit check required? You always pay in advance and if you don't pay they can cancel the ticket. There is no credit risk. It is not like a mobile phone contract where you make a commitment to pay every month for a year or two years.

that it is why it is criticised by many welfare groups. The system used is similar to that of a mobile phone operator. Automatic check in the Schufa database.
Credit checks are common with all sorts of contracts (incl some energy contracts) in Germany with people on a poor score often paying more.
I am not sure yet when the fee will be booked off the account. Nothing on my statement yet although it is still early days.

 

[AdamWW]

that it is why it is criticised by many welfare groups. The system used is similar to that of a mobile phone operator. Automatic check in the Schufa database.
Credit checks are common with all sorts of contracts (incl some energy contracts) in Germany with people on a poor score often paying more.
I am not sure yet when the fee will be booked off the account. Nothing on my statement yet although it is still early days.

That is a shame. With phones you can get around this problem with pre-pay.

It must be a deliberate decision to have it work in this way rather than letting people pay for tickets for individual months as with the 9 Euro ticket. I wonder why.

They already have the full infrastructure for selling tickets so the additional cost over a subscription model would not, I would have thought, be huge.

 

[Watershed]

However, a bus company in Sachsen Anhalt allows you to pause the subscription right up to 24h before the end of the month (ie the penultimate day).

I haven't found any other source for the Deutschlandticket that allows this, and I wouldn't be surprised if some busybody or other doesn't drag the bus company to court for some stupid reason, but in the meantime, you can use it on your phone or laptop, or even print out a piece of paper (presumably with a QR-type code printed on it?). https://www.mopla.solutions/de/tickets/deutschlandticket

It looks like this bus company also allows you to subscribe without a credit (Schufa) check, and offers a €10 discount off the first month (offer available until 31 May). If other retailers require a credit check to be passed, I imagine that disqualifies foreign residents?

 

[rvdborgt]

It looks like this bus company also allows you to subscribe without a credit (Schufa) check, and offers a €10 discount off the first month (offer available until 31 May). If other retailers require a credit check to be passed, I imagine that disqualifies foreign residents?

No, because such discrimination is prohibited.

 

[duesselmartin]

It looks like this bus company also allows you to subscribe without a credit (Schufa) check, and offers a €10 discount off the first month (offer available until 31 May). If other retailers require a credit check to be passed, I imagine that disqualifies foreign residents?

No. As a visitor you would have a clean slate If you are in Germany unless you have previous German debt. Even UK debt would not be relevant. Only German debt will stick like glue.

The requirement is not by law but more a convinience of the service provider. Most public transport authorities source that ticket service out to others ehich usually is not noticed by the costumer.
Example. The HSB Harzer Schmalspurbahn pays another company to deal with revenue intake.

 

[island]

IIRC the UK is still in SEPA, which means, again IIRC, that a UK IBAN must be accepted, as long as the bank accepts SEPA direct debit.

The latter being the more important part. Most British banks do not process SEPA direct debit payments, because there is negligible demand for them.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

And in case that you didn’t notice: the 49 €-ticket is meant for people living in Germany - and paid by them through taxes. If tourists benefit, that is ancillary, but honestly nothing anyone living in Germany should and will care about.

To stand the "not for foreigners" stance on its head, DB Arriva makes profits in the UK which at some point get repatriated to DB in Germany.
So when we use Arriva, us Brits are paying into the German railway network just like German residents.
(I'm aware Arriva profits are minimal, and that DB is trying to offload it to concentrate on its domestic network).

Then there's the profits that German manufacturers (notably Siemens) make from supplying trains for the UK network.
Capitalism, taxation and subsidy are complicated...

 

[yorksrob]

To stand the "not for foreigners" stance on its head, DB Arriva makes profits in the UK which at some point get repatriated to DB in Germany.
So when we use Arriva, us Brits are paying into the German railway network just like German residents.
(I'm aware Arriva profits are minimal, and that DB is trying to offload it to concentrate on its domestic network).

Then there's the profits that German manufacturers (notably Siemens) make from supplying trains for the UK network.
Capitalism, taxation and subsidy are complicated...

Well there's nothing to stop our Government introducing such a scheme for us if it wanted to.

Why get worked up over what other countries are doing when our Government couldn't run a whelk stall.

 

[duesselmartin]

Not sure if Arriva actually makes a proft as DB is unsuccessfully trying to get rid of it.
Back in topic. You can use your €49 ticket in National Express trains

So yes. globalisation is everywhere and I just gave a fortune to the Swiss railways.

I think the DeutschlandTicket deliberatly does Not exclude visitors but they are not a prime target.
The idea is to relief the cost of commuting and get people from moving their bum out of cars into trains ect.
I suspect they will fail on the latter as long as Germany continues having such reliability issues ( and that will be decades).

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

From what I can see on the DB web site, you can only buy a Deutschlandticket for 3 months in advance.
eg today, I could book to start on 1 May/June/July, but not for 1 August.

What exactly does "Excl mobile phone" mean in the rules?
I assume the ticket is (or can be) issued as an PDF e-ticket and displayed on any suitable device, or on paper.

 

[duesselmartin]

From what I can see on the DB web site, you can only buy a Deutschlandticket for 3 months in advance.
eg today, I could book to start on 1 May/June/July, but not for 1 August.

What exactly does "Excl mobile phone" mean in the rules?
I assume the ticket is (or can be) issued as an PDF e-ticket and displayed on any suitable device, or on paper.

Interesting. The system sees it for immidiete use then. I guess that is because the target group are commuters who would book almost immidietly. I don't see a disadvantage though as a tourist can also book it short term.

 

[johncrossley]

Has anyone here living in the UK bought the ticket yet?

 

[yorksrob]

From what I can see on the DB web site, you can only buy a Deutschlandticket for 3 months in advance.
eg today, I could book to start on 1 May/June/July, but not for 1 August.

What exactly does "Excl mobile phone" mean in the rules?
I assume the ticket is (or can be) issued as an PDF e-ticket and displayed on any suitable device, or on paper.

Stop moaning about what Germany is doing and start agitating for the British Government to do something similar.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Stop moaning about what Germany is doing and start agitating for the British Government to do something similar.

I think the time to do that is after GBR is established and has some strategic power to grow rail revenues and change the ticketing system to achieve it.
I'm not moaning about the German system in the least - I expect to be using it in the next year or two.
In the meantime I will be using various "xxx Day Rangers", the nearest UK equivalent to the Deutschlandticket.

 

[yorksrob]

I think the time to do that is after GBR is established and has some strategic power to grow rail revenues and change the ticketing system to achieve it.
I'm not moaning about the German system in the least - I expect to be using it in the next year or two.
In the meantime I will be using various "xxx Day Rangers", the nearest UK equivalent to the Deutschlandticket.

That's too late.

The Government are already grinding down the British railway system. They had the chance to rebuild after Covid, but they chose to slash instead.

Agitate with the UK government as to why it isn't implementing such growth strategies now.

For everyone who is interested in this German ticket, forget nit-picking it and start agitating to our own government why they need to be implementing it.

 

[blackfive460]

Stop moaning about what Germany is doing and start agitating for the British Government to do something similar.

But can we have a reliable railway with suitable capacity first please?

 

[yorksrob]

But can we have a reliable railway with suitable capacity first please?

Yes. Although it's clear that a Government that chooses not to atempt this as a minimum, isn't going to come up with an innovative fare offer

 

[Seehof]

I want to buy a Deutschlandticket but I am being cowardly (!) and waiting for someone else to do it and post their experience!! Presumably, you only need to cancel it once and not every month until you need it again.

 

[duesselmartin]

Yes, you cancel it once. That is it.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

I've just read that the bus and tram network in Montpellier, southern France, is now free to use.
It's part of the "zero carbon" city policy.
There will be increased local company taxation to pay for it, so it's essentially "on the rates".

PS: The free scheme starts in December 2023, and might be restricted to "residents".
Much like the free Spanish offer is on a nominated specific commuter route and not a general free-for-all.

 

[DeverseSam]

I've just read that the bus and tram network in Montpellier, southern France, is now free to use.
It's part of the "zero carbon" city policy.
There will be increased local company taxation to pay for it, so it's essentially "on the rates".

PS: The free scheme starts in December 2023, and might be restricted to "residents".
Much like the free Spanish offer is on a nominated specific commuter route and not a general free-for-all.

and ENCTS I guess also

 

[urpert]

The latter being the more important part. Most British banks do not process SEPA direct debit payments, because there is negligible demand for them.

I have a Starling Euro account for that (amongst other) reasons.

 

[johncrossley]

Does DB allow GB IBANs or do they practice IBAN discrimination?

The latter being the more important part. Most British banks do not process SEPA direct debit payments, because there is negligible demand for them.

So does that mean most UK based people on this thread will have to open a new account to get the ticket?