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Consider this anecdata. My car got stolen recently and I had to fill out a 40 pager for my insurance claim. Of course, they sent it as a PDF, yet I had to fill

Consider this anecdata. My car got stolen recently and I had to fill out a 40 pager for my insurance claim. Of course, they sent it as a PDF, yet I had to fill and print to send via snail mail. Of course, with another 20 pages of copies about inspections, overall history of the car and photos. A week later the police sent me another 40 pager to fill via snail mail. Where I had to fill exactly the same information by hand - again send it back with the same 20 pages about inspections and so on. Of course, the insurance needs to be kept up to date with the latest information the police receives, so I had to copy the whole thing and sent it to the insurance again. If you don't call that bureaucracy, I don't know what qualifies as such. I don't even talk about the process of unregistering the car, which is another similar story.

throwbadubadu 3y ago
Yeah.. at least we start supporting "online formulars" - in form of boxes where you can put them in (Really, there are multiple places now I had seen that approach :D). Another anecdote.. we missed to update our address for the car registration (we did properly at the Burgeramt for passport). At some point we got a grumpy letter, to that new address, about that they had to look up our current address and now need us to get to the Amt, in person with appointment no way around it, to update also car's address to the new address they just had sent the letter to... oh well.
pgeorgi 3y ago
Insurance companies erecting arbitrary barriers between you and a claims payment? Color me unsurprised. As for unregistering the car, I've heard of (US-based) DMV jokes (like "Flash" in Zootopia) but I didn't run into (Germany-based) "Kfz-Zulassungsstellenwitze" yet.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > but I didn't run into (Germany-based) "Kfz-Zulassungsstellenwitze" yet. Well... the situation used to be so bad that making jokes was inappropriate. Like, you had to wait months to even get an appointment to register your freshly bought car in 2020 [1] - and that was not due to covid, extremely long wait times were a common complaint for many years before. [1] https://www.autobild.de/artikel/kfz-zulassung-chaos-bei-den-behoerden-17392601.html https://www.autobild.de/artikel/kfz-zulassung-chaos-bei-den-...
- lesuorac 3y ago
  > As for unregistering the car, I've heard of (US-based) DMV jokes (like "Flash" in Zootopia) YMMV. When I went to return a plate there was a general line for everybody but an employee with a tablet was walking through it taking care of the trivial matters (i.e. plate return) so it ended up being <5mins for me. Years later, when I was registering a car it was an appointment system so I also got seen in <5mins. Of course, many years before either of those I was getting a new license and the general line gets you a ticket with a letter and the person ahead of me with that letter had some complicated scenario so I got stuck waiting a long time behind them while other letters went significantly faster ...
expertentipp 3y ago
When I insured a car in Germany, a letter diarrhea followed. "pay this amount", "pay an updated amount", "your insurance will be cancelled as the payment is due", "an another random data request and a threat, just in case", "some elaborate letter without any action point". Learned multiple times the "bullying someone through an incompetence".

throwbadubadu 3y ago

Yeah.. at least we start supporting "online formulars" - in form of boxes where you can put them in (Really, there are multiple places now I had seen that approach :D). Another anecdote.. we missed to update our address for the car registration (we did properly at the Burgeramt for passport). At some point we got a grumpy letter, to that new address, about that they had to look up our current address and now need us to get to the Amt, in person with appointment no way around it, to update also car's address to the new address they just had sent the letter to... oh well.

pgeorgi 3y ago

Insurance companies erecting arbitrary barriers between you and a claims payment? Color me unsurprised. As for unregistering the car, I've heard of (US-based) DMV jokes (like "Flash" in Zootopia) but I didn't run into (Germany-based) "Kfz-Zulassungsstellenwitze" yet.

mschuster91 3y ago
> but I didn't run into (Germany-based) "Kfz-Zulassungsstellenwitze" yet. Well... the situation used to be so bad that making jokes was inappropriate. Like, you had to wait months to even get an appointment to register your freshly bought car in 2020 [1] - and that was not due to covid, extremely long wait times were a common complaint for many years before. [1] https://www.autobild.de/artikel/kfz-zulassung-chaos-bei-den-behoerden-17392601.html https://www.autobild.de/artikel/kfz-zulassung-chaos-bei-den-...
lesuorac 3y ago
> As for unregistering the car, I've heard of (US-based) DMV jokes (like "Flash" in Zootopia) YMMV. When I went to return a plate there was a general line for everybody but an employee with a tablet was walking through it taking care of the trivial matters (i.e. plate return) so it ended up being <5mins for me. Years later, when I was registering a car it was an appointment system so I also got seen in <5mins. Of course, many years before either of those I was getting a new license and the general line gets you a ticket with a letter and the person ahead of me with that letter had some complicated scenario so I got stuck waiting a long time behind them while other letters went significantly faster ...

expertentipp 3y ago

When I insured a car in Germany, a letter diarrhea followed. "pay this amount", "pay an updated amount", "your insurance will be cancelled as the payment is due", "an another random data request and a threat, just in case", "some elaborate letter without any action point". Learned multiple times the "bullying someone through an incompetence".