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Exactly. Rubber Stamps belong in a museum. Along with Fax machines. And the people still insisting on using those for "security reasons". Common practice in Ger
by jillesvangurp 3y ago
Exactly. Rubber Stamps belong in a museum. Along with Fax machines. And the people still insisting on using those for "security reasons". Common practice in Germany is to receive an email with a pdf, print it, sign it (or stamp) it, and then put it in the post. This both stupid and slow.
German bureaucracy is still paper driven. Having lived in other countries with more or less full digital access to all the stuff Germans still do with paper forms or in person, I know the difference. It's slow, tedious, expensive, error prone, etc.
Any paper forms should move online. The whole ritual of printing them, filling them in with a pen, and then having people manually copy information back into some ancient database is just completely backwards. People should sign stuff digitally. This is not only possible but common practice in most of the countries bordering Germany.
- weinzierl 3y agoPast week I travelled to London by train. I tried to book this trip a couple of months in advance from Deutsche Bahn website, but only got obscure error messages when finalizing the booking(*). So I tried the french SNCF app and the booking was done in a couple of minutes, all tickets conveniently in the app - expect for the German leg of the travel. SNCF sent me a Deutsche Bahn paper ticket via snail mail. (*) Tried for about a week, on different computers, my mobile, from another account. Sent a complaint, received an email answer that said they could not help me, but I could send my email to another address - except the other address was the very address I sent my complaint in the first place. Went to Deutsche Bahn office eventually, train I wanted was supposedly booked out, which I know wasn't true because booked it later via SNCF. They reluctantly tried to find me an alternative, but apparently they had to go through all the combinations manually. It took forever and wasn't successful either.
- AlbertoGP 3y agoI did that trip several times years ago. I too tried first to book it via DB but ended up buying it from SNCF.
- dewey 3y agoTry trainline.com next time, there’s many official DB resellers if you run into issues with their site.
- weinzierl 3y agoThanks, I did not know that. My point was more that German authorities and their privatized successors are so stuck in their paper based processes, that even when you book via a reseller app (line SNCF) they'll have to send paper per mail.
- dewey 3y agoThat’s indeed a bit weird, I book quite often and haven’t had a paper tickets in 10 years even with frequent cross border (Austria / Germany) travel. Have encountered many other issues with DB of course!