Question for Germans

[OneToughHerring]

I have a friend who currently lives in Germany. He's been living there for less then a year and he gave me some thoughts on how he compares living there to living in Finland and Thailand where he has also lived. He told me that despite the notion that Germany is hailed as a technologically advanced nation, average everyday things are still surprisingly difficult and not as 'smooth' as they are in Finland or even in Thailand.

Now I wonder how the Germans here in GT feel about this, I'm not trying to diss you nation, on the contrary. My buddy could be just stupid. :) I'm just interested to know what it's like in Germany for a recent immigrant or a person who has moved there for work when it comes to everyday average things.

Edit. Ok a concrete example, when you guys go to the store, what do you pay with usually? Cash, bank card, credit card, cheque, something else maybe?

[Aramike]

Good topic, OTH. While I have nothing to really contribute (I haven't been to Germany in around a decade), I'm looking forward to the answers.

Perhaps you could answer the same questions about Finland???

[OneToughHerring]

Well personally it's pretty common to pay with a bank card or similar for groceries etc. here. There was a renewing of the bank card system that is still in progress, all bank cards must have the visa electron - thing in them. The electonic chip-thing, don't know the exact term. This means that one has to punch in the bank card code when using the card at the check-out desk, in some stores.

It used be just a swipe of the card and sign the receipt and that's it, made it easier but also more dangerous to have one's card stolen and misused by someone. Now it's a mix of just signing the receipt and having to punch in the code depending on the store. As if the thieves wouldn't know to use the card where only a signature is needed and just forge the signature.

There's talk of making the cell phone the 'wallet', that is the thing that you pay for things. Cell phone could also be the key to the car/apartment further lessening the amount of stuff in the pockets.

[Sledgehammer427]

it is a great idea, other than the fact cellphones are easy to break, easy to mess up, easy to steal, and, for some, hard to use. my dad has a hard time with cellphones because his fingers are too big.

[Aramike]

Well personally it's pretty common to pay with a bank card or similar for groceries etc. here. There was a renewing of the bank card system that is still in progress, all bank cards must have the visa electron - thing in them. The electonic chip-thing, don't know the exact term. This means that one has to punch in the bank card code when using the card at the check-out desk.

It used be just a swipe of the card and sign the receipt and that's it, made it easier but also more dangerous to have one's card stolen and misused by someone.That's interesting, because I have been arguing with people for years that the "signature approval" system of credit/bank cards was pointless. It's not like your average cashier is enough of a handwriting expert to dilleneate between a real/fake signature anyway...

The PIN system works best, in my opinion - instant fraud protection and verification. So you all are WAY ahead of the US in that regard.

[OneToughHerring]

I've heard that cheque books are pretty common in the States, which I in a way understand because the USA is a big country where changes to the system would require huge national standards to be enforced.

I've also heard, from my buddy, that cheque books are also pretty common in Germany which surprises me a bit.

I would say that it's pretty important for Finns that things work smoothly, and being a relatively small nation it's relatively easy to standardise and optimise things although we have our share of bad city and other planning.

[Aramike]

I've heard that cheque books are pretty common in the States, which I in a way understand because the USA is a big country where changes to the system would require huge national standards to be enforced.

I've also heard, from my buddy, that cheque books are also pretty common in Germany which surprises me a bit.Heh, only when it comes to middle aged women...

No one really uses checks anymore.

[OneToughHerring]

Actually the person I heard about the use of checks in the States was a woman and a bit of 'blonde' as in 'dumb', so could be that she used them cause it was easiest for her or something. :)

[Arclight]

Noone asked about Holland, so I feel I have to comment: :D

It's always been cash or PIN around here for as long as I can remember. 25 now, so it's been like that for at least 10-15 years. Never in my life have I used a cheque or even seen one. :-?

Time for the rest of the world to catch up. :O:

[Schroeder]

In Germany you can pay pretty much everywhere with your credit card or bank card (if that is the right term, EC Electronic Cash is the magical word here). You have to put it into the reading device and enter your PIN.

I don't know what other things your friend is missing here so it would be good to have more examples.
I have been to other countries in Europe, the US and Australia and didn't see much difference in every day technology.

[Lurchi]

Technologically advanced is only true in terms of Engineering (cars, ships, planes and such) = mostly everthing that has to do with production, machinery and its export.

In daily life however germans are pretty conservative adopting new things. Examples which come to my mind are Broadband Internet: The introduction of this has taken quite some time and i think the number is still pretty low compared to other countries.

Shares: This whole stock thing took a lot of time to become popular. Still mamy are very conservative buying these as many lost a lot of money with the popular Telecom flotation of shares which was their first contact and which went wrong.

Another thing are credit cards: These are not so widespread than in most other countries. Many of my friends don't have a real credit card (only standard electronic cash) and those who have credit cards usually have only one or two.

In supermarkets things are still mostly paid with money. Personally i do this too and only pay things with my Bank Card if the sum gets over 100 € or so. The credit card i use to fuel the car, pay internet bills or hotels abroad but not for daily life stuff.

[Shearwater]

Interesting example ... Yesterday I was having a couple of beers with my friends, and we also talked about credit cards (weird topic maybe, but it was a long night :DL). To make a long story short: Credit cards are really unusual in Germany, or at least that's my perception.
That doesn't mean that no one has credit cards - in fact, a lot of my friends do, but that's because they went abroad and required one. What we do have though are EC or Maestro cards, which aren't quite the same. Your card gets charged at once, not only at the end of the month as a lump sum, but of course you can pay instantly, provided that there's enough cash on your account (another difference).

I have to admit that I use my EC card for pretty much everything, including daily grocery shopping, which is rarely more than perhaps 4-5€.

Apart from that: Seems like this thread has developed into a 'credit cards in Germany thread' :O: Could you give another example OneToughHerring? I think this is really interesting :DL

[OneToughHerring]

Schroeder,

Well mainly it was the payment aspects, in grocery stores. I don't remember exactly what the problem was. Beer and liquer like Jägermeister was cheap though, or cheaper then in Finland. :yeah:

Shearwater,

well it's not just negative stuff, there's a lot of positive too. The road system is good especially around bigger cities. Weather is good except that winter can be just as cold as in southern Finland.

[Skybird]

Most payment in Germany still is done via coins and notes.

Preferred plastic money here are so-called EC-cards, which you get with no additional fees (neither for the service nor per transaction) with your banking account. Often, stores have a minimum of 5 or 10 euros before you can pay with cards. That is due to transaction costs shops have to pay per transaction.

Euro-Checks have been sorted out many years ago. Travellers checkes mostly do not get accepted, and if so, in a store, it always means plenty of special activity by the salesmen, and calling superiors, and asking how the form is going to be filled. Better don't try! But almost nobody tries anyway.

Visa and Master are in use, too, but do not share that much acceptance as EC-cards, although they are not rare. Interestingly, especially huge shops, huge department stores, huge chain stores do not accept them. Charges that have to be payed per transaction are much higher than for EC-card, and the owner of the card in the end has to pay more, too. I consider using these cards to be stupid. you get ripped of - for being allowed to pay somebody else. Well, that you can have for free, can't you. I have mine only for rare occasions I need Visa for internet payments (which I avoid as much as possible). Considering the high yearly fee and the rare occasions i need it, my behavior of keeping that damn thing is very stupid, too.

In the past, I had worked in a department store for some years. I often chuckled when dealing with foreign tourists being upset when they payed with Visa or Matser, and I wanted their ID-card as well - to compare signatures. security awareness is something that is rudimentary in other countries, it seems. :D dutch topurists (plenty we have) were bewildered, British and Americans often became angry. Must be genetic :D

There were also people, almost always, complaining about the use of cards when standing in line, becasue it is much more time consuming than paying with coins and notes, even without tehcnical problems in the line, and people not remembering their PINs.

Personally, I prefer coins and notes, for the reaosns mentioned above, and for comparable reasons why I prefer a manual espresso machine to a full automat, and an analogue watch to a digital one:

it's more pleasing.

[Skybird]

Broadband: the EU yesterday published latest numbers, saying that Europe has more broadband users than any other part fo the world. within europe, germany is on 9th place, with 75% of households having internet access, but just 37% of these are broadband.

europe-wide, 56% of people have internet, of these 80% are broadband, says the EU.

There are also more users of cellphones in europe than there is european population. :doh: In this field, the EU claims global numerical leadership, too.

http://ec.europa.eu/deutschland/press/pr_releases/8660_de.htm

I must say the lag in Germany concerning broadband maybe is because of absolutely bad and lousy services of private companies. I have had 5 internet providers so far, with 4 of them I ended in months of war, twice they stopped and gave in just before me pulling them to the courts. IMO, the IT branch is a very criminalised business, overpriced, but underserviced, and being extremely treacherous towards customers, using a maximum of deception, hiding, ignoring you, and blatant liying in order to wear your resistance down in case of conflict like in a war of attrition. Strange, but the much criticised pink giant, Telekom, is the company I now ended up with. Two technical problems in the line that I reported to them were solved within 90 minutes, they even called back to say it got sorted out, no telefon robots, no getting ignored, and competent servicemen being the first at the phone instead of incompetent desinterested call-centre-secretaries, and getting handed arund in circles. They are more expensive (I could have my telephone and broadband flat for half the money) , yes - but maybe better quality in service has it's price...!? Employees must get payed, you know. much of the cheaper rivals run bad business policies and employ personnell that is not up to the job. And that I say after many and long very bad experiences with them. - You will never hear me saying one positive word about private IT companies in Germany. I hate them and wish them plague and cholera.

[OneToughHerring]

The internet connection thing reminds me of another friend who went to Germany for student exchange. He was in a college or university that was somehow connected to the German military. According to him the German military has no shortage of money, as a lowly exchange student he had his own office with computer with internet etc. This was about 4-5 years ago. Not sure if he was bs'ing me though. :)

[XabbaRus]

Skybird I am surprised you found Brits getting hostile when asked for ID to match the signature to the card.

Up until about 4 years ago in the uk we still had to sign when using our debit cards, of course we don't carry other id with us so you just match the signature on the receipt to the one on the card.

In the UK we are all chip and pin now or cash. Cheques are only used for paying by post or if you are paying a business such as a a building contractor or nursery for example.

The thing with chip and pin is I use my wifes card and she uses mine as we know each others numbers.

[Jimbuna]

Let me chip in with the UK.

Transactions in the high street continue to be made predominantly with cash.....cheques are seldom used nowadays.

Whilst the credit/debit card system is very widespread and Chip and PIN protected, there are those on lower incomes who obviously have no need for such sophisticted security because they don't have access to a bank account.

The Government are trying to reverse this trend with measures such as transferring pensions and welfare benefits directly into individuals bank accounts or into Post Offices where the individual will require a bankers card to access the funds.

[Skybird]

Xabba,

I can't tell you why it is like I described, but it was very obvious, an observation shared by my colleagues of that time as well. That does not mean that all British and American tourists were like that, hell, no. With most there was no problem. but compared to other tourists groups, the share of people being upset for the reasons mentioned, was bigger. Like for example american tourists being easier upset about the shop personnel not speaking English. On many working days I was the only one on my floor being fluent in English, and sometimes I got called by colleagues in despair (and stress!) when they had to deal with an American tourist who was angry that he was not understood. It seems they take it as granted to come along with their mother tongue everywhere , but many older generations of germans have not had english at school or were no longer competent at it. With younger generations of Germans it is no longer a problem. when I think of it, it seems to me that it were younger tourists sometimes being angry, and older American tourists always being extremely polite indeed. In my last year, there was a traveling girls group of maybe 20, 25 girls from a religious community, they came from Maryland and all wore light-grey, oldfashioned (but somehow attractive!) dresses. I forgot what community it was. They swarmed over the whole floor immediately and in absolute record time, they literally took EVERYTHING in their hands and lifted it and examined it and chatted and chirped and laughed as if there was no tomorrow. I felt like in a bird cage at spring time!

Strange what kind of observations you make about people when business was running low and you had too much time! :)

Funny it often was with Dutch, becasue the languages are very close, it seems, but most germans find it more difficult to speak dutch than Dutch find it to speak German. Often it was doing communication with both hand and feet - resulting in much smiles and laughter. Somehow they seem to be immune to speaking English at these occasions. :D

But I cannot remember to have ever seen a Brit being upset if one of my colleagues did not speak English.

I especially liked the Danish, Spanish, Dutch and British soldiers that sometimes came in. Very relaxed, and often soime jokes exchanged. We have several British families living up our road here, belonging to the British garrison here, and over the years I used to form some very lose contacts with some of the men, having a short talk when meeting on th street, exchnagign some not seriously meant "strikes" when football national teams played - things like that.

[Tribesman]

When I was living and working in Germany I simply used cash , the same as I have done in every country I lived and worked in.

[Seeadler]

EC / Maestro cards are very popular here in Germany and I've even used my Maestro card last month in Orlando/FL at an ATM in order to get cash. With my Master Card I would have been paid increased foreign sales using an ATM, with Maestro not.

[stabiz]

In Norway we still trade stuff on markets. I usually bring fish when i go to get a DVD or some cigarettes.

[Thomen]

EC / Maestro cards are very popular here in Germany and I've even used my Maestro card last month in Orlando/FL at an ATM in order to get cash. With my Master Card I would have been paid increased foreign sales using an ATM, with Maestro not.

Aye.. did the same until I closed my checking account at the Stadtsparkasse last year. You can even use your Postbank savings account card here on a ATM. Still doing that..

However, when in Germany we usually pay cash, except when the bill is going to be big, as in restaurants or a boat load of groceries that are going to be shipped to the US.. :D

[Thomen]

In Norway we still trade stuff on markets. I usually bring fish when i go to get a DVD or some cigarettes.

I got some shiny sea shells and half a chicken in the freezer. That's enough for a six pack, yes? ;)

[OneToughHerring]

Well to explain my original point, I think it's interesting to compare countries and how average everyday things 'work'. For example in many far eastern nations there is a pretty high level of technological sophistication and the weather is nice so average everyday life is often pretty simple. Then again there are countries with lots of bureucracy and things are made purposefully difficult, especially for non-natives.

[Jimbuna]

In Norway we still trade stuff on markets. I usually bring fish when i go to get a DVD or some cigarettes.

LMAO :rotfl:

What!!....no sheep or cattle? :DL

[Torplexed]

I got some shiny sea shells and half a chicken in the freezer. That's enough for a six pack, yes? ;)

Who run Bartertown? ;)

http://www.motifake.com/image/demotivational-poster/0908/master-blaster-mad-max-road-warrior-beyond-thunderdome-maste-demotivational-poster-1249557911.jpg

[Shearwater]

LMAO :rotfl:

What!!....no sheep or cattle? :DL

Don't confuse Norway with Australia :rotfl:

[Jimbuna]

Don't confuse Norway with Australia :rotfl:

Fair enough :DL

http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/9318/aussiesheepshagger.jpg (http://img137.imageshack.us/i/aussiesheepshagger.jpg/)

[TarJak]

Well now you've dragged Australia into it I have to say that recent visits to the US have surprised me in how far electronic payments have come in Australia. Most people including those on welfare have bank accounts as almost all government payments are made into bank accounts.

Shopping for groceries etc is now about 80% cashless with either credit or EFTPOS cards being used. PIN's have been used for EFTPOS transactions for years but Credit Cards are now offering either signature or PIN options for transactions.

Even Taxis in capital cities have mobile EFTPOS units so you can use your card for that. I found the US a bit behind in that regard as up until my most recent visit in 2008 no cabs that I had travelled in had any way of paying that wasn't cash.

We are getting a big push from Mastercard and Visa for getting Debit cards which access your bank account funds rather than using someone elses money.

As for broadband well we are royally screwed by our telcos and ISP's who put ridiculous caps on monthly usage and punative overage fees if you happen to use a bit more than your pre-paid limit.

[Jimbuna]

http://www.itbusiness.ca/images/articles/Mar19/visa-chip.jpg

Anyone got one of these? :DL

http://gizmodo.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/08/wow-visa-card.jpg

[antikristuseke]

Basically things are the same in Estonia as they are in Finland, only better.

[OneToughHerring]

Basically things are the same in Estonia as they are in Finland, only better.

Yea I've heard that you guys can like, vote on the Internet and stuff. Sometimes when it rains and it's election day I wish I could too.

But then again, if you have the same thing that there was in Latvia awhile ago, tourists who paid with credit cards were ripped off in bars/clubs, it's nothing to brag about.

[Kongo Otto]

This year i had a friend visiting me, from the USA.
By accident he broke two fingers from his left hand, and we put him to the Doctor at my local Hospital.
I said the Doctor at the Hospital he is an American Citizen, which is not in the Army.
The Doc said, "well we can help him, but he has to Pay about 300 Euro for it."
I said the Doc: "we could use my "Krankenkassenkarte" = Health Care iD Card instead"
He said: "Yes that wouldnt be a problem."
So at the End we used my Health Care ID and he just Paid the usual 10 Euro for visiting the Doctor.
No Problem at all.

[antikristuseke]

Yea I've heard that you guys can like, vote on the Internet and stuff. Sometimes when it rains and it's election day I wish I could too.

But then again, if you have the same thing that there was in Latvia awhile ago, tourists who paid with credit cards were ripped off in bars/clubs, it's nothing to brag about.

Credit card fraud and other skulldugery happens everywhere, no denying that. But in general our systems are reasonably secure.

[Kongo Otto]

Credit card fraud and other skulldugery happens everywhere, no denying that. But in general our systems are reasonably secure.

Credit Card Fraud is a worldwide Problem, ist one of OC´s best Businesses.