Question for Germans

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:

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.

[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.

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.

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.

[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 ). 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' Could you give another example OneToughHerring? I think this is really interesting

[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. dutch topurists (plenty we have) were bewildered, British and Americans often became angry. Must be genetic

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. In this field, the EU claims global numerical leadership, too.

http://ec.europa.eu/deutschland/pres...es/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.

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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.

[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.