Finally. Germany combines some of the worst aspects of the US (credit ranking, complicated abortion process, private healthcare if you want decent treatments) with the worst aspects of Europe (low digitalization, high taxation, recursive federalism: within the country and within the EU).
A country like the Netherlands has its own issues (mainly housing) but doesn't have the myriad of pain points you can find in Germany like Schufa, anti-customer contract rules, or public healthcare inaccessible despite paying more than 400€/month for it as a single individual.
I find it quite disturbing that high taxation is seen as a negative aspect of Europe. I lived in Italy, France and Germany, and I enjoyed public healthcare and education of very high standard at very affordable prices, and free in the limit that one cannot afford to pay for them.
As a relative of a person with a chronic disease I can tell you that on the one hand if we are not bankrupt it is because of public healthcare, and on the other I'm proud of contributing through my taxes so that anybody in need can have the same treatment irrespective of their economic situation.
Maybe nitpicking here, but healthcare is not financed with your taxes in Germany - it's financed by statutory health insurance (SHI) and private health insurance (PHI). The State "simply" sets the framework/legislation/etc. so that it doesn't get wild (like probably it is in the USA). [0]
In Italy it's the state/regions that take your taxes and pay the health system.
There is no capital gains tax - Germany has less progressive taxation than the United States! VAT in general is a regressive tax, that many EU countries inordinately rely on. A US-citizen has to pay taxes no matter where they reside, but the wealthier citizens of EU countries can easily evade taxes by domiciling themselves in various tax havens around the EU. Germany does a very poor job collecting taxes from the highest earners.
> I find it quite disturbing that high taxation is seen as a negative aspect of Europe.
High tax rates and, in fact, ANY taxes area a negative. However, that negative is (hopefully) offset by the positives that the things those taxes go to pay for provide.
> that high taxation is seen as a negative aspect of Europe. I lived in Italy, France and Germany, and I enjoyed public healthcare and education of very high standard at very affordable prices, and free in the limit that one cannot afford to pay for them.
...coupled with an utterly illogical (and factually incorrect[1]) non-argument.
You can have these things without high taxation, if the system that implements them is efficient. It's not.
" I'm proud of contributing through my taxes so that anybody in need can have the same treatment irrespective of their economic situation."
It is a big world my friend. And if millions come to use these services but don't pay in, the services get thinner and thinner. 1 Million Ukrainians came to German. Less than 25% have a job. The rest is financed by the taxpayer. Money, Rent, Health insurance...
Edit:
It reminds me of a Third Reich joke. An old woman goes into a map shop and looks at a globe.
She asks the sales person: What is this big blue land on the globe?
That's an overly negative and hyperbolic view. Nothing is entirely wrong here, but you're painting every single point in the most negative way possible.
You can certainly argue about how good the healthcare system is in the end, but it isn't categorically inaccessible. And if you pay 400 EUR/month you're earning enough money and can choose the private health system if you prefer that.
The credit ranking also works in very different ways than in the US, so I wouldn't compare them directly. I'm not sure what you mean by anti-consumer contract rules.
Hello from Germany. No lies detected. Don’t forget about a working culture where process always ranks above results, and leaders commonly lack confidence to make pragmatic decisions.
Well, this working culture makes result slow and expensive, and as a result, in many cases uncompetitive, but it does a good job of avoiding fuckups and while slow and expensive, things usually get done predictably, on time and on budget. Which probably makes it better than American reckless "fake it till you make it" approach in most of the complex projects.
> Europe (low digitalization, high taxation, recursive federalism: within the country and within the EU).
A decent chunk of those are exclusive to Germany, or at least far from the norm in the EU or Europe in general. For instance digitalisation varies wildly between countries, but Germany is definitely one of the most embarrassingly behind countries. Taxation also varies (e.g. Bulgaria and Estonia have flat income taxes). Federalism isn't a thing in most European countries too.
I'm a bit surprised you would consider the credit system the same as the US. It doesn't have the bonkers bit of the US system where you have to take great care to be in a small amount of debt even if you don't need to be, in order to "prove" your creditworthiness so that you can be in a lot of debt later.
Being in debt to build credit is mostly a fairy tale told by the companies - just having an open line of credit is all you need to provide account age. You don’t need to use it or carry a balance (you may need to use it periodically to keep it open but that can be charge/pay off immediately).
It's starting to creep into public services. You couldn't even get easy access to Covid stimulus funds without a credit card. Debit cards were rejected despite providing the same level of ID verification.
> Germans are typically complaining from a high level.
Do Germans share the British tendency to think everything is better in the rest of the world?
As an immigrant (as a child, admittedly) and someone who has lived and worked elsewhere and, more importantly, does not completely share this aspect of the culture, I find British pessimism and self-flagellation really, really annoying.
400€ for medical, dental, and optical combined you mean. And less for students. And you conveniently leave out their 4 week minimum vacation time/year. (my sis and her BIL just moved from there, and help people move there).
Digitalization is really behind yes, and homeownership is even more expensive than the US. But rent is almost half the US and groceries are cheaper. And instead of subsidizing full sized pickup trucks and EVs, you get Audis, VWs, etc for cheaper.
Now compare median income of Germany vs US. Economic opportunity is fading away in Germany. Also, pretty much all cars - especially Audis, VWs, etc are (20-30%) more expensive in Germany vs US.
True, but in the Netherlands it’s the government itself which sells all of your data, literally everything from your house, it’s price, location, blueprints, satellite images, what you paid for it, previous owners, your car, and even your government ID number if you are registered as a company, just to many a couple.
And yes, you obviously have to pay to get your own data.
> or public healthcare inaccessible despite paying more than 400€/month for it as a single individual.
This is super close to my early 2010's ACA experiences. Even when a poor earner could scrape up enough to buy a plan, the deductible made it unusable.
Policy pricing was exorbitant for $12k/yr earners but dropped enough for 22k/yr that a few plans were buyable. The challenge was coming up with another $somethingthousand to cover the deductible.
There was a sharp drop-off in plan pricing at 32k/yr and some mid-grade plans were in reach. IIRC deductibles were lower on those plans and they may have been usable (or nearly so).
What struck then. Of the news orgs cheering/damning the ACA, zero of them ever covered how pricing dropped as income rose. I assume that's because pricing was only ever disclosed to folks who completed the lengthy signup process - and news folks found it too daunting to experiment with.
There are no real deductibles in German public healthcare, though some areas are excluded almost entirely like glasses and certain dental work. The cost is also scaled to income, the 400 EUR (which is only 50% of the cost, the other 50% pays the employer) here are what you pay when you earn ~70k EUR per year and are essentially the maximum for public health care. So it is much cheaper if you earn less money.
One of the main current criticisms of the system is that it can be very difficult to get appointments with specialists compared to people with private health insurance.
Healthcare is kinda shit in The Netherlands. Long waiting lists even for simple things. Never actually prescribing medication but instead over prescribing paracetamol. Only being able to get a set amount for appointments regardless of actual need.
Sure if you’re in a car crash and urgently need care they will help you without going bankrupt but anything less urgent good luck getting an appointment this week / month / year
Does The Netherlands not have Urgent Care facilities like the US? I feel like those for of facilities could handle the issues of a lack of access for simple or menial things. I had to get a cyst lanced a few weeks ago and I just walked into an Urgent Care by my house and was in and out in about an hour with no appointment. I think it was about $180 since I didn't have insurance.
I am dutch and have lived in quite a few countries in the eu and se asia: I would prefer to never have to deal with NL healthcare services again compared to other countries. And I have been (unfortunately) been in hospitals, a lot. Since the 90s NL is striving to become little USA policy wise and this is still getting worse. It’s a shit show.
Is Netherlands healthcare better? From what I've heard from people having lived in both countries, German healthcare is more accessible. E.g. in Netherlands you can't see a specialist doctor unless you convinced your GP you absolutely have to - which can be hard at times.
I'm 58 and not exactly in the best of health. I've had to rely on healthcare in NL quite a few times over the last 20 years or so and all of those were serious cases. I have nothing to complain about, but that's n=1. To increment that n a bit: I know lots of people here and almost all of them have had some health issues over the years and the vast majority of those have been dealt with in a serious and reasonably effective manner.
Where NL is utterly ineffective is when it comes to vague symptoms. Until it is perfectly clear what is wrong you're going to be seriously frustrated because the diagnostic machinery isn't really all that effective, when in other countries they'd spend a fortune to find out what's wrong with you in NL unless it's 100% clear you're going to have a hard time getting the care that you need.
I blame Calvijn, NL seems to have a misplaced sense of reduced expression of emotion resulting in an expectation to tough things out rather than to deal with them and for some reason doctors seem to see complaints without a direct relatable cause as an attack of hysterics rather than as something to investigate. If you come from a different background you're going to find this a very difficult thing to deal with.
Given that everyone uses IBAN, and it works great, I strongly disagree.
>private healthcare if you want decent treatments
Your mileage may vary, but I was very impressed with the speed and ease of acquiring healthcare under a public plan. The lack of paperwork for seeing a new doctor is astonishing. The lack of copays, SOBs, and all that is like a breath of fresh air, and is worth copying in the US. Heck I once saw a doctor for something and simply gave my card, and saw the doctor in the next hour, and she decided I needed an ultrasound...and did the ultrasound in 5 minutes herself. In the US, this would have been a multi-week ordeal with multiple rounds of paperwork and visits to different offices.
My wife also had a C-section at a Berlin hospital and the care was competent and 100% covered by our public insurance. In the US couples requiring a C-section can expect $20k+ of debt.
Low digitalization isn't just payment - it's also needing to fill in paper forms, or making in-person visits to government and business offices.
I've been living in Germany for about a decade, and it is still behind in many of these items from when I left the US, and having a friend that recently moved from Germany to NL, he was blown away at how convenient and just not-hostile so many day to day interactions with governments and businesses were.
Like - big picture, I'm very happy in Germany, but certain things are still very archaic and sometimes needlessly so.
My impression coming from France, which I never thought of as particularly progressive on the technological front, is that Germany is full of odd, idiosyncratic archaisms.
> public healthcare inaccessible despite paying more than 400€/month for it as a single individual.
That's a pretty new thing though (been getting worse for the last 10 yrs). And the person responsible for the legislature that caused this change is the current health minister.
Also... 400€? It's a percentage of your salary. And you're omitting that the employer pays the same amount, so you're effectively paying 800€ at the very least.
> Also... 400€? It's a percentage of your salary. And you're omitting that the employer pays the same amount, so you're effectively paying 800€ at the very least.
Sweden is highly digitalized, we pay on our phones, pay taxes on our phones, do government stuff on phone or webbrowser. No stores do cash anymore (also a negative)
Sweden is a low tax land compared to Germany. In the past, it was known for high taxes, but one could argue that this progress came together with the tax reduction in the last decades.
That's utter bullshit.
Your quality of care in the hospital is exactly the same as with public health insurance.
Also sometimes private insurance is even worse when it comes to addiction and psychological treatments
You're treated the same in big hospitals but when I was in Berlin, private vs public meant I could get an appointment at a dermatologist tomorrow instead of in two months.
This is not true. Private insurance means better care in hospitals in Germany. Better access to appointments, choice of head/experienced doctors, even can mean better rooms.
> private healthcare if you want decent treatments
> public healthcare inaccessible
What do you mean? I am not sure what you mean by decent treatments.
> Schufa
There is some change happening there, especially now that the EU Justice Court ruled against credit scoring institutions (they break GDPR, etc.). Very slowly, as usual, but it might happen. (Also the current governement is planning changes.)
In the process of renting a flat in Germany, SCHUFA is not even the biggest travesty.
The worst part is potential tenants handing over full dossiers about their background to the prospective landlords. Passport copies, payslips, account statements and more. And as a tenant, you have no way of knowing when does it all end up.
At best it will be dumped into a paper recycling bin. But who knows if all these documents aren't sold further.
You also have no choice, you comply or you lose any chance of getting a flat.
It is incredible the amount of private information that gets exchanged in Germany to access certain things. You brought up landlords, but I've heard crazy stories about job applications or applications to services that "require" an incredible amount of private information (often even including pictures too!) handed-over for completely obscure reasons with no recourse if your application is denied or simply ignored.
I almost didn't get a mortgage in the Netherlands because if you're German, they request a Schufa report, and there was a minor issue on that. Had I come from e.g. Bangladesh instead of from Germany, I would not have had this problem.
We found a workaround and ten years later the house is paid off, just for illustration of how predictive that report was. I'll cheer for whoever takes on and fights Schufa, always.
The underlying issue is that bankers have no discretion (for various good and bad reasons). Everything is bureaucracy and checking the right boxes to let the computer decree your worthiness. No overrides, no explanations permitted - unless you can attack the problem from another angle.
In Switzerland for a proper lease, you likely need to provide a (clean) record from the debt collection register. But it's a government run agency, as it should. No score. Debt collectors can file claims a bit too easily and there are errors, but you can also challenge them easily.
In the UK at least, credit reports largely happen behind the scenes, and potential landlords etc cannot perform a full credit search.
With your permission they can perform a 'soft' search (have you declared bankruptcy or do you have any County Court Judgements) and they may not charge you for doing this.
Further, as of GDPR, you are entitled to all information from the agencies for free. Prior, you could obtain it for a small fee (£2 by post if my memory serves me correctly).
As far as I'm concerned, SCHUFA is basically a scam I am compelled to fall for whenever I want to rent somewhere.
Same in the Netherlands, and I can personally corroborate that you don't need it in Belgium. Finland also didn't need it but for a temporary student apartment that might be different.
Currently in Germany, yeah... we paid the Schufa tax twice over because we're two people renting together, and the GDPR data export thingy conveniently omits the credit score they've computed about you...
Was considering whether one can make use of the 14-day return thing, but they've thought of that: it uses a sealed envelope that's hard to open without leaving evidence (under a guise of having a nice opener mechanism).
Because landlords have never abused their power for financial gain, malice or outright to get sexual favours from desperate tenants
It took nearly 10 for my previous landlord to face the justice.
She was completely outrageous and shameless in her crimes - blatantly in violation of registration for HMC, violation of planning permissions, squalor, disrepair, the houses had rats and literal hole in the wall for rain and wind. She would harass gullible and naive students, illegally evict them, etc. and all her crimes were on written record.
On the one hand, I think Schufa is collecting a lot of unnecessary data that they should'nt have access to. For example, when I bought a pre-paid SIM card in Germany the provider did a Schufa check. No idea why.
On the other hand, I get why a credit score can be useful for larger purchase decisions. If I was a bank, I'd like to know if the person I'm lending 400k for a property, has in the past defaulted on any loans.
I genuinely don't know what a good middle ground is though.
A good middle ground could be to only check what you suggested the bank wants to know:
“Has this person defaulted before?”
If someone wants to borrow huge sums from a bank the bank should take the risk and price it appropriately.
If someone wants to borrow money to buy a TV the seller should take the risk and price it appropriately.
The current solution seems too invasive for what it provides. How is the world better because Schufa knows someone bought a prepaid phone card and can sell that to an online store when you buy a pair of shoes and choose to pay by invoice the next week?
Something is in theory cheaper somewhere but where is the proof? The only hard data we have is that Schufa and companies like them are making billions, so there is certainly money to be saved by someone somewhere by scrapping this.
> On the other hand, I get why a credit score can be useful for larger purchase decisions. If I was a bank, I'd like to know if the person I'm lending 400k for a property, has in the past defaulted on any loans.
The amazing thing of living in the modern connected world is that we have all sorts of information available easily. We can use what other countries are doing as inspiration, or as learnings what not to do.
The problem you're describing has been solved for decades in tens of countries around the world, there's no point in reinventing the wheel. In France what the bank does is ask the national bank about the person's credit history, which will only contain current and past loans, lapses in repayments, being sent to collections, etc. So only stuff that is actually relevant to the question "has this person defaulted on loans previously and are they thus a risk of defaulting again", which together with the information about current revenues is all they need.
What surprised me about Schufa is that the certificate it provides only states that you didn't have any defaults or delinquencies in Germany. That's quite different from a credit rating in the US sense that you can build up by consistently borrowing and repaying over time.
When I moved to Berlin after having lived in London, my Schufa was thus as pristine as possible - simply because I had no German credit history to begin with.
I do feel they are increasingly modelling themselves after the US system, seemingly only impeded by stricter data protection laws.
Schufa, as you said, used to be mostly the exchange of negative-only debtor information (i.e. Schufa having no information about you is a good sign for your creditworthiness). I'd say in the last 15 years (or so) we've arrived at the point where Schufa having no information about you is about as bad as having negative information. Exactly like in the US.
The only difference being that for their main consumer product you are still fine to get the "Nothing negative to report" document, as that is what's accepted by most landlords.
the main consumer-facing score is what you are describing, which is never used by their customers.
for customers (banks,insurances, retail companies etc.) they have scores tailored to their industry (branchenscore), which also includes repaid loans etc.
the "basisscore" is pretty much useless, it's only a number given out to consumers.
1. If you apply for a loan, this affects your credit rating. Yes - not get a loan, or default on a loan, simply by applying for a loan, your SCHUFA can be affected negatively. Especially if you are shopping around for loans, this is infuriating. This happens because your SCHUFA is affected simply by another entity checking your SCHUFA score. This is also really annoying because it can be very hard to get a loan as a recent immigrant to Germany, so you inevitably end up applying for multiple ones.
2. Your SCHUFA score is also affected by where you live, and how many jobs you've had in X years, and how often you move (which is often as a recent-ish immigrant).
3. Services like Klarna affect your SCHUFA - even if you have a perfect payback time.
Applying for a loan in the US can affect your credit score for awhile, because the system isn’t instantaneous and it’s trying to handle someone requesting (and getting) multiple loans at once.
There are “soft pulls” and “hard pulls” that affect this differently. Usually it doesn’t matter much in the long run of things.
Applying for a loan affecting your credit report also was/is a thing in the UK - but I think banks realised that it was hurting their business (they want to sell you a credit card/loan after all, and aren't going to if people are scared to ask them for it). So now it's a gimmick that's splashed all over their websites that you can get a quote with only a 'soft search' that doesn't affect your report.
Even though, if you log on to the (free) credit reporting service to see your own data - these 'soft searches' are still recorded, so the industry has basically decided that they shouldn't affect your chances of getting credit.
Don't about the UK but in the US there used to be a big privacy problem around people who worked at banks and car dealerships looking up credit reports for non-business reasons. Soft inquiries are a way to combat that by making every request to view a person's credit report into a recorded event that the person can see.
Regarding 1): This can be avoided by having an agency asking for loans for you, as those requests are not directly linked to you as far as Schufa is concerned.
Most of the time so, you can easily ignore Schufa in your dqy to day live. They suck to deal with for mortgages, loans and appartment rental so. And they over step their authority and abuse their power all the time, without cobsequences for them so far. Hope that changes soon.
I'm sure you would change your opinion when you immigrate to a new country, have to move around to different apartments because of a massive housing crisis, and then find an apartment long term and get accepted, and then get rejected based on your SCHUFA because you moved around multiple times and perhaps opened a bank account or two.
As the previous person pointed out, these predictors have cases when they are obviously wrong.
Solely relying on statistics will have people falling through the cracks.
A perfect example of when thinking only in averages, and using trendy data-first approach leads to awful and stupid results for groups with too little size to matter statistically.
Make your models fair, ffs!
To note, SCHUFA requires all requests to contain a feature code describing the GDPR-"legitimate reason" for the request, and only some affect credit. But those consuming the API have long sent wrong codes, and nobody in the chain cares.
I use Klarna (albeit rarely) to only pay _after_ any returns are completed and only the amount I need. Not pay upfront and then wait good know how long for three online shop to return my money. I always pay well before the deadline.
My bank just scraped virtual cards and I use them for online payments so I wanted to use Klarna as a virtual card. Went through the whole process only for it to fail at the end with Klarna saying that they can’t generate that card, but I should go talk to Schufa or Arvato about it.
So, not all use cases are bad and Schufa should distinguish between them.
Huh? Aren't they try to be mainly a online payment provider like paypal? That is how I used them couple of times. Money straight from my bank account via them, towards the shop.
Readit News
A country like the Netherlands has its own issues (mainly housing) but doesn't have the myriad of pain points you can find in Germany like Schufa, anti-customer contract rules, or public healthcare inaccessible despite paying more than 400€/month for it as a single individual.
As a relative of a person with a chronic disease I can tell you that on the one hand if we are not bankrupt it is because of public healthcare, and on the other I'm proud of contributing through my taxes so that anybody in need can have the same treatment irrespective of their economic situation.
In Italy it's the state/regions that take your taxes and pay the health system.
[0]: https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/fileadmin/Dateie...
after receiving the same services for no or minimal tax i also find it very disturbing that people still think high taxation is necessary.
High tax rates and, in fact, ANY taxes area a negative. However, that negative is (hopefully) offset by the positives that the things those taxes go to pay for provide.
Typical emotional manipulation...
> that high taxation is seen as a negative aspect of Europe. I lived in Italy, France and Germany, and I enjoyed public healthcare and education of very high standard at very affordable prices, and free in the limit that one cannot afford to pay for them.
...coupled with an utterly illogical (and factually incorrect[1]) non-argument.
You can have these things without high taxation, if the system that implements them is efficient. It's not.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39402957
It is a big world my friend. And if millions come to use these services but don't pay in, the services get thinner and thinner. 1 Million Ukrainians came to German. Less than 25% have a job. The rest is financed by the taxpayer. Money, Rent, Health insurance...
Edit:
It reminds me of a Third Reich joke. An old woman goes into a map shop and looks at a globe.
She asks the sales person: What is this big blue land on the globe?
The sales person says: This is the USA.
Old lady: And this huge Red area, what is this?
The sales person says: This is the Soviet Union.
Old lady: And this tiny brown spot, what is this?
The sales person says: This is our Third Reich.
Old lady: Does the Fuehrer know this?
-----------
I hope you get what I am trying to say.
You can certainly argue about how good the healthcare system is in the end, but it isn't categorically inaccessible. And if you pay 400 EUR/month you're earning enough money and can choose the private health system if you prefer that.
The credit ranking also works in very different ways than in the US, so I wouldn't compare them directly. I'm not sure what you mean by anti-consumer contract rules.
The issue is not getting in - but getting back out before you retire and don't have enough available income to pay the rates anymore.
And where tenure ranks above skills or experience. Especially if unions are involved.
A decent chunk of those are exclusive to Germany, or at least far from the norm in the EU or Europe in general. For instance digitalisation varies wildly between countries, but Germany is definitely one of the most embarrassingly behind countries. Taxation also varies (e.g. Bulgaria and Estonia have flat income taxes). Federalism isn't a thing in most European countries too.
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Despite Finland reapeatedly making headlines (including on HN) about being a Nordic welfare state.
Germans are typically complaining from a high level.
Source: Members of the wider family living in both countries. Some over 80 and needing a lot of healthcare services.
(I hear general practioners can be a problem in poorer areas in the East. My experiences are from a prosperous area in the West.)
Do Germans share the British tendency to think everything is better in the rest of the world?
As an immigrant (as a child, admittedly) and someone who has lived and worked elsewhere and, more importantly, does not completely share this aspect of the culture, I find British pessimism and self-flagellation really, really annoying.
Digitalization is really behind yes, and homeownership is even more expensive than the US. But rent is almost half the US and groceries are cheaper. And instead of subsidizing full sized pickup trucks and EVs, you get Audis, VWs, etc for cheaper.
And yes, you obviously have to pay to get your own data.
This is super close to my early 2010's ACA experiences. Even when a poor earner could scrape up enough to buy a plan, the deductible made it unusable.
Policy pricing was exorbitant for $12k/yr earners but dropped enough for 22k/yr that a few plans were buyable. The challenge was coming up with another $somethingthousand to cover the deductible.
There was a sharp drop-off in plan pricing at 32k/yr and some mid-grade plans were in reach. IIRC deductibles were lower on those plans and they may have been usable (or nearly so).
What struck then. Of the news orgs cheering/damning the ACA, zero of them ever covered how pricing dropped as income rose. I assume that's because pricing was only ever disclosed to folks who completed the lengthy signup process - and news folks found it too daunting to experiment with.
One of the main current criticisms of the system is that it can be very difficult to get appointments with specialists compared to people with private health insurance.
Sure if you’re in a car crash and urgently need care they will help you without going bankrupt but anything less urgent good luck getting an appointment this week / month / year
In the Netherlands we have BKR, which is less all-encompassing than SCHUFA, but also needed to be fined before giving proper right to access under the GDPR: https://edpb.europa.eu/news/national-news/2020/national-cred...
Where NL is utterly ineffective is when it comes to vague symptoms. Until it is perfectly clear what is wrong you're going to be seriously frustrated because the diagnostic machinery isn't really all that effective, when in other countries they'd spend a fortune to find out what's wrong with you in NL unless it's 100% clear you're going to have a hard time getting the care that you need.
I blame Calvijn, NL seems to have a misplaced sense of reduced expression of emotion resulting in an expectation to tough things out rather than to deal with them and for some reason doctors seem to see complaints without a direct relatable cause as an attack of hysterics rather than as something to investigate. If you come from a different background you're going to find this a very difficult thing to deal with.
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Given that everyone uses IBAN, and it works great, I strongly disagree.
>private healthcare if you want decent treatments
Your mileage may vary, but I was very impressed with the speed and ease of acquiring healthcare under a public plan. The lack of paperwork for seeing a new doctor is astonishing. The lack of copays, SOBs, and all that is like a breath of fresh air, and is worth copying in the US. Heck I once saw a doctor for something and simply gave my card, and saw the doctor in the next hour, and she decided I needed an ultrasound...and did the ultrasound in 5 minutes herself. In the US, this would have been a multi-week ordeal with multiple rounds of paperwork and visits to different offices.
My wife also had a C-section at a Berlin hospital and the care was competent and 100% covered by our public insurance. In the US couples requiring a C-section can expect $20k+ of debt.
I've been living in Germany for about a decade, and it is still behind in many of these items from when I left the US, and having a friend that recently moved from Germany to NL, he was blown away at how convenient and just not-hostile so many day to day interactions with governments and businesses were.
Like - big picture, I'm very happy in Germany, but certain things are still very archaic and sometimes needlessly so.
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That's a pretty new thing though (been getting worse for the last 10 yrs). And the person responsible for the legislature that caused this change is the current health minister.
Also... 400€? It's a percentage of your salary. And you're omitting that the employer pays the same amount, so you're effectively paying 800€ at the very least.
Not everybody is employed.
Could you please explain that a bit more?
That makes it worse! Not better.
Sweden is highly digitalized, we pay on our phones, pay taxes on our phones, do government stuff on phone or webbrowser. No stores do cash anymore (also a negative)
High taxes is a positive if used right
What do you mean? I am not sure what you mean by decent treatments.
> Schufa
There is some change happening there, especially now that the EU Justice Court ruled against credit scoring institutions (they break GDPR, etc.). Very slowly, as usual, but it might happen. (Also the current governement is planning changes.)
The worst part is potential tenants handing over full dossiers about their background to the prospective landlords. Passport copies, payslips, account statements and more. And as a tenant, you have no way of knowing when does it all end up.
At best it will be dumped into a paper recycling bin. But who knows if all these documents aren't sold further.
You also have no choice, you comply or you lose any chance of getting a flat.
Those crazy stories are indeed crazy and simply not true.
We found a workaround and ten years later the house is paid off, just for illustration of how predictive that report was. I'll cheer for whoever takes on and fights Schufa, always.
Interestingly, I didn’t need a credit check to rent in Belgium and Denmark.
It looks more like the Mafia. You pay a protection tax but this does not guaranty anything.
That said, I agree with you. It needs to go.
Further, as of GDPR, you are entitled to all information from the agencies for free. Prior, you could obtain it for a small fee (£2 by post if my memory serves me correctly).
As far as I'm concerned, SCHUFA is basically a scam I am compelled to fall for whenever I want to rent somewhere.
Currently in Germany, yeah... we paid the Schufa tax twice over because we're two people renting together, and the GDPR data export thingy conveniently omits the credit score they've computed about you...
Was considering whether one can make use of the 14-day return thing, but they've thought of that: it uses a sealed envelope that's hard to open without leaving evidence (under a guise of having a nice opener mechanism).
I have never known anyone to demand the paid version.
It took nearly 10 for my previous landlord to face the justice.
She was completely outrageous and shameless in her crimes - blatantly in violation of registration for HMC, violation of planning permissions, squalor, disrepair, the houses had rats and literal hole in the wall for rain and wind. She would harass gullible and naive students, illegally evict them, etc. and all her crimes were on written record.
And she was doing it with impunity for years. For all that, her punishment is a slap on the wrist - https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/news/article/266/rogue_landlor...
On the one hand, I think Schufa is collecting a lot of unnecessary data that they should'nt have access to. For example, when I bought a pre-paid SIM card in Germany the provider did a Schufa check. No idea why.
On the other hand, I get why a credit score can be useful for larger purchase decisions. If I was a bank, I'd like to know if the person I'm lending 400k for a property, has in the past defaulted on any loans.
I genuinely don't know what a good middle ground is though.
“Has this person defaulted before?”
If someone wants to borrow huge sums from a bank the bank should take the risk and price it appropriately.
If someone wants to borrow money to buy a TV the seller should take the risk and price it appropriately.
The current solution seems too invasive for what it provides. How is the world better because Schufa knows someone bought a prepaid phone card and can sell that to an online store when you buy a pair of shoes and choose to pay by invoice the next week?
Something is in theory cheaper somewhere but where is the proof? The only hard data we have is that Schufa and companies like them are making billions, so there is certainly money to be saved by someone somewhere by scrapping this.
The amazing thing of living in the modern connected world is that we have all sorts of information available easily. We can use what other countries are doing as inspiration, or as learnings what not to do.
The problem you're describing has been solved for decades in tens of countries around the world, there's no point in reinventing the wheel. In France what the bank does is ask the national bank about the person's credit history, which will only contain current and past loans, lapses in repayments, being sent to collections, etc. So only stuff that is actually relevant to the question "has this person defaulted on loans previously and are they thus a risk of defaulting again", which together with the information about current revenues is all they need.
When I moved to Berlin after having lived in London, my Schufa was thus as pristine as possible - simply because I had no German credit history to begin with.
the main consumer-facing score is what you are describing, which is never used by their customers.
for customers (banks,insurances, retail companies etc.) they have scores tailored to their industry (branchenscore), which also includes repaid loans etc.
the "basisscore" is pretty much useless, it's only a number given out to consumers.
in the following section i talk a little bit about the differences between "branchenscores" and the "basisscore": https://onlinekredit.com/schufa-scoring#der-schufa-basisscor...
1. If you apply for a loan, this affects your credit rating. Yes - not get a loan, or default on a loan, simply by applying for a loan, your SCHUFA can be affected negatively. Especially if you are shopping around for loans, this is infuriating. This happens because your SCHUFA is affected simply by another entity checking your SCHUFA score. This is also really annoying because it can be very hard to get a loan as a recent immigrant to Germany, so you inevitably end up applying for multiple ones.
2. Your SCHUFA score is also affected by where you live, and how many jobs you've had in X years, and how often you move (which is often as a recent-ish immigrant).
3. Services like Klarna affect your SCHUFA - even if you have a perfect payback time.
There are “soft pulls” and “hard pulls” that affect this differently. Usually it doesn’t matter much in the long run of things.
Even though, if you log on to the (free) credit reporting service to see your own data - these 'soft searches' are still recorded, so the industry has basically decided that they shouldn't affect your chances of getting credit.
Most of the time so, you can easily ignore Schufa in your dqy to day live. They suck to deal with for mortgages, loans and appartment rental so. And they over step their authority and abuse their power all the time, without cobsequences for them so far. Hope that changes soon.
Would you like the models to ignore these predictors of financial strength? Because, you don’t like it?
Solely relying on statistics will have people falling through the cracks.
A perfect example of when thinking only in averages, and using trendy data-first approach leads to awful and stupid results for groups with too little size to matter statistically. Make your models fair, ffs!
My bank just scraped virtual cards and I use them for online payments so I wanted to use Klarna as a virtual card. Went through the whole process only for it to fail at the end with Klarna saying that they can’t generate that card, but I should go talk to Schufa or Arvato about it.
So, not all use cases are bad and Schufa should distinguish between them.