I've been wanting to write this for a while now. I've only been back to Germany for two months and there are already a number of things that annoy me. One major cause is Die Bahn (former Deutsche Bahn, DB, German rail company). I'm interviewing at the moment, so I have to travel often and see quite a bit of that.
Germany is "the country of poets and thinkers", therefore rail tickets in Germany have colourful names - that have little to nothing to do with the tariff they're for. Try it: What do you think is the difference between a "Schöner Tag Ticket" ("Nice Day Ticket") and a "Schöne Reise Ticket" ("Nice Journey Ticket")? They sound a bit like the brain-child of an under-challenged, psychology graduate marketing intern. "We're telling people they will have a nice day if they buy this product, so they will like it." As it turns out, both tickets are valid for all of North Rhine Westphalia. The difference is that the former ticket includes all local public transport but is only valid from 9am to 3am (essentially excluding early rush hour). The latter ticket is valid for 24 hours but does not include public transport other than main line trains. Both tickets exclude fast or express trains. I only found that out after almost walking out of the ticket shop with the wrong ticket. As if the tariff conditions were not already complicated enough! This then make me wonder: What's wrong with calling the former, say, "NRW Inklusiv" and the latter, being wildly imaginative, "NRW 24h"? Or something of that sort. Anything. What's more, these tariffs are not even explained if you want to buy the tickets from a vending machine. I quietly suspect that there is a hidden strategy. Both tickets mentioned above are saver tariffs. Now, people can't possibly save money if they don't understand how to. Get it?
Speaking of vending machines. Speaking of complicated. I understand that the elder generation will on occasion have trouble handling modern technology. The ticket vending machines deployed by DB, however, are of a different breed. I've seen youngsters that surely grew up with computers, electronic gadgets and the Internet give up in despair. The funny thing is that major train stations featuring these machines soon also had a dedicated employee or two wearing a vest saying "Automaten Guide" ("Vending Machine Guide"), whose only task was to explain to you how to use the blasted thing. Obviously, the message had got through that the machines were not user friendly. Now, imagine you're a software vendor and your customers tell you: "Your product is not usable, the interface is confusing." The reasonable and sane answer would be: "Ok, we'll make it simpler." Not so. DB's reaction: "Be patient, we'll explain it to you." Probably you can't expect any other reaction from a company that used to be a branch of the Federal Government. Now imagine small stations where there's not even a Automaten Guide. There have even been reports of machines not working (not offline but faulty) and then people being fined for not having a valid ticket. Half the machines that I tried refused to accept my bank notes - fairly fresh, tidy ones even. And I thought they had gotten on top of that technology by now. And when you give up and go to the counter there will, of course, be a long queue of people who all had the same idea. What is so difficult about having a simple no-frills, no-fancy-graphics, Windows-wizard-style, question-driven menu system: "Where do you want to go? (type a search text)", "When do you want to go?", "Do you want a return?", if "yes" do same again for return leg, show a list of applicable tariffs, ask for payment?
I'm really not a fan of National Rail and rail operators in UK. I think the rail network, trains and sometimes the service were God-awful. But the tickets had simple, descriptive names like "Single", "Return" or "Day Ticket". The vending machines were sometimes out of order but the usage was simple and intuitive.
Now, I ask: How is it possible that in a technologically advanced country like Germany we can have better infrastructure, better trains but can't get something basic as ticketing right?!
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