20 Euros for a change of address in Germany?

Well, no, but people still fall for it.

The geniuses at the German Postal Service took a single service and split it up. Now, there is a mail forwarding service as well as a change of address service, with a Hold Mail service to complement the offerings.

All of this used to be free. These days, only the change of address is free.

12 months of mail forwarding will set you back 25 Euros*. 6 months cost 20 Euros.
Hold Mail can be had for 3 months for 10.20 Euros.

When mail was sorted by hand, the service forward service was free. Nowadays, when all that is done is create an entry in a database, you pay 25 Euros.

Of course, that was a government run operation, devoid of incentive or willingness to make a profit.

Like other postal and telecommunication services in Europe, the German service was (partly) privatized and has since expanded internationally and into related sectors.
Introduction of what we call SMS pricing was the logical thing to do. After all, this monopoly wouldn't last forever and profit needed to be made. "SMS pricing" is our favorite example of a service that costs virtually nothing sold to the consumer at 100 times the cost.

How well does the mail forwarding service work?

Gee, not nearly as well as we thought when we moved into our place.

The folks who had lived in the house before us had set up mail forwarding, yet, from day one, mail addressed to them continued to land in our mail box. Multiple trips to the post office (privatized, too) and a friendly you know they have an active forwarding request, did not stem the flow.

Oh, and the company is still 20% government owned via a government bank, we found when we researched into the fee structure. It makes a profit, 20% of which go into the state coffers to supplement our taxes.

Sadly, other postal services have embarked on the same paths, and with identity verification in place in the U.S. there is very little chance to see Dick Cheney's mail forwarded to Comedy Central.

Finally, the obvious question: if you move within Germany, should you fork over the money for mail forwarding instead of the free "change of address"?

Probably, yes. Companies around here are pretty ruthless about late fees, and unless you have hours of computer time to spare on explaining and bitching (in that order, please) and putting your experience up on a web site while avoiding claims of damage to reputation -- pay up, and feel proudly assured that the margin benefits the government, too.

* It is 24.90 to be exact.