If you live in the U.S., you know, hopefully, of the nifty way government helps you get back orphaned money from companies and institutions, for example, an inheritance from some distant relative, escrow funds, or overpaid insurance premiums.
Companies first need to contact you, and if this fails, they need to transfer the funds to the government, which holds them for you. Without interest, of course, but still. We haven't checked recently, but by now pretty much all U.S. states have had publicly accessible web sites for a decade or longer.
You go to the respective state web site, type in some identifying data, and there you have it. Then you send in notarized proof of identity, and a check arrives in the mail.
And in Germany?
If a company is not eager to contact you or fails, you will never know they owe you money.
Obviously, one could argue that the need for some sort of centralized system may not have existed because Germans didn't move nearly as frequently or as far as Americans, and - who knows - maybe German companies are better record keepers?
We decided to give Germans the benefit of doubt until we stumbled on the use of premium telephone lines by businesses. Toll free 1-800 numbers are not as crucial to business success over here as in the U.S., again somewhat understandable from a cultural and historical perspective.
Where it gets interesting, though, is the use of premium numbers by businesses - an approach totally opposite of the U.S. retail sector. We are not talking about premium numbers for "certain kinds of services", but regular old retail, from groceries to hardware stores, airline companies, or, egregiously, telecommunications companies and internet service providers.
Of course, many customers feel ripped off being charged extra for questions or issues they gave with some purchase. Even publicly run entities resorted to premium numbers. The radio and TV license agency still clings to premium numbers whereas the jobcenter/EDD folks ditched charging unemployed citizens for pleasure of asking for help.
According to a newspaper article a while ago, existing customers of a company can ask their telephone company to withhold a premium charge whereas new customers generally have to pay up.
In short: you need to know your rights in detail, and you have to put in extra effort which can exceed what you are owed.
One illuminating example of numerous hoops you have to go through despite all data being available to the folks who billed you is a health insurance reimbursement clause, intended to help with extraordinary illnesses.
If the total of co-pay in a given year exceeds 2% of your income after taxes, your health insurance provider is obligated by law to pay back the money in excess of the 2%.
Say you make very little money, have a long hospital stay and need expensive medications and months of physical therapy.
The health insurer gets all the bills and the co-pay information from the different medical providers.
Now, you might think all you do is hand in your income tax return, and a health insurer's customer specialist enters that tax information and clicks a button on a screen - done.
Wrong.
You have to keep all receipts given to you by the service providers and hand these in with a an application form. No application, no reimbursement. No receipts, no reimbursement.
If your dog ate, for example, a 500 Euro hospital co-pay receipt, the insurance provider will deny including that amount in the rebate calculation - despite having the computerized data from the hospital. Of course, for an individual co-pay as high as that you'd go and get a copy from the hospital - hopefully before the reimbursement deadline.
We have come to call the German reimbursement system "the booze in Utah" system: not only do you have to ask, you must do so in a very specific manner.
[Update 4/1/2016] Of course, this setup disenfranchises those people who would benefit most from a reimbursement: the poorly educated and those immigrants don't speak German well enough.
Now, some immigrants do overcome this information deficit through curiosity and community support. Which - we kid you not on this 1 April - has enraged some locals. The blogster has heard this statement: How do these people who don't speak German know the ins and outs of the system better than me?
No comments:
Post a Comment