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February 8, 2012
Bahn CEO intervenes after railway gives teen wine as redress
Published: 8 Feb 10 11:51 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/society/20100208-25115.html
Deutsche Bahn CEO Rüdiger Grube has personally intervened after a 16-year-old girl thrown off a train on one of the coldest nights of the year was compensated by the company with a bottle of wine.
- Drunken Munich U-Bahn train driver busted (8 Feb 12)
- Arctic cold wreaks quirky havoc across Germany (8 Feb 12)
- Action! Babelsberg film studio fźtes 100 years (8 Feb 12)
Two weeks ago, the girl was forced to disembark a train at a closed station late at night when the temperature had dropped to -18 degrees Celsius because she was short on ticket fare.
The girl, identified as Jennifer, had been in Berlin visiting a friend, and assumed that the cost of her trip home to Groß Köris would equal that of her ticket into the city. But the train conductor informed the teenager that she had to pay an additional €2 to buy her ticket on board.
When Jennifer failed to produce the extra cash, the conductor forced her to disembark, refusing to speak with her mother on her mobile phone.
The incident was the latest in a string of controversial measures taken against children without proper tickets, but happened despite new measures instituted by the rail company that forbid employees from forcing children from their trains.
While the company called Jennifer’s case “totally unacceptable” and promised to remedy the situation, her family apparently received only a bottle of wine and a discount Schönes Wochenende weekend ticket, the magazine said.
The Local (news@thelocal.de)
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Your comments about this article:
Yes ,all the other passengers offered to pay the difference.
Take this as you like, but Germans love uniforms.
@ journette
They do get good training and the like.See last comment darüber. ^
Geoffrey "Ragnar" DeVere
2720 NW Pettygrove St.
Portland, OR 97210
3163 S. Pacific St.
Tolovana Park, Or 97145
No one offered to send YOU any wine! ;-)
In the simplest of terms, the original fare inspector/conductor did not apply the least bit of common sense here. As someone else observed, there are rules, but this was a time when something more than that was required. First, she should have simply allowed the girl to ride. Given what I've read, I'll bet the girl would have been happy to return later with the additional 2 Euros. Even if she didn't offer that, I'd still let her ride. And, when the other passengers offered to make up the difference, she should have allowed that. Why not? What possible thinking would disallow that?
Now, after the original error was made, and the results made public, DB screws it up even further by offering...a bottle of wine? Maybe I'm missing something in German culture, but the wine sounds like a really poor bribe.
The local manager should have met with the family and the girl, apologized for the actions of his employee, and made it clear that DB will make the changes necessary to insure it never happens again. Nothing they can do will change what the girl went through, but an offer of a year's pass for the family...or something like that...would at least demonstrate that they really did understand the problem and want to make amends.
Fail...about 300 different ways!
Sure a bit of common sense would of been good in the situation. DB management sounds like they are GM or Chrysler trained execs. Don't care about customers, workers, or stock holders (taxpayers in DB's case)