These are the consumer protection orgs and agencies:

1. SPF Economy (gov agency; gratis but no protection; communication problems)
2. Consumer Mediation Service (gov agency?; gratis but no protection)
3. Testachats (NGO; sometimes effective but ~€13/month)
4. ECC-Net (?; gratis but only for non-Belgian complaints)
5. Ombudsman for the Retail (NGO; gratis but tiny jurisdiction)

SPF Economy and Consumer Mediation Service share the same address. It’s unclear how they differ and whether they work together, but they are remarkably useless.

SPF Economy rarely even acknowledges receipt of complaints. They sometimes act in silence, so you are blind to whether they act at all. And sometimes they really take no action. They seem to have law enforcement powers but they do not use it.

Consumer Mediation Service has better communication than SPF Economy. They keep you informed. But if they have enforcement power, they are not using it.

Testachats will not even talk to you unless you become a subscribing member for ~€13/month. So the mediation services are financed by consumers. They don’t do court. They will only negotiate. Sometimes it gets results and I remain baffled as to why it gets results because they have courtroom phobia and AFAICT they do not score businesses or publish issues.

ECC-Net shares a building with Testachats. The EU requires every member state to designate a consumer protection org. APPARENTLY ecc-net serves to give non-Belgian complainants free access to Testachats to minimally comply with EU law. ECC-Net refuses to serve Belgian residents. Effectively, Belgian residents complaining about Belgian merchants must pay for a Testachats membership. Since that is entirely domestic, it falls through the cracks on EU rules. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Ombudscom is a gratis NGO but they only treat complaints against specific businesses that subscribe to Ombudscom. It’s (rightfully) the inverse of the Testachats model, as the merchant pays the bill for consumer protection. But it is useless if a business does not subscribe to them and I have no idea who subscribes.

simple warranty claim scenario: non-gratis

A product failed catastrophically inside the warranty period. This should be a trivial and straight-forward claim. It played out in this sequence:

1. The manufacturer ignored the warranty claim.
2. SPF Economy ignored the complaint about the ignored warranty claim. Did not even bother to contact the manufacturer.
3. Ombudscom: “that company is not a member and thus out of our purview”
4. Testachats was the only mediator to reach out to the manufacturer and establish communication. The manufacturer finally honored the warranty in the end.

So in the end it was only possible to get the warranty honored using Testachats. Otherwise the consumer would be forced to use the courts (and that’s not free either).

Apparently it’s possible to pay cash to a Google Pay retailer and top-up the account without having a bank account. But it’s not a global option.

Anyone know if this is possible in Belgium or Germany? Looks like Carrefour and MediaMarkt accept Gpay. A Carrefour cashier only knew that it’s possible to pay using Google Pay, not top-up the balance. He pointed to a Google Play gift card (note the L). Can Google Play credit be transferred to Google Pay?

(edit) No, it is not possible to do Google Play → Google Pay. There are some silly ugly hacks but nothing reasonable.

Question still remains as to whether there is any way in BE or DE to put cash on a gpay account.

Apparently it’s possible to pay cash to a Google Pay retailer and top-up the account without having a bank account. But it’s not a global option.

Anyone know if this is possible in Belgium? Looks like Carrefour and MediaMarkt accept Gpay, but I’m not sure if that also means they can top-up Gpay. If yes, then the next question: is it possible to do that without a smartphone?

Anyone know of any conventional banks offering free accounts these days? By “conventional”, I mean a bank with a vault that is not strictly digital/cashless, where you still have at least a fighting chance at getting over-the-counter cash services (to withdraw and deposit cash).

Or if none are free, what would be the bank with the cheapest fees spanning a year?

I use very unreliable email forwarding services for protection and control. Rationale:

• to detect data leaks (every email address I disclose is unique to the recipient)
• to disable an ephemeral address when it is abused

I pay no fees. My forwarding providers are likely running in some kid’s mom’s basement. Lots of messages get lost. It’s usually the worst kind of a loss: a blackhole. Which means the sender successfully connects and receives a well-sent status. The messages are lost after the sender is left with the false idea that it was delivered. I have no idea if the messages are lost by the forwarding provider or the email server of the ultimate destination.

In one case I discovered that a forwarding provider was silently dropping all messages no matter what email service I use. It’s a gratis service, so the idea of suing or taking action against the shitty provider would be controversial and likely unsuccessful. It could have been happening for months or even years before I discovered it was happening.

Email is inherently unreliable. It is what it is. But at the same time, Belgium has decided that sending an email carries the legal weight of a registered letter. Yikes! Indeed, something officially important for which my attention is critical and has legal consequences has a good chance of going to a black hole without my knowledge.

To worsen matters, the post service charges ~€10 to send a proper registered letter. That extortionate cost sufficiently drives senders to use email instead.

When a hyphen is involved in a Belgian address, it can be confusing because apparently there is ambiguity. There are addresses with these forms:

1. rue Whatever 62-64
2. rue Whatever 24-1
3. rue Whatever 1-2
4. rue Whatever 3-1
5. rue Whatever 6-8
6. rue Whatever 6-10
7. rue Whatever 6/8
8. Boulevard du Roi Albert 2 8-10

I believe sample 1 means there is one address or mailbox for two adjacent buildings.

Sample 2 apparently means mail box/slot 1 at building number 24

Sample 3 is tricky, but I would assume an odd and even number would never reflect adjacent buildings because usually odd and even are on different sides of the road. So is it fair to say that’s the same as case 2?

Sample 4 is more ambiguous because 1 and 3 could be adjacent buildings, but it’s perhaps bizarre to give a decreasing range. So I would guess it means box 1 at building 3. Correct?

Sample 5 is the most ambiguous. Does it mean box 8 at building 6, or building 6 and 8 combined? The only difference between case 1 and 5 is the size of the number. If the number is large, it becomes less likely to be a box number. But still it’s just guesswork.

Sample 6 could be a range of 3 buildings, or box 10 at building 6.

Sample 7 is rare, but has the same problem; though less ambiguous. I’m more inclined to say it means box 8 at building 6 because “/” would hopefully not be used to list building numbers.

Sample 8 is the ugliest, most confusing. The “2” is using an arabic digit rather than the roman numeral “II”. Note the very critical space between the 2 and the 8. Fuck whoever writes an address that way. Whenever the leading digit is a 2 or a 3 there is a risk that it’s part of a street name in someone’s honor. Without the critical space, it would refer to King Albert the 1st, building 28.

I use very unreliable email forwarding services for protection and control. Rationale:

• to detect data leaks (every email address I disclose is unique to the recipient)
• to disable an ephemeral address when it is abused

I pay no fees. My forwarding providers are likely running in some kid’s mom’s basement. Lots of messages get lost. It’s usually the worst kind of a loss: a blackhole. Which means the sender successfully connects and receives a well-sent status. The messages are lost after the sender is left with the false idea that it was delivered. I have no idea if the messages are lost by the forwarding provider or the email server of the ultimate destination.

In one case I discovered that a forwarding provider was silently dropping all messages no matter what email service I use. It’s a gratis service, so the idea of suing or taking action against the shitty provider would be controversial and likely unsuccessful. It could have been happening for months or even years before I discovered it was happening.

Email is inherently unreliable. It is what it is. But at the same time, Belgium has decided that sending an email carries the legal weight of a registered letter. Yikes! Indeed, something officially important for which my attention is critical and has legal consequences has a good chance of going to a black hole without my knowledge.

To worsen matters, the post service charges ~€10 to send a proper registered letter. That extortionate cost sufficiently drives senders to use email instead.

I can see from web searches that there are a lot of ombudsman agencies in Germany. But they are mostly private sector. I cannot find the national ombudsman that handles cases of a problem with a federal public service. Does that exist?

Linked post gives detail. The absolute shit-show of fake PDFs comes amid the eur-lex site’s restricted access that blocks Tor users, which means we can only reach laws that are mirrored on archive.org. And only if the builtin search tool can be avoided.

(update) eur-lex was open access 10 months ago.

(crossposted from !exclusive_public_resources)

The Council of State is a court that handles appeals, often to challenge non-court decisions like that of a public enforcement body. E.g. you report to SPF Mobilité that an airline or rail operator did not compensate you for a delay or cancellation, and they give you a flippant rejection, the Council of State is your recourse.

The Council of State will not open a case unless you pay a few hundred euros to their bank account. They do not accept cash.

So you might think: I’ll just hire a lawyer with cash and the lawyer will open the case. Nope. Belgian lawyers are prohibited from accepting cash.

(crossposted from !exclusive_public_resources)

The Council of State is a court that handles appeals, often to challenge non-court decisions like that of a public enforcement body. E.g. you report to SPF Mobilité that an airline or rail operator did not compensate you for a delay or cancellation, and they give you a flippant rejection, the Council of State is your recourse.

The Council of State will not open a case unless you pay a few hundred euros to their bank account. They do not accept cash.

So you might think: I’ll just hire a lawyer with cash and the lawyer will open the case. Nope. Belgian lawyers are prohibited from accepting cash.

(crossposted from !exclusive_public_resources)

The Council of State is a court that handles appeals, often to challenge non-court decisions like that of a public enforcement body. E.g. you report to SPF Mobilité that an airline or rail operator did not compensate you for a delay or cancellation, and they give you a flippant rejection, the Council of State is your recourse.

The Council of State will not open a case unless you pay a few hundred euros to their bank account. They do not accept cash.

So you might think: I’ll just hire a lawyer with cash and the lawyer will open the case. Nope. Belgian lawyers are prohibited from accepting cash.