The German group buying ticket dodgers out of prison
&gt; But the public transport companies take a harder line with serial offenders. They are the ones who are referred for prosecution, regardless of whether or not they&#x27;ve paid the penalty fare.<p>Worth noting that in Germany the very same companies face 0 legal repercussions for the serial offense of not meeting their duties to the regular person, whether it&#x27;s DB (the national railway operator), Lufthansa (national airline), or the local public transport systems.<p>They repeatedly cancel trips without any compensation for ticket holders, and the default stance is that you have to chase them forever with forms sent <i>via snail mail</i> (!) even for the basic refund of the ticket, not even speaking of actual compensation. Or they will go on strike for days or weeks and have very low level of service or complete interruptions and in this case there is 0 recourse for any kind of refund even when a monthly public transport pass was 100+ EUR. Or the plane&#x2F;train will be hours late costing you further expense, or the train stuck in the field for hours at a time due to malfunctions, they happen on a daily basis with 0 repercussions.<p>They are literally allowed to repeatedly lie in the information to you during the resolution of such complaints and many times the only recourse is to involve a lawyer. The absolute worst that can happen to them in this situation is to have to fulfil their legal obligation (refund&#x2F;compensation). There is no concept of anyone on that side being prosecuted for such things.<p>At least with the new 50EUR Deutschlandticket people will suffer the same but for less money.