Hey everyone,

so I also became a victim of the dein-rundfunkbeitrag scam. I've sent them a Widerrufsformular, but according to them it was too late. Now their law firm is telling me I should pay 40,67€.

How safe is it to ignore this? Can they come after me legally?

by swampogrelord2

15 comments

  1. It’s a pretty cheap private lesson about contracts. They told you that you have to pay 40,67 Euro when you press the button and you pressed the button.

  2. What they’re arguing sounds conclusive to me, albeit I’m not a lawyer. Services can be exempt from Widerrufsrecht if they are completed before the end of the 14 days.

    Ignoring it is a bad idea, they will just keep pushing for the money and it‘ll get expensive as soon as collections is involved or a court case started. It sucks having to pay 40€ for a service that is normally free, but better than having to pay 400€ later on. 

  3. Don’t ignore them. Ask a lawyer for help.
    A general advice NEVER ignore bills. This can become really pricey debt collection companies take their job to get the money serious.

    Edit, as far as I know, you will have to pay the money. But I am not a lawyer.

  5. You have a legal contract with them. Dont ignore them, pay.

  6. Pay the 40 euro before it becomes more.

    Next time read pages where you enter your address or payment details. You are the reason for the “Jetzt zahlungspflichtig bestellen”-button

  7. Others had the problem before:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/LegaladviceGerman/s/xuz0o1bK1x

    Googling led me to this:
    https://www.sr.de/sr/home/ratgeber/verbraucherfalle_beim_rundfunkbeitrag_saarland_100.html

    This lawyer says that the legality of such a request must be checked for each case but offers a Musterschreiben to fill in and send:
    https://kanzlei-hoffmann-kiel.de/colleon-ag/

    And finally Verbraucherzentrale may be helpful:
    https://www.verbraucherzentrale.de/aktuelle-meldungen/vertraege-reklamation/unrechtmaessige-gebuehren-auf-servicerundfunkbeitragde-sammelklage-eroeffnet-96353

    Edit to say: I only browsed the articles but they basically say it’s important to refute any claims of Colleon AG in writing. If you have written to another company before, also write to them. Musterbriefe can be found online.

  8. The Verbraucherzentrale link someone posted here already contains a template for a message to object to the payment.

    What they are saying in this email, that the 14 day cancellation period made for contracts online doesn’t apply in this instance could be true. Exemptions would require a valid reason for not offering the 14 day cancellation period and notifying the user about this in advance.

    However if you were mislead or made the contract under wrong assumptions, that could be an entirely unrelated reason to cancel the contract to what they are stating in this email.

  9. I called ARD and asked if they actually did anything and ARD told me they didn’t get any documents from this company, so they want money but they didn’t do anything.

  11. You either pay and forget it or you go the hard way, which could potentielly cost you several hundred. But it will for sure cost you your inner peace and nerves. Not worth it.

  12. I always wonder how this practice/contract is not “Sittenwidrig” since close to 99% did not expect it to be a resell and the resell adds no benefit/solves no complexity at all.

  13. Legally, it’s not a scam. You ordered a service from them, they did it. Now you need to pay them their money. They are operating on the same basis where visa services (those services where you can give them your passport + information and they’ll go to the consulate on your behalf) operate on, and this is actually an important service.

    Ethically, dein-rundfunkbetrag is absolute BS of course.

    From a customer protection perspective, the main failure here is that this domain and similar ones had not been bought, as well as the fact that Rundfunkbeitrag does not have a clause that prohibits such a service.

  14. Just pay it. You may get it back later.
    After moving out to study i got these because i forgot to cancel it. 1 year later and it was urgent, before i got legal problems i payed and submittet everything for the past semesters. In the end i even got my 220€ back but dont let it get that far because thats no fun. Since then i always do everything very carefully and fast

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