Stupid bus ticketing system - a rant

So I'm living in a town called Burscheid during the week (yes, I call it Bird Shite too) and I managed to get a flat which is about 20 minutes door to door by bus. So with yesterday being the first of the month, I thought it might be good to get myself a monthly bus pass. As I was in town yesterday morning, I ventured into the relevant newsagent (after asking around first - including the kiosk at the Busbahnhof that curiously sells no tickets of any description). Here's the exchange:

Me: I would like a monthly pass for Bird Shite please
Newsagent bloke: That'll be €40 please - oh wait, do you have a Stamm Karte
Me: A what?
Newsagent bloke: A Stammkarte. The tickets are not transferable, so you need one and match your ticket to it.
Me: No I don't. OK then, I'll have one of those too.
Newsagent bloke: (laughing) oh no, I can't give you a Stammkarte, you need to go to Opladen (the next town, which is around 45 minutes from my flat each way on the bus) to get one
Me: So you can't sell me a monthly pass?
Newsagent bloke: No
Me: But I have the money.
Newsagent bloke: No, you must go to Opladen first, only then can I sell you a ticket.
Me: Do I need a photo?
Newsagent bloke: No, It's just a card you fill out.

What the fuck?? Am I the only person who sees a problem with this system? If you're going to sell bus tickets, then why not hand out these Stamm Tickets at the same place? Someone at work showed me his - it's just a card that he filled out his own name on. Nothing fancy, no official stamps, nothing, but I am expected to take a one and a half hour round trip with associated costs (coz I obviously have to pay for the bus there) to get it. I can go register my car or get a passport renewed (if I was German) or even get married in Bird Shite. But if I want to get a weekly or monthly bus pass, I have to go to the next fucking town first.

And the best is that the bus drivers don't actually even look at your tickets most of the time anyway - let alone check your ID. So in protest, I've been showing them various scraps of paper and receipts out of my wallet instead for the past 2 days...

Can they not send you one in the post?

Well I'm coming back to Munich via Cologne this arvo and I'm pretty sure I can get one from there

Are, but will it be the correct Stammkarte for the Birdshiter Verkehrsvertrieb?

It's all on the gesamtnetz - I actually go via Opladen, but never have much time between bus and train connections. So I may have to take an earlier bus.

It's just pointless fucking hassle

Why not borrow the card your workmate showed you? If it requires no ID and has no picture, who is to know? Or if it's really that simple, why not just scan it, fill in your details and print it out yourself?

I love this.

I thought you were running/owning the Arc. Obviously I'm a little out of touch.
What are you doing up in Birdshite?

And yes it is prepostorously stupid. You could have a conversation like this:

You: This is ridiculous, it wastes time & money, has no practicial purpose, drives people away from public transport, makes no sense whatsoever, Grrr
Beamter: But those are the rules
You: But it makes no sense
Beamter: But those are the rules
You: But it makes no sense
Beamter: But those are the rules
You: But it makes no sense
Beamter: But those are the rules

Coz my workmate needs his too. Scanning, etc is still an unneccessary hassle for something that should actually be very easy. Plus, I wanna go into the office this arvo and rant at them personally

The whole buying of a buss pass should go a little like this:
Walk into newsagent, ask for bus pass, pay, leave. The whole transaction should take around 5 minutes tops (and that's if there's a queue).

I just had a look at his Stammticket again. It's got one of those none copy type patterns on it - that they also have on the tickets themselves. Common consensus in the office is that they check closely about twice a year. So it sorta rules out copying or scanning

Buy a massive fuel guzzling BMW, and then vote green to in a vauge attempt to attone for the massive amounts of pollution your car spews out. Seems to be a common practice.

I should buy one of the busses...

could be there is a number on this Stammkarte that you have to transfer onto the tickets you buy. so your colleague would obviously need his cause without it, the ticket is invalid.

Same or similar situation with weekly/monthly tixs in the Mannheim area. You can buy them from the machine, but there is a place to fill in a number. I got caught a couple of times with just the ticket and was told I had to get an ID number. So I had to stand in line for half an hour at the one DB desk dedicated to regional public transportation just to get a little plastic cover for the ticket. On it is my name and address. And when I got checked, which is about once a week, they matched the card number to the ticket.

Well, if they check so infrequently, I would just use the work mate's card to get the bus pass and then give it back to him.

I needed a good laugh today. Thanks.

Except he needs it every day to get to work. And you have to show the whole plastic cover thingy. And he comes in from Cologne every day, which is a couple of extra zones which I don't need and is another problem that I'll get to later in this post...

Anyway.

This shit just gets better...So I went to Opladen to pick up one of those Stammkarten. Of course it meant I got back to Munich an hour later, as I missed my connections. Anyway, I got this form to fill out - name, dob, the usual shit. Then there is a spot to fill out what type of ticket you require, ie where you're going to be travelling from and to. So I tell the bloke that it depends on whether I'm going back to Munich or not on the weekend. I had by this stage decided that weekly tickets were probably going to suffice for the month (same procedure required though with the Stammkarte, etc). I would probably get a ticket just for Birdshite next week, but one that extends all the way to Cologne the week after. Next month I'll be getting a Bahncard 100, so I would only need the Birdshite ticket from then on. But the Stammkarte part of it is locked into the zone you fill in. Which means that because I said Birdshite only, I would have to trade in the Stammkarte the following week for one that had different zones and then trade that one in again when I went back to the original Birdshite only ticket. And go to Opladen each time to do it. It's almost like they've deliberately made this as difficult and inconvenient as possible.

I am seriously going to write them an e-mail and as a part of it offer my services as a consultant to make their processes easier for their customers to use - which would save them money too. I'll do it for very cheap in fact, as it's not the most challenging thing to correct and I could pretty much tell them straight away how to do it...

Do it Dude!! That would be so awesome!!

Also complain via the lobby group Vekehrsclub Deutschland.