Jonny

I look at diets very simplistically. If you go on a diet you can certainly lose weight by adopting any number of 'fad' diets. If the diet works then great, but most people then stop the diet and return to the eating/lifestyle behaviour that caused them to pile on the pounds in the first place.   Forget diets, change your lifestyle to one that you can live with in the long term.

Well done. It's about time somebody turned the tables on these legalized robbers.

  Some people would beg to differ ...   https://www.shape.com/lifestyle/mind-and-body/can-potatoes-help-treat-your-depression

Surely if she's a friend, the friendly thing to do would be to pay for the glasses - or half the bill if you have financial difficulties. Maybe speak to her first and explain you don't have insurance and try to work something out. 

You can buy cheap replacement heads in bulk on Amazon. They cost a fraction of the price. I've been using them and think they're fine. I don't notice a difference from the expensive official ones.

  Well said, The quality is so good that a lot of it is bought and broadcasted  by Germany, for example, the David Attenborough wildlife shows. Of course these shows firstly need a German to do an annoying voice over because they can't seem to cope with subtitles.     When I think about it that way, maybe we're all helping to fund the BBC through our German payments.

  It's the same as mp3s vs CDs. In the early days a very greedy company, let's call them 'Apple' , decided that they could charge 99 cents per track on an album. This meant that with some albums containing 15 or 16 songs, you would end up paying more for the mp3s than you would if you bought the physical album with a case, booklet etc etc. It then turned out that you didn't actually own the mp3s, you just licensed them and couldn't give them away or sell them (like a 2nd hand CD). This kind of behaviour played right into the hands of pirates in the early days. With the streaming model of today it seems a lot more sensible and fairer and so pirates are actually diminishing in number because their needs are being met legally and at a fair price. Or so I think anyway !!

  This is what I don't understand. If there is high demand, why can the owner not put an advert on immobilienscout for a lot less than 35K euros and sell it to one of the first people who come along ?

I think I mentioned it before, but ask them in a very solemn voice 'What would your mother think if she knew you were scamming innocent people ' ?    I was told this by an Indian. I've tried it and it works 

After many years of renting in Munich, I've started looking at buying a place. In my area there are apartments/houses that cost upwards of 1 million Euros. I was shocked to discover that these places have a makler fee. I just cannot get my head around the fact that somebody wants to sell their home for 1 million Euros so they ask someone to place an advert in immobilienscout - and maybe show somebody around the apartment - and for that work the makler gets 35,700 Euros from the buyer !!! How on earth can this be seen as a reasonable cost when buying property ?  I've also seen adverts for property at 2 million Euros so the buyer pays 71,400 Euros to the makler for this. So does a 2 million Euro apartment involve DOUBLE the work of a 1 million apartment ?? I cannot believe that there hasn't been an outcry over this. Surely a flat fee of a few thousand would be a lot more sensible and fairer ? It's almost as crazy as taking your kitchen when you move !! 

  This is common behaviour from these leeches. You received the yellow notice because it is nearly 3 years since they sent the last one. They sent this so that it restarts the statute of liability clock again (or something like that). In my case, I dealt with the initial problem and so 3 years later I objected to the court order since as far as I was concerned, I'd done what they asked and paid their fine. My lawyer said that when you object to the yellow letter, it's up to the leeches at WF to prepare a case against you and in his opinion, this is too time consuming. Anyway, I'm pleased to report I have not heard from these lowlifes for many years now.   The major piece of advice is that you MUST NOT IGNORE this yellow letter.   Good luck.

  If you illegally downloaded Being There, could the lawyer company not send you a letter saying 'We know you did it, don't do it again or else ' , possibly followed up with a small fine ? That sounds fair. Unfair is a scumbag lawyer firm fining a first time offender 1000 Euros for downloading an obscure movie and also charging them for the expense of aforementioned scumbag lawyer firm to catch them.   

  I had the exact same problem with these scumbags. They sent me a big yellow envelope demanding payment nearly 3 years after I'd already paid them. It was one of those Mahnbescheid things I think where you have to reply within 2 weeks. I objected - putting the onus on them to prove their case - and I never heard from them again. 

  Alternatively, people who 'steal' copyrighted material might not be able to find it on one of the many subscription services they pay for. Maybe it's on Netflix Korea or Netflix Japan but not on Netflix Germany yet. So they watch it however they can. Maybe they don't class just watching a movie as 'stealing'.   Maybe the thing they want to 'steal' is available for free outside of the artificially created internet geo border.   Maybe they get fed up waiting for that 30 year old movie (that they maybe already bought on VHS video cassette)  to become available in Netflix or Amazon Prime.   Maybe they want to watch something on their tablet but that DVD box set they bought a few years ago is copy protected so they can't easily transfer it to their tablet so they download it instead. Is that stealing ???  

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