May 2004 Spam Award: R+V Insurrances

In May, I decided to finally get some needed insurances for liability and household effects. For that purpose, I met an insurance agent and his apprentice. Now one of the things important to me is my camera equipment, because next to my work on Spybot, I sometimes need some relaxation.

So I asked Mr. *******, the insurance agent, if the household effects would include my camera wherever I would be, telling him about the special insurance my father needed for his cameras. I mentioned this three times and he promised me it would be included, so we closed the deal.

But when I received the printed insurance policy, I clearly saw that my cameras where not included the way it was promised, so I asked the agent about it. He told me (in written) that insurances like the one I was looking for don't even exist (while my father did actually have one). I therefore retreated from the insurance within the first two weeks, which again was confirmed by Mr. ******* in written. After that, Mr. ******* didn't care to answer to any further email or letter.

But after that, R+V continued to send me bills, debit money from my bank account, and sending me irrelevant letters about checking my background (which by the way is quite a nice violation of my privacy - as we had no deal, they had no right to do so). My letter of complaints were blocked with silly statements like "your letter was not signed" where I did forget that, while those I did sign were discarded without a word mostly.

Not only did Mr. ******* promise insurance coverage that did not really exist in the final insurance papers, R+V did also cheat by continuing my insurance even after I did cancel it and after they confirmed that. And they are continuously violating my privacy, not even reacting to my claims for information about saved personal information which I have according to the Bundesdatenschutzgesetz (German law for data privacy), and even to a R+V attorney I had on the phone at one point.

If you live in Germany, I can only urgently warn you about getting any insurance of whatever kind from R+V.

Update November 9th: I had a court appointment today, because Mr. ******* had accused me of threatening him with using my money to buy a russian killer to get him out of the way. While this accusation itself is preposterous, I find the underlying accusation of racism and monetary arrogance quite rude. But as the judge didn't see any racism in this, I had to apologize for calling Mr. ****** an every day dirty word and remove his name from this page.

July 2004 Spam Award: Peter Hoff / German Partner Consulting GmbH

Peter Hoff earns this months spam award for his rudeness in admitting his spam, yet rejecting any responsibility for his violations of the law. For that, he does not only earn the spam award, but also some legal trouble which can read about here.

September 2004 Spam Award: BMG Germany

Yes, that's right, I'm talking about this music label. They are using newsletters to advertise some of their bands, and obviously their subscription server is behaving ill. It did subscribe me a few times until I complained. Their first reply was that I should simply unsubscribe, but that wouldn't have helped as they newsletter server seems to subscribe every single email address, including all those virus emails with spoofed sender addresses. After some struggle (they removed my address and it got subscribed again), an employee of BMG assured me a second time that I would receive no more spam from them. Well, a few weeks later, new spam came - again from BMG, this time advertising Yvonne Catterfeld instead of Ooomph. I'm no fan of either of them and never would have even thought about subscribing to their newsletters, but this time BMG is playing dead man and not answering any mails of why I have been subscribed any more, so they earn this months spam award for sure.