• 63 Posts
  • 96 Comments
Joined 4 years ago
Cake day: March 6th, 2021
  • freedomPusher@sopuli.xyzOPtoEurope@feddit.de•Do any credit reporting agencies in Europe give consumers control over creditors access?English
    21·
    5 months ago

    So not what their running debt is but only whether they can take on a new, specific one.

    I knew the criteria was out of the hands of EU-based lenders, but didn’t realise the data is also out of reach to the lender. I suppose it makes sense that the lender would get no info other than a yes or no, if lenders have no discretion.

    I noticed A shop had a rediculously priced phone (like €800+, something I would never buy) but advertised something like €9 if you take a contract. So it’s effectively a loan factored into a locked-in phone service plan. IIUC, the phone shop must arrange that with a bank and does not have the option of taking on risk, and then the bank asks the central bank if customer X can handle that loan, correct?

    You can reverse payments through the bank in the EU as well but it’s seldom necessary, since the companies tend to revert the charge willingly when confronted by the consumer protection bureaus.

    I’ve only had to resort to bank reverse a couple if times.

    One was when I ordered a pair of shoes of what appeared to be an Italian website. It later turned out it was a scam site that listed popular models that were not made anymore and then sent you a ridiculously poorly made knock-off copy from China. I explained the issue to my bank and showed the knockoffs I got and a week or so later the charge was reversed.

    That’s quite a surprise. I heard SWIFT/IBAN transfers were permanent and irreversable. I heard of mistakes being corrected but it required the two banks to collude and the bank of the recipient to do a money grab on their account, which I suppose would be impossible if a criminal closes their account. I wonder if your bank took a loss or if they colluded with the other bank. IIRC, banks have a minimum “investigation” fee of like €25 plus an hourly rate to pay bankers to deal with bad transactions. Did your bank offer that service for free?

  • freedomPusher@sopuli.xyzOPtoEurope@feddit.de•Do any credit reporting agencies in Europe give consumers control over creditors access?English
    21·
    5 months ago

    The only similar things I know is the central bank keeping a listing of “unpaid credit” which make ban you from getting any new credit for a certain time.

    Indeed that’s what I’m talking about. In Belgium it seems consumers have no control over whether a creditor can access the central bank’s records. Apparently the central bank simply trusts that creditors are checking records in response to an application for credit. I would like to know if any EU countries make use of an access code so consumers can control which creditors can see their records.

  • freedomPusher@sopuli.xyzOPtoEurope@feddit.de•Do any credit reporting agencies in Europe give consumers control over creditors access?English
    11·
    5 months ago

    I don’t mean to imply anything about scoring, but certainly there must be some kind of mechanism to expose bad debtors to lenders.

    In Belgium, there are no private credit bureaus but there is a central bank. Belgian banks are obligated to report loan defaults and cash transactions to the central bank, and creditors are obligated to check the central bank’s records. Consumers have no way to control creditors access to their records in the central bank. It seems to be trust based. The central bank apparently trusts that a creditor is checking a consumer’s file in connection with an application for credit by the consumer.

  • freedomPusher@sopuli.xyztoFree and Open Source Software@beehaw.org•Ethical, easy-to-use and privacy-conscious alternatives to well-known software
    2·
    5 months ago

    Also worth noting that #Ubuntu and #Mint both moved substantial amounts of documentation into Cloudflare (the antithisis of the values swiso claims to support). I have been moving people off those platforms.

    BTW, prism-break is a disasterous project too. You know they don’t have a clue when they moved their repo from Github.com to Gitlab.com, an access-restricted Cloudflare site. There are tens if not hundreds of decent forges to choose from and PRISM Break moved from the 2nd worst to the one that most defeats the purpose of their constitution.

    It might be useful to find dirt on various tech at prism-break, but none of these sites can be trusted for endorsements.

    The prism-break website is timing out for me right now. I would not be surprised if they were dropping Tor packets since they have a history of hypocrisy.

  • freedomPusher@sopuli.xyztoEurope@feddit.de•First projections of EU Parliament election resultsEnglish
    163·
    5 months ago

    Young voters did this, ironically enough, according to BBC World News. Young people struggling to get jobs after graduation think that right wing parties will fix that.

    So as older generations are trying not to hand-off a burning planet to the young, the young are signing up for a burning planet under some delusion that right wingers will get them jobs. Schools have apparently failed to teach kids that the jobs they get under conservative governance are shit jobs – lousy pay and lousy benefits.

  • freedomPusher@sopuli.xyztoEurope@feddit.de•First projections of EU Parliament election resultsEnglish
    1·
    5 months ago

    My god… “Consumer power” is a myth, there’s no evidence of it working for anything significant.

    I guess you are not following Gaza. McDonalds in Israel decided to give free meals to Israeli soldiers. McDonalds customers who boycott Israel impacted McDonalds’ bottom line. And it’s a franchise. The McDonalds shops in Israel had different ownership than McDonalds outside Israel (where the boycott was impacting). So in response McDonalds HQ directly bought out all Israeli branches in order to stop the support to Israeli troops, just to protect their brand.

    Lidl and Aldi both started taking a hit in Europe because their produce from Israel was being boycotted. Aldi got caught removing the origin label from their produce when Israel was the origin. Lidl got caught falsifying the label by displaying a different region. If the boycott was insignificant, there would be insufficient motivation for a grocery chain to commit fraud against their customers. So I boycott the whole Lidl chain and Aldi North, not just Israeli products.

    Organize your workplace

    Or boycott without organising, as this person did:

    https://slrpnk.net/post/4687232

    Here’s what does not work: not boycotting.

    Boycotts only lack effect when in fact they are not executed. IOW, the apathy you advocate weakens the strength of boycotts. The shitty attitude that boycotts don’t work is the sole factor that disempowers boycotts from working.

  • freedomPusher@sopuli.xyztoEurope@feddit.de•First projections of EU Parliament election resultsEnglish
    83·
    5 months ago

    Well, you can vote harder. The polls are not the only place you vote. Every purchase is a vote. Most people neglect their consumer power. I’m boycotting hundreds (if not thousands) of harmful companies and products, including Amazon. You can always vote harder by investigating the shops and brands you support. You can investigate whether your bank invests in the fossil fuel energy and change banks (or better, become unbanked). You can follow the [email protected] community.

    E.g. certainly one small thing @[email protected] can do is ditch sh.itjust.works for a different instance. Website weight has quadrupled since Cloudflare took hold because CF encourages web admins to create heavy websites. sh.itjust.works is CF-based.

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