Please read our conditions for purchase on account

For the purpose of credit assessment, the service provider

Allgemeiner Debitoren- und Inkassodienst GmbH, Eduard-Pestel-Str. 7, 49080 Osnabrück, Germany

on our behalf with

CRIF Bürgel GmbH, Radlkoferstraße 2, 81373 Munich

the address and creditworthiness data stored about you, including data determined on the basis of mathematical-statistical procedures, insofar as we can credibly demonstrate this and have proven our legitimate interest. In order to decide on the establishment, execution or termination of the contractual relationship, we collect or use probability values, the calculation of which includes address data.

Up to this point, you have read the legally required text that everyone who wishes to purchase "on account" must agree to. The following explanations are no longer part of this, please only read them if you are interested, otherwise you can ignore them.

A word of explanation

Service providers such as Schufa collect general data on creditworthiness. From this they calculate the trustworthiness of a buyer. This is expressed in school grades from 1 to 6.

How Schufa scores are determined

Paradoxically, Schufa & Co. rate someone who has already had a loan and paid it off on time better than someone who has never had any debts!
The reason is the data basis of these companies: When someone takes out a loan, the bank reports this to Schufa, which also registers whether the borrower pays their instalments on time or not.
People who have never had a loan are unknown to Schufa & Co. They can only make assumptions about reliability, e.g. the customer's neighbourhood.

Here is roughly the rating structure:

Score 1: Took out a loan once and paid it off on time.
Score 2 to 3: No negative entries, but also no positive entries or possibly no personal data at all apart from the address.
Grade 4: Once failed to pay a bill to Deutsche Telekom or the electricity provider for months and only responded after several reminders.
Grade 5: Ever had a debt collection procedure in your life.
Grade 6: Two or more debt collection proceedings. From this point at the latest, you can forget all planned telephone, rental or credit agreements.

Excursus: How to tune my Schufa score to the best value!

We had this example ourselves in the shop: an employee had a bad score of over 2.5, even though he had done nothing wrong all his life!
His "problem": he had never taken out or paid off a loan and was unknown to Schufa, Bürgel and the like!
So we found out how to fix this and he bought a piece of furniture from Jyskthat he would have needed anyway on instalments, i.e. a personal loan. Although he would have had the money in cash without any problems!
He paid it off well for 6 months. A few months later (to make sure that all the data had arrived at Schufa, Bürgel etc.) we tested his creditworthiness again in the shop, and lo and behold: top score 1.0! From 2.5 to 1.0 by buying furniture!

Our experiences with Schufa & Co

Service providers such as Schufa are generally unpopular. They are also often said to make unfair judgements. For example, a student who has never paid a bill late, but is still a student and lives in Berlin Neukölln, can quickly be given a credit rating of 2.9 without any justification.
The grades 1.0 - 2.9 are allocated on the basis of "general experience", i.e. according to age, place of residence, profession, etc.
To get a credit rating of 3.0 or higher, something must have happened. And from a credit rating of 5, there has certainly been a debt collection procedure.

Of course, we don't like the categorisation of people by computer algorithms either.
Unfortunately, however, we have also found that their judgement is correct in 90% of cases.
Customers with a credit rating of 5 or 6 have generally not paid, in other words, cheated! Someone who knows that they have a credit rating of 6 and still chooses "invoice payment" knows what they are doing. In other words, they are speculating that a small shop will not notice.
Interestingly, credit ratings 3 - 4 are very rare.
Customers with a credit rating of 2.6-2.9 are more common, and our experience is that in 80% of cases they pay their invoices conspicuously late or only after a number of labour-intensive and costly reminders.
For this reason, we take the approach of refusing invoice payment for credit ratings above 2.5 and referring to our numerous other payment methods such as PayPal or prepayment.

We also reject "payment on account" for credit ratings below 2.5 if the address is known but the customer is unknown!
This can happen if someone orders to a "good" address but is not registered there.

The administration of reminders and also the transfer to a debt collection service provider is completely in our own hands.
We also don't want customers who pay an invoice two weeks late, for example due to illness or simple laziness, to immediately have a debt collection agency on their backs. This would happen if an external service provider took over the processing of the invoice payment.
We would like to define our relationship with our customers ourselves and not leave it to a computer or an anonymous company. And we have already had the case of a customer contacting us after the third reminder and stating that he was demonstrably unable to work in hospital for several weeks.

However, our very great concern for good and understanding dealings with customers who have payment problems should not be confused with weakness.
If, after a number of reminders or unanswered e-mails, it becomes obvious that we are being defrauded, we take rigorous action against this, including with the help of debt collection agencies. We generally do not write off invoices due to low value and bureaucracy; every attempt at fraud is pursued on principle, so this should not be expected.

Your anonymity is protected!

An automatic plugin in the shop makes the decision as to whether invoice payment is authorised or whether the shop suggests an alternative payment method such as PayPal at lightning speed as you proceed to the checkout. No employee enters your data manually anywhere and we are not interested in your personal data!