The rail competitor Flixtrain has been successful in court against misleading filter options in an earlier travel information from Deutsche Bahn. The Hamburg Regional Court has now published the judgment from December 1st.
A connection search design used in 2018 with the preset filter option “Prefer fast connection” was affected. The court decided that this meant that certain Flixtrain connections were not displayed, even though they were viewed as “fast connections” from the customer’s perspective and were therefore expected as a search result.
The amount of damages is still being determined
Competition was hindered in relation to the Flixtrain offers on the Berlin-Stuttgart and Hamburg-Cologne routes. According to the judgment, Deutsche Bahn is obliged to pay compensation. In order to quantify this, according to the district court, you must provide information about booking requests during the period in question. The judgment is not final. The losing party could appeal the verdict, which the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court would have to decide on, a court spokesman said (ref.: 315 O 262/18).
“The matter complained of is historical and has no relevance to our current travel information,” said a DB spokeswoman. In the proceedings, a design by bahn.de and DB Navigator was criticized, which has no longer been used since spring 2019. “We are now examining the judgment and the reasons for the judgment and will then decide whether we will appeal.”
Flixtrain is a brand of the Munich mobility platform Flix. The provider is one of the few competitors of Deutsche Bahn.
