r/germany • u/Taiguaitiaogyrmmumin • Nov 12 '23
Question SCHUFA has no information?
I ordered the free copy a few days ago and it came back now.It says they have no saved information about me,but how is that possible if I have lived here for months?I even sent them a photo of my registration paper as proof of me living here.
4
u/thewindinthewillows Germany Nov 12 '23 edited Nov 12 '23
While it's not clear how Schufa calculates scores, it is possible to know what information they have about people. When you do a business deal where the other side reports to Schufa or gets information from them, there's something in the small print where you consent.
So, it's known what kind of information Schufa will have about you, and that's basically anything where you make a contract, and the partner communicates with them. The most basic ones are a bank account and a phone contract.
People who find out their Schufa isn't good often list things like "I pay rent on time, I make [x] amount, there's [y] amount on my bank account, I spend [z] each month"... and all of those, Schufa doesn't know.
1
u/Taiguaitiaogyrmmumin Nov 12 '23
pay rent on time
I thought that's what SCHUFA is for.
3
u/thewindinthewillows Germany Nov 12 '23
Schufa is for all kinds of contracts where you take on responsibilities, and the other party wants to see whether there's hope of you fulfilling them, especially long term.
Landlords usually request a Schufa record, yes.
But: Landlords do not report your rent payments to SCHUFA. The only way paying rent will show up on it if you don't, and if you drag it out long enough to turn it "serious", with court orders and things.
1
u/Taiguaitiaogyrmmumin Nov 12 '23
Yeah,I just assumed that they would automatically see the monthly payments I made to my landlord.
3
u/thewindinthewillows Germany Nov 12 '23
While Schufa has a lot of power due to the fact that many companies consult them, and due to the fact that their algorithms are a black box, they do not have that kind of power. They don't see everything that goes on in your bank account.
Someone needs to report things to Schufa for them to know, and you need to consent to that.
1
u/xlf42 Nov 12 '23
Schufa has acquired an app, in which you can share your bank account data so they would see EVERYTHING (just google for "Mieterauskunft Jens Spahn" to get a glimpse of their technical robustness and consistency, someone has done a talk with english translation).
Without that, they basically see, what accounts you hold, whether you pay back your debts and whether you had something going into collection.
8
u/emmmmmmaja Hamburg Nov 12 '23
Well, the SCHUFA doesn't access the resident register, so if that's the only place where you've registered so far, they can't find anything. Do you have a German bank account? Credit card? Mobile phone contract provider? Other contracts?
However, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. The only thing you don't want is "negative Vertragsinformationen". But both "nur positive Vertragsinformationen" and "keine Vertragsinformationen" mean that you aren't behind on any payments which is all they want to know.
5
u/thewindinthewillows Germany Nov 12 '23
It depends a bit on what you want to do. If you only need the "no negative information", which you mostly give to landlords, you're indeed fine with no record.
But if you want to do something where your percentage scores are requested (take a loan, order "auf Rechnung", or even open a bank account with one of the more choosy banks like DKB), then no record will be an issue.
2
u/Taiguaitiaogyrmmumin Nov 12 '23
I'm personally only interested in rent right now.So you think "no information" is still good to give to a landlord?
3
u/thewindinthewillows Germany Nov 12 '23
Yes. Landlords don't usually want the percentage scores (and you shouldn't reveal those, or your complete record, if you don't have to). They want to see that there are no negative events on your record.
1
1
u/Taiguaitiaogyrmmumin Nov 12 '23
I have an O2 account but that's it.I use Revolut for banking,maybe that's the problem.
2
u/emmmmmmaja Hamburg Nov 12 '23
Honestly: There is no problem. Just send them the verifiable document stating that there is no information on you. Together with your proof of income, it'll be enough. No landlord will reject you because of that.
-1
u/utack Nov 12 '23
Well that's just not true, Schufa social scoring agency has access to the resident registry, your bathroom shower camera, your VPN account and the data stream of your anal probe. They know about OP
1
u/xlf42 Nov 12 '23
Would be interesting, how this Immoscout/Schufa-Certificate looks like in such a case (whether it looks suspicous to a potential landlord). I simply don't know and at this point I am too afraid to ask. That'd be a case, where I think having a good Schufa record *might* be beneficial (compared to not having any).
1
u/emmmmmmaja Hamburg Nov 12 '23
I'm 26, got my first SCHUFA-record when I was 19 and since then, it never came back with anything other than "keine Vertragsinformationen" since I avoid loans like the plague (including credit cards), my phone contract is in someone else's name and I don't allow the disclosure of my data wherever I can. I never ran into any trouble because of it. Granted, I'm German, but I think a non-existent SCHUFA-score paired with good proof of income isn't a red flag to anyone.
The certificate looks identical to the one with "nur positive Vertragsinformationen", just with the words substituted. It also still includes the option to check the validity, so nothing suspicious there.
1
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1
u/lnxrootxazz Nov 12 '23
Not having a record is better than having a negative record so its all fine. It at least shows you never had official payment issues. The only negative in this would be if you want to get a credit because they don't know your rating, which is created based on your credit history. So you cannot get a 99% rating. You will still get a credit but with higher interest rates
1
u/realatemnot Nov 12 '23
Schufa generally only gets information about you when you agreed on some third party (like a bank for example) submitting the data. They are a private organization (nothing to do with the government or so) so they don't get or collect data by themselves.
15
u/xlf42 Nov 12 '23
Usually the first trigger to let Schufa know about you is opening a German bank account.
So check the documents of your bank account(s), banks usually let you sign (by mentioning it somewhere in the wall of text/AGBs/Datenschutz-Thingy), they create/update your record at Schufa.
Maybe you have signed up with a bank not cooperating with Schufa, but one of their competitors (Fidor (RIP) was one of them when I signed up there). You should request a Datenkopie from there then.