Why not visit this place is of course not the beautiful nature! No it is very nazi-acting bureacrats. Please read and reconsider! Avoid it and go around!

It is on the surface is very fine looking society, but the fact that Hitler was Austrian, that they wanted to force-vaccinate their population during covid gives a tell of what terrible system-before-the-human-bureacrats we are dealing with. I am left appauled!

I was naively unware of what terrible people they genuinely are before we drove through Austria towards Denmark from Italy. We put gas on the car, stopped to eat at a restaurant and was enjoying Austria thinking they enjoyed visitors. Comtemplating our next summer vacation should be in Austria.

Enjoyed visitors!! I could not have been more wrong! But the cruelnes did not dawn on me until several months later.

They are, as true bureacracts a little behind in technology, so they required we payed 12 EUR for a sticker to place in our windshield to use the roads. We are a VERY law abiding family and off course we should pay to use their roads! They have excellent roads and clearly expensive roads, no wonder they need to be payed. So we pay the sticker on one of the last gas stations in Italy before entering Austria. This is July/early August.

Fast forward three-four months until November, it is dark and cold. We get a weird old-style physical paper letter in an envelope that we have to sign for at the post office? That is indeed strange?! I have never seen this kind before. We do not really get this kind of mail. True bureaucrats!

The paper letter is from a company called AS Finag, that said we had not paid the road tax.

Funny old style letter in blablabla reference to law paragraphs (the really old style pretentious type) and pay before this date. Now I had to pay 100 EUR on top of the 12 EUR allready payed.

Since the sicker was still in our windshield, the glue is so difficult to remove in the cold weather, and I had the receipt of purchase, I could confidently tell them, you guys made a mistake!

This was written onto them in the stated e-mail on the day I received their paper letter in November.

Do not think you can contact the bad guys! The bad guys decide the contact and when to contact you!

I heard nothing for the next nearly three months before they in end January wrote that since I had not payed, they now transferred to a Austrian debt collection agency call Bezerk Landtirol.

I wrote them back that they cannot move my case to a debt collection agency since I actually had written them that I did not acknowledge their claim, since the sticker was still in the car. Strangely the AS Finag company replied THE SAME DAY! Not after three months that since they allready transferred the matter I should not contact them.

Wait what?!

Now I should deal with their nazi-debt collection agency Bezerk Landtirol!

Claiming that I now owed them 300 EUR instead and if I did not pay they would demand 5000 EUR. I of course did not pay, telling them the wrong in the case.

I also wrote the AS Finag people who refused to get involved in their mistake, since they had transferred their mistake to the debt collection agency.

The debt collection agency couldn’t care less and they send another letter that if I did not pay I should pay 10.000 EUR. So bezerk, that is what they went, their name was correct.

I now called the bezerk trolls, and they explained that some X could be seen on the sticker, which they thought was wrong for no given reason? This was after 4 letters. AS Finag could have told me this in a reply to my first email.

The matters are so crazy in this post-nazi country that an “error” in their system for 12 EUR can cause a law abiding citizen to being threathened to pay 10.000 EUR!!! I’m sure it is a part of a bigger scheme and it was a neglect of fraud to trick unknowing foreigners.

This is the reason why you should stay the hell away from this country.

I ended up giving up arguing with these bureaucratic nazi types who believe they are right and have been given extended powers by their government. Misuse of power!

I have of course charged them for my time, a time consumption they have put on me for NO reason, invading my privacy, so the total time spend on this comes to a crazy 700 EUR.

Plus I want my 12 EUR back for the sticker that I payed!

I have reported this scam to the Danish police.

I am sure I am not the only one being mistreated by Austrian road scammers or a crazy old fashioned system that sends letters in the mail, misusing power to exploit the assymmetry of power between the system that makes the laws, collects the fee they themselve have made up, and a normal citizen who has done nothing wrong.

Imagine what this has cost the Austrian economy for 12 EUR allready payed? Well, summer holiday did not go to Austria, I had initially decided us to go to High Tauern this year. Skiing holiday for 5…? Yep, also not Austria.

Please leave your story in the comments.

If you are AS Finag, pay me your debt of 712 EUR, apologize for your bad behaviour, and prove to me that you have learned from your bad behaviour and that this will not repeat itself on other passing through your country.

Send me your crazy Austrian scammer story!