Four Hours – Thanks Deutsche Bahn (The Ad Found Me. The Checkout Didn’t.)

I try travel by train more. For beyond tellerrand, for conferences, for meetings. On 2 September I booked a ticket from Forsthaus to Berlin for €198. On 3 September I had to change my plans of traveling by car and needed a train ticket to Freiburg. Second class was shown to me for roughly €349. An offer next to it showed €364 for the first class, which I bought. Despite the fact that it is nearly impossible to take the DB on short notice as it is horrible expensive and really no alternative for those cases, that is €562 in two days. On the evening of 3 September I was scrolling through Instagram and saw an ad from Deutsche Bahn. The BahnCard 25 at half price. The promotion ran from 1 to 30 September 2026. It covered the business cards too. The BahnCard Business 25 for first class was €69,99 instead of 144. So the promotion was already running when I booked both tickets. I was shown none of it. Not in the search results, not in the basket, not on the payment page, not in the…