KIt took 24 hours before KfW funding pot 442 was empty. Yesterday, the development bank awarded up to 10,200 euros in grants on behalf of the federal government to those who live in their own home and are interested in an electric car: up to 1,200 euros for a charging station, 6,000 euros for the photovoltaic system and 3,000 euros for a battery storage system Federal Ministry of Transport – around 33,000 applications were approved.
Granted, mind you, only to those who were, firstly, fast enough and, secondly, had the necessary luck. Just a few minutes after KfW activated the online application platform at 8 a.m., it collapsed under the huge onslaught. As a result, some were able to submit their application and some were not.
“Promotion according to the gambling procedure”
And so frustration is also spreading on social networks. “It took me 10 hours to send the application after hundreds of attempts and now I have neither a reference number because I was logged out immediately afterwards, nor a confirmation email. I feel ripped off. How can something like this happen?” asks a user on the short message platform X (formerly Twitter). Another writes: “Promotion after the gambling procedure! Bravo! 2×15 hours of life wasted for nothing and nothing again! You have real digital experts at work.”
Other users pointed out that the overloaded servers could be outsmarted by changing settings in the browser, for example as follows: “The problem with #kfw #kfw442 It seems to be that the client (browser) only waits 10s for the server response with the calculated funding amount, but the server needs longer due to overload. With a little skill you can adjust the timeout in the developer console – then it works!”
Are homeowners keeping their feet still for now?
What resulted from this? Homeowners who were well informed, had a lot of time and luck and had a fast internet connection and, if necessary, the necessary IT knowledge, get a lot of money. Such an arbitrary allocation of funding does not create trust. Tax money cannot be awarded based on programming knowledge.
For KfW, the IT problems are a disaster – one that those responsible could have foreseen. And must. Because it is not the first time that there has been a problem with the application.
But the Federal Ministry of Transport also has to put up with questions. Was this program really necessary or rather unnecessary? Why do well-off homeowners tend to be encouraged to make purchases that already pay off more or less quickly (e.g. photovoltaic systems)?
Added to this is the fear that homeowners will now keep their feet still, wait for the next subsidies and possibly postpone investments in charging stations, solar systems or storage that they had planned anyway. 300 million euros were in the pot, 200 million euros should be available again next year. A total of 500 million euros of tax money that would have been better used elsewhere.
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