I use DB a few dozen times per year for international trips and as such have quite a bit of experience with the problems of train travel in the former wirtschaftswunder. Yes, ICE trains are more often than not delayed and time tables are better treated as wish lists than accurate depictions of when you'll get where. Having said this I do not agree with the depiction of the restitution process, probably because I ignore the typically German paper/stamp/copy/snail-mail/triplicate_authorised_stamped_and_approved bureaucratic route and use the DB Navigator app or the bahn.de site for restitution requests for all my (many) restitution requests. Thus far I have had no problems in getting restitution for hotels, alternative transport options and the 25% (> 1 hour delay)/50% (> 2 hour delayed, all to frequent on my longer international trips) ticket price restitutions.
DB is far from perfect and the backlog in rail and rolling stock maintenance seems to drag them down more and more but they are a godsend when it comes to booking and managing international train travel. It is both far easier and generally far less expensive to book an international trip through DB than it is through e.g. the Dutch, Danish or Swedish railway operators or one of the middle-man sites like omio.se etc.
> Having said this I do not agree with the depiction of the restitution process [...] and use the DB Navigator app
Iirc they only started this possibility in june 2021. So anyone, especially foreigners, that experiences this system before then, will still know the paper only version. And 2021 is quite late to implement a digital version of that.
Ah, the DB app. I remember seeing on a ticket envelope (when ticket envelopes were still a thing), DB proudly promoting their new app, "now with delays information!". Great and sad at the same time.
That is possible, I started taking the train for these trips during the SARS2 unpleasantness so I have no information on how things worked before that time. I am 'a foreigner' (Dutchman living in Sweden) and I suspect that factor only makes it more likely for customers to use online claim requests since it is customary for international customers to interact with DB through the 'net instead of through physical locations where they keep stacks of those grey claim envelopes with forms at the ready.
DB is far from perfect and the backlog in rail and rolling stock maintenance seems to drag them down more and more but they are a godsend when it comes to booking and managing international train travel. It is both far easier and generally far less expensive to book an international trip through DB than it is through e.g. the Dutch, Danish or Swedish railway operators or one of the middle-man sites like omio.se etc.