S bahn in Berlin

Scam. Deutsche Bahn employees usually wear uniforms. There are rarely plain-clothes Polizei on the trains, but by law, they're placed there under warrant for a specific investigation. They can only act outside their warrant in cases of emergencies. Sorry you got conned.

So why did he say the ticket was no good? Did you buy it from a ticket automat in a station, or from a counter? Or did you buy it from someone on the street? Did the ticket say it was valid for that date? If not a dated ticket, had you cancelled it in one of the stamping machines when you got on? On the correct side of the correct end? You put undated tickets into the stamping machine with the words "Hier entwerten" up on the end that goes in. Why did you so easily give up and accept that the ticket was invalid? Sounds like a scam to me. The only time I have seen a ticket inspector on an S-Bahn (Munich) he was in a uniform. And, he was not accepting cash, but writing tickets. You said his English was limited. Did he speak Italian? Sounds like the Italian ticket scam just being run in a different country.

anita, The fact that he wasn't able to produce any identification would have been the first "red flag" for me. I'm not overly familiar with the penalties in Germany, but I suspect that not having a valid ticket would result in a fine (as in Italy) but there's no possibility you would have been thrown into prison. Unfortunately, I agree with the others that you were probably scammed. Hope the rest of your holiday goes well.

Scam. I have seen inspectors in plain clothes on the Berlin transport system but they always show an ID card as soon as they start checking tickets.

Hi, Yes, I believe it was scam. As others have said here, DB personnel are going to be in uniform. Even their security is in uniform, which is indicated on their little patches. I was asked to show my Passport (not in Berlin) once on a recent trip by a plain clothes policeman but he had ID which I saw. He checked other passengers too. But that was on a Regional Bahn. They also usually work in pairs. If you validated the ticket in the "Hier entwerten" space and were in the allowed time frame (120 mins ?), you had nothing to worry about on the S-Bahn. I've never been checked either on the S-Bahn.

Berlin S-Bahn and U-Bahn inspectors wear plainclothes, not Deutsche Bahn (national railway) uniforms. The key is the identification; inspectors always show it immediately. They also check every passenger around them and don't target individuals. Also, the payment method-- real inspectors write you a ticket to be paid later; they don't demand cash.

Controllers are often in plain clothes, not in uniforms. They all get on a car together though and everyone has to show their ticket. Plus they have electronic gadgets for writing tickets, or scanning them. A single person getting on a car and asking one passenger for their ticket is a dead give away that it is a scam. Also, the ticket controllers do accept cash and prefer to be paid on the spot.