Granted, they keep the honest people — honest. Thieves will find a way to break into anything. Also, I haven’t seen every Abloy lock. That being said, I wouldn’t hesitate to use another Abloy lock.

Don’t you just have a solution for everything! Don’t want your credit information peddled to whomever? Don’t buy anything! Besides, a person without credit cards will probably be shipped straight to Gitmo.

The trouble with not having a credit record is that lenders will not lend without one. Well, fortunately there are those subprime loans.

Since you favour this kind of a solution, there is also a simple one for the Finnish tax records: don’t have any income.

Bozo is a circus clown = sirkuspelle. I am not a very funny clown, though. I took it as an alias because of Verosirkus. (tax circus) There is not very much that is funny in the issues that I address.

Don’t use credit if you don’t want a record at the credit bureau.
They probably don’t have anything on me.

Unfortunately, buying and shipping a door is not so straightforward through the internet. It seems almost all the doors in Finland have the Abloy locking mechanism in them. I have an Oulux door. Maybe someone in Finland makes doors that have no holes in them for the lock hardware…

As the article indicates, the monopoly is starting to be a thing of the past. 2 years ago, the situation was already quite different from now.

Monopolies and the Internet.

Humm, they don’t exist, if you can buy and ship freely.

The acquisitions were made up largely of foreign companies, i.e. Sargent, McKinney, etc., and an number of other in the US, but also far and wide in an effort to make a complete package of provision and sale of related parts. Ehat’s true in the US and Canada is also true of other places.

So any sort of cornered market in this situation starts looking pretty silly since the monopoly does a disservice to Finnish customers by not offering competative goods, but benefits everyone else where they make this stuff which comes from a constellation of small and large companies scattered around the planet. In other words, a monopoly which would normally “insure” a few jobs (through manipulation of the market) does nothing at all for Finnish labor.

One note: having done a ton of this stuff over the years – the European producs, though solidly made have traditionally been rather simplistic, and hard (until lately) to make work in North America to support the way things are used here and the requirements of the Life Safety Code. The stuff looks great, but it used to be very hard to make it work.

Exactly right. Just to clarify… For someone (e.g. a hardware store, employer, landlord) to check your credit, they must first get from you a signed consent form.

The “good reason” part only defines the circumstances under which a company is entitled to ask for your consent.

Let’s also clarify what is on your credit report (from the other thread):

name
address
social security number (like KELA number)
date of birth
creditors
payment information, timeliness
tax liens (if you didn’t pay your taxes)
civil judgments
bankruptcies

http://www.aaacredit.com/qa.asp

There is NO information on the report about your employment income, investment income or values of investments.

The open tax records have been mentioned as an impediment to running a business in Finland, as business partners may find out your income level. In the US, business partners having access to your entire credit history is not such an impediment according to these two propellerheads.

In reality, what someone made 2 years ago is relatively useless information from a business perspective. Your company may turn out a 1M€ profit, but if you choose to take out only 20k in salary and dividends, that’s all that shows up in the tax records. The balances of private companies are not accessible to the public.

That being said, at least Veropörssi needs to go.

About Stasi, I think we have reason to believe that SUPO has been infiltrated by the KGB and might still be. That’s more serious than any stupid list, which is just a minor consequence of the bigger issue.

In the US, it is possible to get top-quality locks at dirt-cheap prices. But why bother? You can just unclip the plastic veneer wall-siding, cut through the foam-board insulation with a pocket knife, and then push your hand through the drywall. At worst, you’ll get itchy from the fiberglass wall-insulation.

In Finland, construction is better overall, but the price of materials is needlessly ridiculous.

So, I guess each case is an example of how a culture gets its head stuck so far in its own ass, that it can’t see what it’s doing wrong. Isolation of knowledge is still a big problem in the world.

Like he said, there is nothing of value inside. Anyway, there is no need to ‘bump’ locks in Finland where nobody is around to hear you break the window! (Every apartment I lived in in Helsinki had two locks, the other being the large double-sided key.)