Hi ! 

Please tell us more about what you need help with.

For starters:

http://www.konsum.admin.ch/dokumentation/00143/index.html?lang=fr

http://www.frc.ch/

http://www.konsum.admin.ch/index.html?lang=en 

If you need help with the French part let me know , I'll help you out with the translation. 

For rents, appartments you have AssLoca. It's an association for appt/housing rentals and issues. 

Ioan 

Hi Ioan

I just saw your reply ... ouch sorry for my late response. Many thanks for the info.

I will check those out. I am having problems with Swisscom ... I am fairly certain that they are in breach of contract and probably breaking some advertising or marketing laws too.

I know with respect to legal issues, (a) it is a bad idea to go public before the courts decide something and (b) if it comes to a court situation I don't want to give away my hand publically and (c) I may end up putting myself in legal trouble by accusing Swisscom of soemthing.

So if I may I will mention the specifics to you privately at some point. In the mean time what I need to know is if any of the organisations above, do take up matters on behalf of the comsumer or do they just provide advice for the consumer.

In England the law centres and the citizens advice beaureux will contact the big organisations and talk to them, if they think you have a valid case. This often is enough for the big companies to see that the consumer is not just going away quietly and the big company usually fixes the problems before any court situation.

So I am wondering if any of the above will contact Swisscom. Of course I don't expect any organisation to go to court for me but often the involvement of consumer protection organisation scares the big business ()due to bad publicity) into doing what they should have done in the first place.

Ioan - many thanks for responding. Please kindly let me know if any of the above do make contact with Swisscom (if they think I have a valid complaint after they get the facts from me of course) and which you think may be best for dealing with Swisscom.

Many thanks

Bizhan

All I can say is be careful. Switerland is in the stone age in comparison with other European countries as far as consumer protection goes.

Hello Bizhan! how your story ended up? 

I have my own problem, where I believe my consumer rights are not respected... 

Thanks to Ioan, I adressed my question to http://www.frc.ch/. Will see what the reply would be. 

May be some of you had experience in this area and could advice as well: 

I have lacquered parquet installed in my apartment of good brand (link). I bought it in Switzerland. It is new. It was installed in February 2014. Manufacturer is guaranteeing 25 years of good service of this product.

Unfortunately by mistake I bought cleaning material from ter Hürne called Pflege Konzentrat für naturgeölte Holzoberflächen which is supposed to be used for oiled parquet.

I used it 3 times:  first I diluted 200ml in 10L of water and cleaned the floor, then in two weeks’ time 100ml in 10L of water, and the same two weeks later.
After such usage I noticed that colour started to peel off from my floor. Only at this moment I realized that Pflege Konzentrat für naturgeölte Holzoberflächen is designed for naturally oiled floor. And I have lacquered parquet.  

I was in contact with ter Hürne and with the seller of parquet. Both are mentioning that it is very luckily that parquet was damaged by improper cleaning material. The seller took new sample of parquet and the concentrat in order to do some tests.

In any case, parquet is deteriorating. So the seller is recommending to me as the solution to make sanding of top layer of parquet and put new layer of lacquer. This operation is costly and if it is my fault, I need to pay for it. 

Any thoughts on what to do next?

thanks, 

Maria

Hi Maria

I persisted with Swisscom and they escalated matter and eventually fixed my issue. It took a long time and lots of emails.

But in my case I had not made a mistake. Swsscom had made the mistake and the dispute was whether they would fix their mistake or not.

I see in your case, you have used the wrong cleaning product. If the maker's instructions did not recommend that product or product type, I can't see how they would be responsible ... the problem is not due a faulty product and it is not due to the maker recommending the wring cleaning product.

Now, if the maker of the cleaning material or the shop that sold you the material recommended that product for your parquet and if you can prove it, then you may have a case against the them. This is just my opinion and I am not an expert or a professional in this subject. 

Please contact the experts.

Good luck

Bizhan

Hi Bizhan,

I am currently undergoing with a similar problem with Swisscom.  There were some problems both with my TV and internet connection that was not able to be solved directly by their technicians over the phone, I was without the service I pay every month for several days.  Since the problem was not able to be solved over the phone, they had to send a technician to my home, who finally was able to fix the problem by resplacing the fibre which was apparently the cause of the problem.  So far so good, but then I received the bill and noticed they billed me for the repairs, which I do not agree with.  First of all, at no point was I advised neither over the phone or by the technician himself (no mention in his report) that I was going to be charged for this services.  And secondly, it was a malfuncition of the same equipment they provide that was the cause of the problem, as I see it, if their equipment is not funcitioning, it is up to them to fix them and provide the service I pay for them... I told them I would not pay the bill until this matter is resolved and they advised me to send a letter with my claim but that the response was going to be negative, according to them, they are entitled to charge for these services since they dont consider this to be their fault, since they say the equipment is mine... anyway, I wanted to ask you if you actually placed any claim in the consumer agencies or how is it that you got them to accept responsibility... cheers, Luis

Hi Luis - You need to find a lawyer in Glocals and there are plenty.

One thing I know is the case in most countries is that if you have a bill that you dispute (like your repairs charges), you cannot/should not withold payment on  other bills to the same company (like your monthly charges). You are (A) using the services, now that the repairs have been done and (B) the normal servce is not part of the dispute.

I continued to pay the standard monthly bills. But if I remember correctly I did clearly state in my email that I will want these charges taken into account if/when they finally transfer me to the new service that I was looking to change to.

The other thing that I did was to ask for contact with their consumer department or consumer complaints department. There was no point in arguing with their billing department who are only guided by the people who did the work and claim you are responsible for the charges.

It was thru constantly reposnding and discussing with the consumer department that I managed to get the issue resolved. They moved me over to the new service but gave me a young person's discount (for people below 26 years old) for 9 months ... so I paid a very small amount per month ... until all the previous fees for the other service were paid off becuase of the discount I got. Normally they would want me to pay the fees to the end of the one-year contract otherwise I could not switch over to the new contract or I would have to pay for both serivces).

Clealry, only the consumer department can do such things and the average service manager or billings person cannot.

One thing I suggest you do is to ask them to provide wrriten evnidence that you accepted the charges or that they informed you of the charges in advance. They may point to a clause in their contract that covers this issue ... such as repair to your euqipment is at your cost.

Having said that, these companies deal with millions of customers and constantly learn from their experiences and update them. You know those little emails or letters they send about changes to their terms and conditions? ... we consumers never read because life is too shrt to spend it reading tiny print of conditions and that we cannot disagree with the changes anyway.

They may get you on one of those clauses. And to be fair, if the 'equipment' is yours then I am guessing as an ordinary person that the law is mostly on their side. I would think that your only hope is some compromise with their consumer department if they have no evidence that they advised you there would be charges ... even that may not hold up due to their terms and conditions.

You need to find out who owns the 'equipment' that was faulty. Who owns the fibre cable. And also check the terms of the monthly charges ... the monthly standaing fees they charge (even if you have no TV or movies package) usually covers 'maintenance' etc and under those terms it is possible that they are responsible for repairing the faults. Note that sometimes the terms state the maintenance covers the equipment up to the building but not inside.

In that case, does your regie own the equipment?

If so, you can "gently" ask them if they will cover repairs maybe due to the monthly building cleaning and maintenance fees that you may be paying.  And if they don't, would you really want to argue with your regie for a samll issue ... not a good idea in Geneva. There are 4 big ones who control a lot of rental property.

As a layman with no legal knowledge, I advise you to find a lawyer ... but it is a good idea to pay the normal valid monthly charges to de-escalate the issue and continue comunications on a more friendly or gentle basis.

Finally, I managed to find the right people (consumer compaints department) and communicated by email in English. It relaly is not worth the time and trouble if you have to discuss by letter in French if yo are not totally proficient. It took me something like 10 emails in English and 6 months. So in total maybe 3 hours. Any other way would not be worth it and I would hav epaid so I can spend my time on more productive and enjoyable things.

Unfortunately in countries where consumer laws are not strong or are old, there is not a lot you can do. These large companies have departments and people dedicated to this kind of task. It is their daily duty to write emails or letters. You and I do not have that luxury.

I wish you success and hope this helps
Bizhan

Hi,

I saw this post while looking for something else, thought I´d add some links:

In French speaking Switzerland: Federation Romande des Consommateurs (http://www.frc.ch/) - consumer protection federation.  I am not sure if there is an equivalent in the German speaking part.  Note though that if you are not a member their telephone line is very expensive!  To be honest I have tried calling once or twice and wasn´t that impressed. 

Legal insurance: I have found a legal insurance to be more useful in these things (eg DAS Protection Juridique) as they can advise on your individual case in many areas, give ideas on what you can do and advice on how to proceed, etc.  

Ombudsmen:

https://www.ch.ch/en/ombudsman-service/

The Insurance ombudsman was very efficient and resolved a case with our household insurance, while the telecomms one was not as they will only mediate in a specific company-customer issue and not for example tackle broader company practice issues.  They are also not "fully independent" as they actually get paid by comms companies who somehow pool funds for it. (I´m not fully sure about this, this is what I understood on the phone).

Note also that you will need to show the ombudsman that you have already tried to resolve the issue with the company directly.

Health insurance:

For cases with your health insurance, there is an internal process whereby if one of your claims gets rejected you can ask to have this reviewed: it is reviewed by the "Vertrauensartzt", a doctor who, I am assured by the patients federation (see below), is "independent" but if you probe a bit further it turns out that they are actually employed by that insurance.  The concept of conflict of interest is a bit alien in Switzerland it seems.

And see Patients federation:http://www.federationdespatients.ch/

As others have said, generally you should not withhold your payments (rental issues seem to be an exception, but there is - of course! - a process for this too.  See ASLOCA) as that puts you in arrears and a weaker party.  Pay your bill and at the same time write (by registered post, things also get "lost" in Switzerland :-) to protest and that you will look further into it (eg if you need to seek further advice). Also, there are legal timeframes to contest bills, so if you pay and do not raise the issue within a certain timeframe it is considered that you accepted the bill as correct. And despite what most Swiss people will say, there are errors in bills! So take a few minutes to check them.

Wishing everyone a happy resolution to their cases!