Help, i am mightily confused. We arrived in May and arranged our telephone, internet and tv through Swisscom, paying well over 100CHF per month.

And now i have just opened a letter from Citycable claiming we owe them 81CHF for usage for the last quarter of last year. My French is not great but i have had a look on their website and it seems they are a cable company. Can anybody confirm? And are their charges mandatory (some type of tv licence)? I telephoned them but didn't get very far as my French is limited and nobody spoke English.

Thank you for any help.

If you have a cable TV hookup, even if you don't use it, you pay.

Tom

If you have a Citycable connection in your house/apartment and you have not had it capped then they will charge you. Generally the outgoing tenant has it done when they leave, but it is not always done. It is one of those charges you don't know you are accruing until they send you a bill. Explain the situation, maybe they will take pity on you (but don't hold your breath....).

However, even if they don't give you a break, get them to send an engineer along to seal the connection so that they won't continue to bill you. You don't need that connection for your Swisscom internet/TV.

Thanks Tom. Any chance i can get rid of it?

Thankyou, will see how it get on tomorrow and post an update!

Just to say it is possible to get these charges dropped if you stand your ground.

When I moved here I originally wanted a cable connection but Cablecom's website said they did not provide services to my area. So I went with Swisscom.

Four months later, a bill came for the cable services, just like you. At the time I was very ill, so my parents had to handle it. They telephoned to have the cable service 'capped', and made several phone calls stating that I did not use the cable service and never had done. In the end I think my mother simply wrote a letter reiterating this and saying that I would not be paying the bill. I didn't, and we never heard anything more...

Until something like a year later when there was a knock at the door. A man from cablecom had come to cover over my cable connection so I couldn't use it!

Hope you manage to get this sorted.

Hi Shayslou,

I also just got on Swisscom, as I can't use the CityCable service. I did receive a letter from them stating I can't use their internet service, only TV.

How did you handle this? Did you manage to speak with someone who understands English?

CityCable have an office you can visit for billing problems at Place de L'Europe next to the subway station. I wouldn't be surprised if they had at least one person who can speak english. You can also email them here : citycable@lausanne.ch .

Well, it seems to be in Switzerland it is not possible to have just internet, that is why if you apply for Cablecom or Citycable - for internet, they charge you for both internet and TV.

You may not note that you pay for the TV Plug cost because mostly it is within the Nebencosten "annual rent fees of your appartment"

Sad that you have to pay now 81 franks (if you really have to) but better than colleagues who never noted it until they left their appartment after 6 years.

No that is not true, they sign up people for more because they don't know any better.

If you want internet only you can order it directly from the Cablecom webpage, they offer combo's but you are not forced to take any other service in order to have internet. If you don't believe then go to their website right now and see, they also offer the pages in English.

If you're a Swisscom customer and also have a mobile account with them, you can drop the landline and only have internet. Call them up, identify your mobile contract and tell then you want to drop the landline. They have a 2 month notice period to the end of the month, If you call tomorrow you can have no more landline charges by April 1st.

Finally, if you're going to give advice then do some basic fact checking first.

In case of Cablecom there is always small print somwehere that the cable maintenance fee paid to a third party is part of the "deal". So, on top of any package from Cablecom there will be about 30,- per month from the local cable TV operator. As included bonus one gets some TV channels and obligation to pay the BILLAG (TV licence).
In case of slower (modem) connections or faster connections but lack of video player software and no registration with any free (Zattoo) or paid streaming service the TV BILLAG doesn't have to be paid.
DE: http://www.billag.ch/web/de/fragen_u...en/geraet.html
FR: http://www.billag.ch/web/de/fragen_u...en/geraet.html

In case of Swisscom, for the cheapest, ADSL internet-only connection they'll ask for line maintenance fee of about 18-20,- per month. So it might be better to have a fixed, landline phone (reliable, as opposite to some VOIP solutions) with them for not much more and ADSL Internet.

Managed eventually to speak to someone at CityCable who speaks perfect English. She claimed to speak just a little but she was fluent (why are they always so modest about their language abilities?). I complimented her on her perfect English and thanked her for speaking to me in English, and she agreed to drop the charges and send someone around to seal the connection! A bit of flattery always helps i find.

Job done.

Thank you very much for the note, it looks a bit offensive but I accept it no worries.

I am sure about what I am say,

Internet only subscription by Cablecom - needs to have a plugin this white box at your home with two circular connections - without it you have no internet.

So if you apply for only internet that costs 35 CHF, you pay in the nebencosten like 27 CHF for this plugin that you can have TV connection to it.

With Swisscom the same, you have to have a mobile or Landline subscription to have internet.

I work in a telecom vendor that supports Fiber Network companies and Telecom Companies as well and I am 100 % sure of what I say.


P.s. Kindly try to take it easier next time giving advices, so others can absorb it.

Kind Regards,

This is not 100% true. I have this connection (the white box) at home, but internet is not possible with Cablecom/Citycable: this has been confirmed by citycable.

Instead, you need to make sure that the line has been "upgraded" for internet, which is normally done for the whole building at the same time. Which in my case was refused by the building owner two years ago .

I did not say that when you have this Wallplug then you have internet, I said if you have it then you pay some embeded money within the Nebencosten.

Let me clarify how the whole story works, if it may be beneficial to some of us here:

Possible types of Providers

1) Telephone Operators

Like Swisscom, Sunrise and Orange:
They have different ways to provide you connection

xDSL - where they provide it over the Telephone line, and for this you need to have a telephone plug.

Wireless: which can be one of various technologies
- GSM (old) and this what they call 2G - G is for generation
- Edge (we can call it 2.75 G)
- WCDMA (we call it 3G)
- HSDPA (we call it 3.5G)
- 4G which is in implementation phase now

Here you don't need a special plugin at home, but you need to have the Operator Hardware near to your home implemented and configured to provide one of these services

Fiber:
And here it is a parallel technology to the Operator Network, which means they are providing their services over fibers provided in the ground.

These fiber can belong to them, or can be rented from Power Utility Companies like EWB, EWZ, SGSW, SIG,... etc

Cable Operators (like Television Operator - Cablecom for example)

They provide you cables to your home with television as main service - where it pass by 5 stages, and always stage 4 is ready before stage 3, as it is costless

- Stage 4, is to bring the White Wallplug thing into your home
- Stage 3, is bringing the service to your Building, where mostly you find a big box at the Keller or near the washing room connected to each appartment.

Since stage 3 is expensive and needs continous maintenance, they don't do it unless they have good payback for it, like group of customers connected to it - sometimes there is interest of users but the whole area was not yet connected, and here it is complex as it depends on the whole geography of the region.


Power Utility Companies

- Here they are network providers, so they bring fibers in the ground, then a provider like VTX or MyGate provides their services over these cables

- Here there is no obligation to have internet and TV or Telephone, as you can have only one single service without problem, but it will be expensive , like for example internet may start with 79 CHF for basic internet service but it is really fast.
- This depends on if the fibers reached your region or not, you can check it from the Service Provider Website or from the Power Utility itself.


*** If you call Swisscom for example and requested internet while you have no mobile or Landline, you may get a strange answer which is they cannot provide you service because they cannot bill you unless you have one of the telephone service, which means they have no technical problems but it is a billing system problem !!!

Hope this makes sense.

Kind Regards,

Exactly.... if you are going to give advice then do some basic fact checking first

Written on the first page of Cablecom !!!!

http://www.upc-cablecom.ch/en/b2c/internet.htm

Requires a cable connection with feedback channel from upc cablecom or one of our partner networks. The costs for this connection (usually CHF 25.05/month plus an obligatory copyright fee of CHF 2.35/month) are normally covered by the ancillary costs in rented apartments. Minimum contract period 12 months. A one-off fee of CHF 49.– is charged for activating the service. Paper-based bills: CHF 1.50 per bill.
* Source: www.swisscom.ch; situation: 16.01.2012. Swisscom offers also other Internet subscriptions.



People advice yourself before you advice others !!!!!!!!!!