The point is that if you want to protest a bill from the police, the office des poursuites is not the place to do it. By not protesting in the correct way (go to court - in this case), the bill is due.

I know that if I went to court I would win and presumably the police would have the cost against them levied. More likely the police would cancel the fine before we even got to court. However that would be moral victory only. When you have a full time job time is in short supply and you need to take into account the size of the bill versus the time preparing for a court battle. I might even find I have a court fee to pay if the case does not proceed.

Quite so. So you post this idiotic situation here and meanwhile you can never use your parking space, for which we assume you pay handsomely, ever again...

Hi. I came to Switzerland in January 2012 for MBA course. This question id for my friend.
He also came from India along with me for the MBA course and had a B-permit.
the b-permit was supposed to expire on December 2013. But due to some emergency at home back in India, he had to leave in urgency and is not coming back.
He has 2 Orange contracts. And he will not be in a position to pay the remaining bills or end the contract as he is not coming back.

My question is will he face any problem for not paying the bills or ending the contract?

Thank you so much.

- Rahul.

Yes,

The bill will get bigger, there will be fees for not paying and eventually he is going to have to pay it or he won't be allow to enter the country and if he does, he could risk jail.

Jail for not paying bill of chf 30 and 50 per month? really?

But he is not coming back to Switzerland. still can there be any problem?

Why does your friend not just cancel the contract and pay the outstanding bill? Frankly, it is foreigners that behave like this that make it difficult for new comers to Switzerland to obtain mobile phone contracts.

I understand that, but he was going to work here. and that is not happening any more.
He has no outstanding as of now. But he will have for next few months.

Switzerland is part of the Schengen agreement......

What does it mean? If he goes to any country in the European Union, he can be caught?

So what? It's a civil matter

Unfortunately, as far as I'm concerned, the fact of the matter is that if your friend remains in India and never in his life returns to Switzerland then the chances of him facing any repercussions over this are negligible.

Even if the organisations to which he owes money could track him down - which in India would be feat in itself, there then remains the question of enforcing the debt, and even if that could be enforced then your friends ability to pay would be in question. Basically it wouldn't be financially viable to try and track him down.

What will happen is that he will receive a Betreibung against his name here in Switzerland, and any attempt to enter the country will require him to pay in full. There may also be problems should he ever want to return to Europe within the schengen area.

Ok, so it would appear that your friend has got away with it, and indeed he probably has, but the rest of your countrymen, and other expats who want to end up living in Swtizerland, will end up bearing the brunt of your friend's, and other foreigners, failure to pay by finding themselves with reduced access to those services which require some form credit - think renting, phone, banking - the essentials.

If your friend has any conscience about this then one possibility would be for him to contact the companies involved explain the situation and work out some way to pay.

__________________
...allegedly.

I guess he should at least write a nice letter saying: "listen, I left the country, bye".

I don't believe betriebungs are enforced by customs .

And immigration??

If your friend has left the country for good, then I assume he has de-registered from his commune and has a letter to that effect. If he sends a copy to the telephone company and explains his situation I'm sure they'll cancel his contract. Countries like CH are used to people moving abroad and having to break contracts - what annoys them is people doing as your friend has, and leaving the country without breaking the contracts and allowing the bills to mount up.

he has that paper i guess. I will surely ask him to send them a copy.

Thank you for your time and advice.

The first time I left Switzerland, I of course did everything correctly.
But I did it a bit last-moment.

So although I sent Assura a letter stating I am leaving the country, with a copy of my de-registration from the citizen's office, they sent back a letter asking for something more before they could cancel my insurance.
The letter arrived too late, my then flatamates kept it and it got to me 3 months later.
I immediately wrote to them asking if they had not done the cancelation because of this.
I found it silly that the contract is not canceled for something silly (that I don't remember) although they had received my de-registration from the canton.
They never replied.

But 2,5 years later I got the second flat I applied for. So I guess they never started action against me.

Not for visitors, if you want a permit to live here then you might have a point.

Dear all,

I read through many of the posts and have maybe missed the answer to a question i have. If someone has had a Betreibung against them how will this affect their chances of moving from one rented flat to another? They would like to move but do not know how the Betreibung will affect their chances of being accepted as a tenant.
How can they move to a new flat?

What I heard from experience of other people. Orange (mobile operator) won't take any action till the moment of issue of the next bill. Then the fine will be added. Next month, if still not paid, they will send you sms with 3 days warning and then switch off the line (exept for incoming calls)
CSS (health insurance) send you reminder first and after 3 months delay add the fine to the bill (approx. 10% from the bill).
Special caution use in case of SBB/CFF (train network operator). In the 2nd warning there is 10 days deadline, otherwise your case will be passed to collectors. That can spoil your credit history and cost you a lot of money