Since I'm on the forum and here in Switzerland, I hear all the time complains about how customer service here is bad. I got also the ''chance'' to experimented it.

But I am so pleased today, I had such a good experience and I want to share it with you.

Monday, I went to H&M to buy some clothes for my little daughter. I began to look around and found stuff for me as well....

Anyway, long story short, I bought a nice cardigan and put it in the washing machine. The tag was saying to clean it by machine on the wool cycle, as I did. It came out so small, I could'nt fit my arm in the sleeve. It shrank half size!

Ok, I'll turn it back... Yeah, but with the way they are here, they will give me **** and tell me it was my fault, etc... My husband told me I should try anyway. I looked for the bill, and my dear husband throw it away and the garbage truck already passed.

70chf straight in the garbage...

I decided to send an email to H&M and told them my story. At least to let them know about the tag and what happened with me respecting the washing instruction. I didn't expect any answer from them, honestly.

The very next morning, I received an email back. The lady was going to take care of it and contact the quality department and come back to me. Today, I received an other email telling me how sorry she was, and after a talk with the quality depart. they didn't have any similar case with that cardigan... Crap, they are not going to do anything about it....

I was wrong!!! I kept reading:

She told me to bring it back where I bought it, she will contact the Manager and they will give me my money back! I am so pleased with their service! This is just so nice!

Happy happy happy! She made my day..... my week!

I have heard about poor customer service many a times here but didnt actually experience it. All of my experiences have been pretty pleasent and sometimes surprising like above.

Lovely, I'm happy for you Nil.
70 bucks is quite a sum to loose in such a way. Will you buy yourself a new cardigan with it?

on an opposing experience...

I bought a cheap mobile phone when I first arrived in switzerland so I can make calls, and be reachable within the first week...

The phone was brand new with all trims etc.. and was under warranty, in under a year the phone decided to just switch itself off (the phone had a history of tempramental behaviour) as I switched it back on it started asking for some random pin code, (no it wasn't something I set, it wasn't any of the pins given to me originally and it wasn't a PUK) anyway so I decided to take it to the swissscum shop, where I was told great, it's under warranty bla de bla and we will send it to be repaired... a week has passed I got a letter to say that there was a software problem and this is unfortunately not covered by the warranty and that if I wanted it fixed I should contact them and pay a fee of CHF70 odd franks to fix it, (ps the phone was worth under CHF60)

The whole excercise was a total waste of time, and at times I felt like smashing the phone in front of the customer service guy! lucky they were all nicey nicey!

In this country I find that if anyone can think of a way to screw you, they will try it, from housing to mobile phone contracts, to clothes shops, goverment departments, anything! The whole country is over insured, under compenstated! but we all love it, why cos we couldn't possibly get what we get here anywhere else, and if we could we would disappear at a drop of a hat! I mean who wouldn't!

ahhh that's that out of the way then... *rant of the day is over*

Cheers lol

The H&M experience is nice - but rare in Switzerland. I absolutely agree that customer service in this country is awful. You buy something and for some reason you find out it doesn't fit. Never try to bring it back and get your money back, no way!

Instead, they give you a voucher in the amount of the item purchased and force you to choose something else, even if there's nothing you want. This Swiss mentality of "your problem you gave us your money, no way we'll give it back to you" is beyond all bearing.

But then, customers' rights and protection in Switzerland date back to the Stone Age anyway…

It's really nice to hear about a good experience. Why? Because it is so so rare. Customer Service is absolutely pathetic in this country. Be it in restaurants, hotels, supermarkets or shopping stores.

Full marks to H&M. Thanks to your experience, they will remain in my good book.

We had a couple of good customer service experiences too lately. Even with Swisscom – though not with returning goods. We bought a new computer and our old modem didn’t fit anymore. After a phone call we got sent a new modem for free with express mail.
Other experience: We got a new fuse for a standing lamp for free from the Theo Jacob shop in Bern.
Anyway, wouldn’t want to comment on ALL customer service in ALL of the country, but I can’t complain more than in other countries - in my very limited personal experience.

Whew, thank you for posting that MM&I! I was starting to get depressed reading all the bad experiences following the OP's good one... surely more folks have had good experiences they can share, haven't they?


As for myself, I've not had a particularly bad experience yet and I've had to interact in broken English / German with a number of folks when looking for a bra in my size. Even in the shops where they knew they couldn't help me, they often had suggestion of where I could check AND helped point me in the right direction to find the place.

I happen to find that particularly fantastic as they knew they weren't going to get my money (as they didn't have what I needed) and they "had" to overcome language issues to boot.

To go back on my good experience, it still going!

I went back to the shop and found an other cardigan to replace it. I was taking so much my time because I was a little bit scared to go to the lady for the replacement... I was scared to get a speach of what I should or shouldn't do, what wrong things, etc...

I ask in english to see the lady, and she was so nice, smilling and very polite. She was looking at the cardigan in shock, but very understanding.

She send me to the cashier and she left, and when I left the store, she passed by to thanks me and wished me a great day!

I am very happy!

I hope some others could come with nice experiences. With all the bad experiences I had and read from the forum, I have such a low expectation on customer service, a little thing will make my day!

My new cardigan is great!

That experience the OP had in H&M was because the company is from Sweden and that is thier policy. If it was a Swiss store you can forget it. Once the Swiss get your money they forget about you...

Well lucky you got away..LOL The problems start "after" they get your money

I've only had to return one thing but my experience couldn't have been better. I returned a shower curtain to Interio simply because I found one I liked better elsewhere.

It was still unopened and I had the receipt, but I returned it to a different Interio than the one I where I purchased it. I thought that might gunk up the works, but they were lovely.

They took the shower curtain and refunded cash back and were very pleasant the whole time. So here's a little shout out to the little Interio in downtown Lausanne.

In the computer and telecommunications business the customer is always wrong and the "specialists" are always right and entitled to charge you. And this not only in Switzerland but also in the U.K. and the USA (where we have our main suppliers). The US suppliers at least are polite and nice, but the UK/CH ones are not.

I've been here for four years, and the only lousy customer service experience I ever had was with cablecom. I've never not been able to return something I wanted to return, be it broken or just the wrong thing, I've never had horrible service at a restaurant, and one time, which really stands out, I forgot my wallet while buying a few cases of beer at a drink shop. The guy told me to take the beer and pay him next time.

Maybe I'm just the lucky exception.

The laws at present protect the "domestic", French, British, US, Japanese suppliers, so that you in a shop take something back you may get the "info" from Tokyo, Osaka, Lyon, Paris, London, Manchester, Birmingham, Chicago, New York, Charlotte "why did you take it back ? the customer has no right to return it ? Did you damage it in your shop ? we can deliver a replacement at ..... ! "" and I made similar experiences in shops in Italy, Germany, France and the U.K. Particular UK personnel are prone to say "no, we never had this in the U.K. " . No, everything depends on :
- the company
- the person
- the branch
- and ....... not least on you ! how you say things

I think a lot has to do with the attitude with which you go into the situation.

If you smile at them, remain factual, pleasant, they are more likely to remain pleasant.

If you go into the shop all guns blazing, you are unlikely to get a pleasant response. It is human nature.

Also remember that these service people are human! And it is likely that they have just dealt with another rather unpleasant customer, just before you came into the shop.


Thank you for your story Nil. It is good that good experiences are shared here too.

For those who can read German HERE is a link to a few of KTipp's "englightenment of the day" articles of customer service PRAISE.

Just to give you a little hope for next time: You don't have to accept such vouchers! By law, you're entitled to have your merchandise exchanged or get your money back.

Federal laws about this clearly say that you as customer only have the right of return if the material is lousy due to production mistakes or has missing parts, but that you have no right of return just because you already bought the same article before or the receiver of a gift does not like it or dislikes the colour. If the shop in question is exercising fair dealing (Kulanz) the customer can exchange it for an article of the same price or higher.



This only applies if the merchandise is faulty or has missing parts. "Fits" is a difficult term. If you for instance buy an electrical item which does not fit due to the various types of equipment in use, you have no right of return, but what you will get offered is to purchase whatever kind of adapter.



well, it is a list of nice things. I today had almost a series of such things around Limmatplatz. First in Migros, the service was friendly. Second in the Outdoors-Shop, the salesman was extremely helpful and showed me how to place the batteries and everything about my purchase. And the waitress in the Cafeteria Limmatplatz right accross was prompt and swift and friendly. The service at the Turkish grocery shop accross the place was good as usual, and the service in the Maharaja Indian Shop a bit down Langstrasse was remarkable. Must have been the moon .....

well, HM, zara etc, they all shrank, no doubts...when i get them, they are all larger than my size should be, and after washing, they could fit me perfectly fine. so my suggestion, maybe we could buy one size bigger next time?