A cheerful and well-dressed gentleman knocked on our door (we = my girlfriend and I) and wanted to talk about our health insurance (I must admit at first I though he wanted to talk about Jesus ).

He first asked if we ever had problems with health insurance claims, and then he asked what health insurance we currently have and what premium we're paying. We told him that we're both students and have a quite cheap health insurance and never had any problems. He then suggested that we may be eligible for a health insurance subsidy (we're not, our PhD salary is higher than the subsidy limit), wished us a good evening, and left. He never offered us an alternative insurance plan or anything.

The entire conversation was in French, which we both speak to some extent but not perfectly, so we may have missed something.

I have to say this entire encounter was extremely bizarre and almost fishy, has anyone had a similar experience?

It was the police, sniffing you out for any wacky baccy.

Not sure if serious or troll, but I'm leaning towards the latter

These cold callers are more often than not freelance insurance brokers, who want to sell new health care or other insurances, and then getting a commission from the insurance company for new contracts. And some are quite ruthless and hard sell is an art they manage to a t.....

Fact is, all of the Swiss consumer Magazines (print and on TV) are warning from this. As more often than not you end up with binding 5 years contracts and sometimes not the right coverage for you...and to boot, not even much cheaper than the insurance you had.

So most likely it was what happened to you and upon realising there is not much money to be made from students he upped and left.

HTH

EE

Many criminal gangs work an area by knocking on doors, seeing if anyone is at home, looking for valuables to steal later. As you are probably poor like me, they don't stay around very long.

Anyone that comes to your door and tries to sell you anything must carry a permit from the town's trading/commercial police. Just ask to see their commercial permit next time.

Yup, and that too!

Yep, that was also our non-fishy explanation of what may have happened...

...and that was the fishy one . Good point about the permit, we'll ask next time.

Thanks!

not an insurance seller but an individual claiming to be associated with a hospital called my elderly relative told her one of her sons had been in a car accident and asked my relative to wire some money for surgery. My relative would have wired the money but fortunately had problems getting to the bank and contacted a neighbor, who in turn assured it was a scam. That con artist scared my relative so much, she didnt consider calling her son to check the validity of the story.

Yup. I'm old enough to be a target of those scammers. I'm looking forward to it.