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Sunrise does not allow written terminations. If you want to get rid of an unwanted subscription, you spend hours with customer service.
Luc Hofstetter and Andri Heimann have one thing in common: frustration with the customer service of the telecom provider Sunrise.
“I think Sunrise customer service is of very poor quality for such a large company,” complains former customer Luc Hofstetter. Like Andri Heimann, he wanted to cancel a subscription that he had never taken out.
«I had a customer service conversation for an offer for a cell phone and internet subscription. And instead of an offer for both, there was only an offer for the Internet. I got a contract for my cell phone,” says Heimann.
He has to make several phone calls to different call center employees over a period of 6 months and spend hours on hold to cancel the unwanted cell phone subscription.
Problem-free 97% of customer service cases
Other customers with similar experiences get in touch with “Kassenjagd”. When confronted with this, Sunrise media spokesman Rolf Ziebold replied that this feedback was only “a marginally small part, where each case usually has individually different constellations”.
97% of customer service cases would not cause any problems. Sunrise has around 2.8 million customers in the mobile segment.
Sunrise frontrunner for ombudsman office
At the telecommunications arbitration board “Ombudscom”, Sunrise is the front runner when it comes to arbitration procedures. In 2023 there were 443 cases, Salt had 115 cases, Swisscom had 102, the latter with significantly more customers.
Sara Stalder, managing director of the Consumer Protection Foundation, is also piling up complaints about Sunrise. Her tip: If someone can’t cancel an unwanted subscription, she recommends going to the ombudsman’s office.
«If you weren’t aware that you had signed a contract, it didn’t come about. That means I’ll tell Sunrise that no subscription has been taken out, no contract has been concluded. Then there should be peace. But at Sunrise you have to take further actions and then say relatively quickly: That’s it, now we’re going to go to the Ombudscom,” says Sara Stalder.
Ombudscom mediates, but also invoices Sunrise, which can speed up action.
Controversial ban on written termination
The form of termination at Sunrise is also controversial: only termination via chat or telephone is accepted; written contract terminations are not accepted. This regularly causes anger among customers.
Sunrise justifies itself by saying that there are details to be taken into account when canceling because of the links between different products. “When it comes to written terminations, there are often ambiguities that require questions for clarification,” the media spokesman points out.
This causes costs, which is why the company decided to cancel via chat or telephone. Zurich cantonal courts have confirmed this practice. However, legal experts criticize the practice.
If customers are unable to reach their goal via telephone or chat, Sunrise will also accept written cancellations in the future: either via the contact form sunrise.ch/help or in writing by post. Rolf Ziebold explains this in the “Kassen Rush” interview.