My wife and I were contracted with them for a while, because they had a good deal for people under 30.
Anyway, we're both past that threshold and so wanted to move on.
Despite the wording in both of our contracts being identical (it was in fact, one contract with two phone numbers), they decided that my wife should pay 200CHF to cancel, while I could cancel for free.
After a couple of months of bickering (telephone support are useless at best, intentionally misleading at worse), we finally got them to agree that the contract states that there would be no fee for cancellation after a certain period of time.
Next issue - for the first 6 months after the contract ended, Salt kept sending us bills. Not, as you might think and somewhat understand, for the flat rate of the contract that had no ended, no, but for mysterious call and data usage that a) happened past the end of the contracted date and b) didn't even line up with call and data usage with our new service provider.
The people in the shops are also useless and rude. Ask to cancel, they say call the phone line. One guy was selling a phone to someone in English in front of us, and then when we got the line to cancel, suddenly they can't speak English any longer. When my wife reveals that she's Swiss, he said 'I don't have time' and asked the next customer forward.
Salt. Never again.
Don't go to Salt fibre, either. It's cheap because it's crap.
In stark contrast, the staff at my local Salt store have always offered me the best deals (literally - one time they offered a deal that included my son's phone contract linked to mine for 9.95, and since they were linked I got a 15 franc per month discount on my contract. This was offered when I asked for a pre-paid, since he wouldn't be using the phone much, and I accepted since being paid 5 francs a month is even better than pre-paid and minimal use). They also use whichever language they know that a customer prefers.
As for billing, once I went outside Switzerland and the Go Europe option (for standard in-Switzerland prices on calls and SMS while roaming) didn't switch on when I selected it on the website before leaving the country. A few calls later, the bill was 'compensated' on the next monthly bill.
As for Salt fibre, we've had fewer problems than we did when we had Swisscom and it runs much faster - as advertised.
The biggest issue is with the layout of our apartment, since the fibre socket is about five metres of wall away from the nearest power socket (so nothing to do with Salt, the fibre socket was there before we moved into the apartment).
I got Salt Fiber for my apartment and Salt Mobile for me and the Mrs when we moved here as the combined price was good.
Salt Fiber: yes the Apple TV remote (however not really their fault) is atrocious but SaltTV is very good in terms of channels and functionalities. The connection speed for me was spot on. As the maximum you can get in CH at the moment is 1 Gbit/s my apple tv connected with cable to the router always scored 90 to 95% of the maximum theoretical speed. Never had an issue in 2 years, activation was quick and fast in 2 weeks.
Salt mobile: yes there are some areas where the connection is poor. But as I live and work in Geneva city this doesn't bother me much. Again never had an issue in 2 years. Price is fair compared to Swisscom.
I had to close my Fiber contract as I moved to a part of Geneva not covered by Salt so now I use Init7 (Hybrid7, so Init loans the line from Swisscom) and speed is a bit lower (75 to 85% of the maximum theoretical speed). I was able to close my contract pretty quickly and no penalties as I was closing it by moving to an area not covered by Salt.
I have to say that I would have kept Salt Fiber if I were able to do so.
I did have a very poor interaction with customer service a few years ago, reported him and had a better interaction with another agent. There are assholes everywhere.
We switched to the plan that has free roaming, and got that for half price, so we’re happy.
you think salt was bad.. hold my beer.....
UPC has the worst level of service, and them buying SUNRISE
bods bad omens for sunrise service which are generally decent.
Wait and see.. but having 3 brands that suck makes swisscom
look really really good.
UPC absolute shit
SALT mostly works
SUNRISE quite decent
after merger
UPC/SUNRISE shite
SALT (no reason to try hard further deteriorates)
SWISSCOM increase prices in line with people running away from
those other poor quality carriers.
Its going to get more expensive for carriers in swiss, next few
years not cheaper sadly..
Luck for me I had the screen shot that I could email and demand that they honor. It took a couple of calls but the accepted in the end.
The lesson learned is to always take a screen shot of the offer and your acceptance before submitting the order so you have some proof.
A closer look on the email address turns out it's an internet scam with fake address.
These tools are for practical purposes useless in CH. I used to work for a telco before and we had tons of complains that people had bad reception in their homes while we could see that the network was extremly strong in their area. Swiss buildings, especially the modern ones, are build with TONS of steel to reinforce the concrete. No idea why they do this so much more than others... but I do know that this screws up peoples reception at home.
@Treverus, steel make buildings more resistant to earthquakes. Earthquakes are not that frequent in CH but they do happen. There could be widespread devastation considering the amount of old buildings.
The problem is : Every single time (and yes, it is every single time) that I call abroad, the person on the other side sees a number from a 3rd country: Greece, Croatia, Germany... or 'private number', so some people (friends, family or customers) do not pick up because they don't recognize the number. Calls to Switzerland are OK, but calls to EU / USA, always always a strange number appears.
I have gone several times to the shop to consult and 'softly complain', but the customer service is completely clueless as of what I'm talking about.
My hypotheses is that Salt 'subcontracts' local, European cheaper mobile networks (whichever is available) to transfer the calls... has anybody experienced the same problem? any way to solve it?
I think this is common technique by cheapest providers. I am not telco person but I think your assumption is correct.
Since UPC bought Sunrise, their customer service is terrible. Their prices have actually gone up, and they no longer seem to care if you threaten to switch to Salt. So, I think that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
On the topic, I believe it is excellent. They had a promotion for unlimited data/calls in CH + 100MB roaming in EU, which with all cumulative discounts costs me only 29/month.
In rural areas the signal might disappear sometimes, but why a Zürcher should care about rural areas?
Trains: very interesting use case. My tip: it’s a tube with several hundred phones moving from cell to cell at high speeds. So if you sit in the front of the train your reception will be a LOT better than in the back, no matter what network. While Swisscom has the strongest network, do they also have by far the most users... so you might have a better experience with a „worse but unpopular“ network on a train.
Ski resorts: roll a dice.
I’ve been overall, pretty happy with their unlimited data plan, which i abuse to high hell