I thought my experience may be useful to some people.
I rented a house for 7 1/2 years and throughout had only good experiences with the owners - until I informed them of my notice to leave!
Luckily for me I gave 9 months notice and realized from their behaviour that they were going to be basically thieves.
So I prepared everything in the house as I had received it. On the exit inspection - as I expected - the owners tried to claim many things that I was clearly not responsible for. I argued several of these - quoting rules on life time of things like bathrooms- and got several items removed from the exit checklist. However there were still points of disagreement. So I refused to sign and wrote my reasons on the exit checklist form.
I had researched my position as holding a blocked account and essentially unless you are taken to court your blocked account is released after 1 year.
The owners sent me a number of threatening letters which I reputed - with some excellent help from ASLOCA. They then involved the Tribunal de Arbitration which could not agree a solution. They then took me to Tribunal des Baux with the hearing a couple of weeks ago. By this time it was really a point of principle to me and I expected a swiss court to rule I favor of the Swiss owners. I was delighted when the exact opposite happened and the court essentially declared that they had zero evidence and my deposit was returned in full.
So if you are experiencing problems and are worried about the Swiss system - please don’t be as in my experience it was all very fair.