On the way from lauterbrunnen to interlaken on sept 30th we met this officer at 3.30 pm who was so rude and charged us 100 chf though we had a travel pass
She was laud and intimidating and did not believe us that we had internet issues so the pass was activated just after train got started. We were robbed.
They arenāt there to listen to mitigating circumstances. The ticket inspectorās job is to inspect tickets. No valid ticket? Fine (literally).
If you think about it, any fare dodger could say the same or any similar excuse.
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Welcome to Switzerland!
Itās normal. Ticket inspectors are not known for the ability to reason. Their job is to check and give fines.
If you think the ticket inspector is wrong, never discuss with the inspector. Keep all the tickets (evidence), ask for the fine, and show up next day to any train station ticket counter to get the fine revoked.
Before having a car I had a GA (general abbonement). One day I got controlled, the machine of the controller said my GA did not exist. I tried to log in into my swisspass account to show that I had a valid GA but Mr. Ticket Checker was quite emphatic to tell that only his machine could tell the truth. Other 3 people in the same wagon got finedā¦
So, I had to go next day to a damned train station, got the fined revoked, and gave feedback as GA customer about Mr. _____ for excellent customer service.
Well, this is Switzerland and thereās no online guidance about how to deal with ticket controllers. Hope you can get that fine revoked. āInternet issuesā will never work with the ticket controller, but it surely works at the train station.
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The good news is that there is a telephone number on the back of the fine which you can call to appeal (or go to the ticket office). If this is your first offence, you have a good chance of it being removed or reduced.
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I always use Easyride on the SBB app, just flick it on as Iām walking to the station. Its like having a GA for the day, and it often saves me money e.g. I used to pay for two singles to and from Zug to Zurich. However Easyride calculates that I can make the return journey for a single fare if Iām only there for a short time e.g. picking someone up. Just like the London Oyster card, it calculates the most efficient journeys at the end of the day, so you donāt have to.
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The rule is to buy/validate/whatever your ticket before you get on board the bus/tram/train/boat/funicular/mouette/etc not afterwards. If you have internet problems you donāt get on.
PS. Where else on the planet can you buy a single ticket/pass involving al of the above.
In Switzerland you donāt board the train without activating or validating your ticket first - guaranteed fine.
Yes. On a local train, if one is running marginally late for activation (so risk being with an āinvalidā ticket for the whole journey), it may be better instead, to buy the same journey but starting from the next station ..
This way one would only be āwithout a ticketā for 1 stop, thereafter the activation becomes valid. If one buys the initial ticket late he would risk a fine throughout the journey.
Personally, I donāt really relate.
What are you complaining about? That you were caught cheating by the rules given?
Let me shed a tear (or not) about your situation.
Not wishing it upon you, but I hope you will never experience a real robbery. Since you complain about being robbed ā¦
Anyway ā¦ welcome to the community. Iāll look forward to any future contributions of yours.
Easy, take a look at what a ātravel passā is on the SBB website.
- a multi-journey ticket only for non-residents of Switzerland
- possible to buy in advance (up to 11 months)
- it can be linked to the SBB app for the phone
So, this is probably not about buying a ticket 1 second after train scheduled departure. Itās the frustrating experience of buying the Swiss Travel Pass literal days in advance, believing everythingās alright and thenā¦controller happens.
Perhaps.
I tend to take Occamās Razor approach of āwhat is the simplest explanation.ā In this case it looks to me like someone was trying to be a little bit too smart.
Maybe I am wrong. Still looks most likely to me.
You can explain away all that you want.
Why did the person originally posting post?
Perhaps the person posting can explain?
Yes, first post, common subject of complaint. Use of term ātravel passā no-specific, most likely just meant ticket.
The system is quite harsh, and there have been cases of people being fined when they have indeed bought their ticket before boarding the train, but failed to notice that because the train was late leaving their ticket would not be considered valid. (I think they would have a case for getting the fine reversed though).
I did find myself, just a week or two ago, having made a journey without a valid ticket, and would have been incredibly angry if Iād got caught, which thankfully I did not. Iām not a frequent user of public transport but that day I was using the bus to go down the valley to pick my car up from a garage. What happened was this:
Before leaving house, check the SBB app for next bus time. Confirm that if I leave right now I should have a couple of minutes spare. Donāt buy ticket yet in case I miss it, even though itās only five minutes walk.
Arrive at bus stop, see the bus at its starting point along the road, not moving yet.
Still a couple of minutes before scheduled start time, Go back into SBB app, reselect the journey and press ābuyā.
One hour later, after the journey, receive a notification āyour journey is about to startā. Ooop. So the app had apparently decided between first and second use that it would change my selected journey to the next one, over an hour later, even though there was still a couple of minutes spare. And of course I hadnāt bothered to check - why would I?
Was tempted to refund the ticket (before the ticketed journey started), then realised that thereās a chf10 admin charge to do so and the fare was only chf11.50 in the first place, so decided not to bother.
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It obviously refers to the Swiss Travel Pass, a number of day passes with either preset or flexible dates of validity depending on the variant bought.
Itās highly unlikely that a tourist starts the first ride at 3.30pm. To make the best use of the day they start early.
And that means an honest tourist is highly unlikely to ever face OPās problem that late in the day. An honest tourist, if at all, is in such a situation in the (early) morning.
Not at all obvious, especially if we infer from the posting name that English may not be their mother tongue.
As for the time of day, look at the journey - they had presumably spent the day up the mountain at Wengen or Muerren and were returning to Interlaken, so this, bought slightly too late as it was, would have been a single-journey ticket; we assume they already had one for the earlier journey up the mountain.
No they didnāt, OP explicitly says they had passes. A pass is not a ticket.
But you seem to agree that an honest OP would have activated them in the morning already.
Youāre making an awful lot of assumptions based on absolutely nothing other than your own prejudices.
Pretty muchā¦
Also, I you canāt activate it via the internet you can also activate it at the ticket office as I have done on a couple of occasions when I had such issues.
See point about native languages. And point about the journey - if they had a valid Swiss Travel Pass it would already have been active from the morning journey from Interlake to Lauterbrunnen (maybe you donāt know the places, but there is no road connection from Lauterbrunen except back down to Interlaken so they canāt have got there any other way.
If you read my other post about my own near-miss last week you will see that I made a mistake with the SBB app myself, so I can well sympathise with someone else doing so. In this case the implication is that they had selected the desired journey options in the app but not fully completed the purchase, be it due to an internet glitch or a problem with the payment. It would be very easy to do, and a foreigner, unaware of the harshness of the rules, just thinks, thatās OK, Iāll try again once Iāve found a seat.
So no, I do not agree that the OP was necessarily being dishonest as you suggest.
Edit: just used AI to help, comes back with:
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The name ā¦ is a strong clue, points squarely to an Indian speaker, likely Jain.
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Indian English already uses āpassā as a native transit term ā āseason pass,ā ātravel pass,ā āmonthly passā are standard in Indian transit vocabulary (Delhi Metro, Indian Railways). Unlike a German or French speaker whose L1 has a different word for the concept, an Indian speakerās L1 and L2 both use āpassā for multi-ride/period documents, so the word feels natural and generalizable.
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I always use easy ride on top of my abo or ticket to prevent exactly this kind of discussions or inconvenience. You donāt get charged because easy ride is aware of your valid ticket