You know, in Switzerland there is a thing, that if a product or service has the name "Swiss" in its name, then it can be sold for any price regardless of quality - and it will fly off the shelves. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's true.
Swisscom is the biggest ISP in Switzerland - they charge high prices for very slow internet. But they have the word "Swiss" in their name, so it's okay to sell 100 Mbps connection for 70 CHF, which many people buys. But the same people can get 10 Gbps connection at the same place for 40-50 CHF also by simply visiting a competing store, and spending 15 minutes on it. But that won't have the word "Swiss" in it.
There really is this bias — it’s crazy. Not just the name “Swiss,” but allusions to the Swiss flag, Swiss typography, other Swiss branding. It almost looks like some of the products are state run.
(Also, the internet connection actually is phenomenally good.)
Swiss law does require an overwhelming majority of the value of a product be made in Switzerland to use Swiss flag branding, or even Swiss landmarks or other signifiers of Swiss-ness. That's why Toblerone had to remove the drawing of the Matterhorn they've had since forever on the side of their triangular tubes, because some production has been shifted to Poland.
> in Switzerland there is a thing, that if a product or service has the name "Swiss" in its name, then it can be sold for any price regardless of quality
That's just basic marketing. You'll see that in most countries, I don't believe that it is unique to Switzerland.
For example: in the US you'll see many products that say "made in America" on the box. Those will likely outsell competing products, even if those are cheaper and better quality still.
And similarly: if you try to sell the "made in America" product in a different country it'll likely by outsold by the "made in [country]" products there.
I feel it's a little more extreme for swiss companies though, especially outside the country. My aunt who works in Rome in the tourism industry told us of a local company that had 'swiss' in the name, simply because of the positive connotation, even when they don't seem to have any relation to the country.
It's why I feel wary of making business with any company with the word 'swiss' in it's name
"made in" is completely different. A higher price is justified by supporting Americans in some way, rather than somewhere offshore.
This is more like McDonald's putting a maple leaf in their logo in Canada. It changes nothing but, apparently, Canadians like it more (I frequently watch Canadian television and non-canadian companies are frequently adding a leaf somewhere in the advertising).
And Decathlon's bikes are Van Rysel, which does mean "from Lille" (where the bikes are designed) but you wouldn't know it unless you speak Dutch. I don't think they hide anything really, but having a Dutch-sounding makes a connection to the Dutch and Flemish who are well known for cycling.
I've noticed a similar thing when buying products online. Overseas sellers from Asia will package their product as "Designed in Germany" or include a red cross to indicate Swiss design, but may not actually be designed or manufactured in Switzerland. Nice packaging though :)
Kind of the ideal setup though. Apple’s design and engineering work has been great, China’s manufacturing can execute on it better than anyone else (see the issues with iPhone production in India).
It’s like saying the ideal car would be designed by Italians, engineered by Germans, and built by the Japanese.
Happy Swisscom customer here. I decided the price is worth it.
The internet they sell is the same speed as everyone else, gigabit is gigabit. Yes there are ISPs with lower prices, like Init7. DO NOT USE INIT7!!
I signed up for them some years ago back when gigabit was rarer, I liked their price and nerd orientation for things like IPv6. Big, big, mistake. Thoroughly awful company.
The problem: my wife wanted to watch TV. Reasonable. They offer it only via an Apple TV app but no problem, I happened to have an Apple TV already. Their app sucks, ugly MVP level stuff but worse, it just did not work reliably. Video stalls and freezes all the time. I get in touch with support, eventually, after much work and bad support experiences, I get in touch with the one guy they actually have working on their TV. It turns out the entire TV team either quit or was laid off and he was now trying to figure out how it all worked. We did some debugging and eventually figured out that their encoders/streamers were putting packets into the stream sometimes that older Apple TVs didn't understand. No warning about this anywhere. Also: they have no way to fix it. I was just told to buy a new Apple TV.
This is aggravating but I'm trying to be friendly to the small local geeky company that's competing with the big state-owned telco, so I do it. But this doesn't help, there are still TV streaming problems.
So I tell them, look, we tried, but your service just doesn't work. Please give me a partial refund and cancel my contract. This is where the hell really starts because I get an extremely rude email saying that actually if I check the fine print the TV service is offered for free and the entire cost of the contract is only for the internet service, therefore there's no expectation that the TV service will work at all and they accept zero liability or responsibility if it doesn't.
Also, Init7 only bills annually, and "your shit doesn't work" is not considered by them to be a reason to cancel. And because I was working with their TV guy to try and get their own problems fixed the billing period had just elapsed, so they forced me to pay the entire next year up front for a service that was broken.
I told them this was totally unacceptable behavior and probably illegal, their answer was I should take them to court.
At this point I investigated who these cowboys are a bit more and discovered their CEO flaming random customers on Twitter, in again totally unprofessional ways. He's since decamped for Bluesky which says it all.
In the end I didn't take them to court, I just told them I'd warn anyone I met away from their shitty company, sunk the 667 CHF penalty (I will NEVER sign up for yearly billing from an ISP again), and switched to SwissCom.
What a giant difference. A massively more professional outfit with identical feature support and speed. They cut you in on savings if you agree to talk with their LLM support bot first before escalating to a call center, but "Sam" actually works so this turned out to be a good deal. Their TV app is much better, and reliable. I switched phone service too and often have reception where other people don't. Every interaction with them is easy, zero complaints.
Lesson learned: paying for "Swiss Quality" is sometimes worth it even inside Switzerland. Also with smaller firms you're just sometimes signing up with assholes and don't even know it. I still think their "TV is free so it doesn't have to work" trick is probably illegal, I don't know how you can get away with that.
Everything is swiss quality when it works. My mobile subscription is at Swisscom, but I downgraded it to call/text only PAYG years ago.
First I wanted (mobile) internet connection on my phone. I checked on their website, they had some monthly package for 10-or-so CHF, which I wanted.
The customer service never heard of it, and signed me up for a 5CHF/day package without asking me. That was a lot of fun doing it back - initially they were also pointing to random points in the contract. But they could never find the part where I actually asked them to subscribe me to something that I didn't want.
Afterwards they could never make 4G/5G internet work reliably around my home (which is pretty funny, because they have a tower literally above my head, and another 40 meters away), it kept going unresponsive for 30-40 seconds at random times. I did ping-pong with their customer service for about a months before I gave up, cancelled internet part and switched to PAYG.
At least they still send me spam - I keep clicking the unsubscribe link, but they are not bothered by it.
I just want to illustrate that there are bad experiences with all providers.
I wish my country India was like that, because we are totally opposite. Anything made in India is considered very bad quality and will not fetch a good price even if better than imported goods.
Swisscom is the biggest ISP in Switzerland - they charge high prices for very slow internet. But they have the word "Swiss" in their name, so it's okay to sell 100 Mbps connection for 70 CHF, which many people buys. But the same people can get 10 Gbps connection at the same place for 40-50 CHF also by simply visiting a competing store, and spending 15 minutes on it. But that won't have the word "Swiss" in it.