Everyone locally knows that cablecom is the cheapest internet/cable tv provider - because the customer service is shotty and once in a while, shady.
I have left the country once, and thus I have signed up not only once but twice with these guys (why do I do this to myself?). Whenever you call - if you happen not to speak any of the three official languages in Switzerland then good luck to you. You will probably not achieve what you want. Even if you do speak one of the three official languages in Switzerland, at least you understand. If you want to add and upgrade services - you will get whatever you want. If you want to downgrade or cancel any services - they will act confused, want to know why and route you to another department and make you wait for eternity until they get a trained person like a rottweiler to talk you out of it.
After my first time cancelling and moving out of the country, I kept receiving bills for a few months of services that were already cancelled. It took a lot of back and forth which was very time wasting to get this cleared, and also the involvement of my friend to call them and write to them. My other friends say they are notorious for sometimes having bill payment problems when people try to cancel. I found it interesting that one specific person on the phone knew how to speak English when it was describing service add ons, but had no clue at all when it came time to understanding that I needed to cancel my subscription. Really, really shady. It happened 2x over the course of the two weeks I tried to cancel, with the first time the caller kept me on hold and held it out for over 30 minutes. The second call I had to be really aggressive and repeat again and again the words "cancel internet" in both English and German because the lady kept ignoring me and kept trying to sell me an upgrade package which was supposedly cheaper.
There are moments, time to time over the years, that I have found a gem of a person who helps very well... so it's not all completely awful.
I still get my cable tv with them, but for internet, I now use Orange. I like being able to go to any store around Zurich and asking the customer representatives in the store about my internet plan. Now that Orange provides a mobile and "MiFi" (this is new - it's like WiFi but runs on a mobile satellite) at home bundled package (which you can basically use the phone network as WiFi and it's even portable), I only have to deal with one bill and eliminate the cost of the cablecom internet package. Saves money and hassle. The only downside with the Orange package is that there is no direct Ethernet connection, all wireless. read more
