Some time ago I have received my utility cost statement (Nebenkostenabrechnung) for 2024/2025 and I’m pretty shocked. The water costs for our building have more than doubled compared to the previous year (+118%). As a 2-person household, I simply cannot explain this. Our situation: We live in a 120m² apartment in Canton Zurich, away from the city center. The building has 9 units spread across 3 floors, each floor with two 120m² apartments and one smaller 80m² apartment. The water rate in our municipality is CHF 1.40/m³. The water bill for the entire building went from CHF 4,415 last year to CHF 9,620 this year. When you do the math, that’s roughly 6,000+ m³ of water for about 25-30 residents, which is over 4x what would be considered normal consumption in Switzerland. To make things worse, there are no individual water meters per apartment. The total building consumption is simply split across all tenants based on apartment size. We have a 120m² apartment with just 2 people, so we’re paying the same proportional share as a family of 5-6 in an equally sized apartment. We’re essentially subsidizing the water usage of larger households regardless of our actual consumption, I find this quite bad but would still be fine if the bill would have not been so high. Other items that also increased significantly: Heating oil: +27.5% Sewage: +118% general maintenance + gardening: +474% (though in absolute terms it’s still a relatively small amount of ~CHF 1,500 compared to the heating and water costs) The property management is Wincasa. The situation with Wincasa so far: I’ve already sent a detailed letter requesting explanations and access to the original invoices and receipts. Here’s where it gets frustrating: They refused to send us the bills or any documentation via email. They insist we come to their offices in person to view the documents. We tried to schedule an appointment, but they take about 2 weeks to respond to each message. By the time they reply, every date we proposed is already in the past and no longer relevant. Meanwhile, they are already sending us payment reminders because I’m refusing to pay before I’ve actually seen the underlying bills and verified the charges. So they’re making it practically impossible to exercise my right to inspect the documents, while simultaneously pressuring me to pay. This feels like a deliberate strategy. My questions: Has anyone had similar experiences, especially sudden unexplainable cost increases for water/sewage? How much do you pay for water? If you’re willing to share: number of people in your whole building, approximate living space, annual amount in CHF, and your canton/municipality. Any experiences with Wincasa in cases like this? How cooperative were they? Could this be a pipe leak or something similar? Why Wincasa is not alarmed by such an increase, for them it seems to be completely normal. What are my options regarding the payment reminders? Can they escalate this while I’m still waiting for them to grant me access to the documents? Is there a way to formally “pause” the payment obligation until the inspection has taken place? Has anyone successfully forced a property management to provide documents via email or mail, instead of requiring an in-person visit? Has anyone been through something like this? Any tips on how to handle the payment pressure while still waiting for transparency? And is there anything else I should be doing that I’m not thinking of? Thanks for any help or shared experiences. submitted by /u/andrewpol88
Originally posted by u/andrewpol88 on r/Switzerland