Like pretty much everyone these days, I’m in desperate need of cooling down my apartment. I missed the boat on a Midea AC, so I decided to buy at least a solid fan. Of course, as many other people had the same idea, these goods quickly became scarce. I could have driven to different cities since shops were showing physical availability in-store, but Interdiscount had full online availability of the selected fan, with delivery on Thursday. Sounds perfect - no need to search, and even if the delivery is delayed a bit, I will still get it before the weekend. Unfortunately, my mistake was that I didn’t assume Interdiscount had been lying to me the entire time. The delivery didn’t arrive yesterday, it’s not arriving today, and the status of my order changed to unknown. They sold me a product they no longer had, taking my money and lying about an express delivery. I called them, but of course, nobody picks up the phone at the customer helpline, and they don’t even have a waiting queue. I searched for alternatives, knowing that my chances of finding a fan on a Friday are very low. But I was lucky! The Interdiscount near my workplace was one of the very few that still had 2 pieces of a different fan. I ran there immediately, knowing they might sell out any minute, or maybe someone had even bought them half an hour ago and the website was not yet updated. What I didn’t expect was that they had sold the very last fan yesterday, and even the employee admitted that the availability shown on the website is completely fictional. Of course, now not a single physical shop has any more fans available, and I will have to suffer through the weekend. I could have made a trip around the shops on Wednesday while fans were still available, but I trusted a Swiss retailer. In such a moment, one has to ask themselves: we are paying a significant markup on many products compared to neighboring countries, even though our VAT is lower, and every now and then we hear complaints from Swiss retailers about how cross-border shopping is killing them and how tax-free limits must be eradicated. But what do we get in exchange? I don’t expect amazing customer service or immediate availability of every product. Can they at least stop lying to customers? submitted by /u/yarpen_z
Originally posted by u/yarpen_z on r/Switzerland