Fellow Swiss redditors, I am seeking your help to understand whether my insurance company is trying to screw me over (I mean, that’s their business model, but this is beyond the point), or is their practice on contract modifications standard. In the beginning of the year, I purchased a car that I insured with a long-term 3rd-party liability contract. I had to specify the number of kilometers I drive yearly. This being my first car in Switzerland, I didn’t really know, but ran some estimates and chose 15’000km. I inquired about potentially increasing this and they said it can be done easily in the future. It turns out I am driving much more than that and have already surpassed the 15’000km by 4’000km. I urgently need to adapt the insurance contract and contacted my advisor. This is where the questionable practice comes: the broker from the insurance company sent me an offer and I noticed that this offer is not an extension of the existing contract, but a completely new contract. In practice, this extends my minimum contract period by another year, instead of keeping the initial end date per when I first signed the contract. I inquired about this and he told me that “the system is like this” and nothing can be done about it, that it’s impossible to extend the contract and that it just makes a new contract. This pisses me off on two levels: one, when I asked him early 2026 about potentially increasing the kilometers if needed, he told me not to worry and that it can be adjusted later with a contract modification and two, because this feels like a dumb excuse. So far, with any other Swiss company I’ve had to modify contracts with (mobile, apartments, work, etc.) we have always simply made an extension to the existing contract. I thought this was standard practice when the modification favors the business. Is the practice of my insurance company normal? Is it even legal per OR or maybe their T&Cs? To me, this feels absurd: you don’t sign a new lease for your apartment simply because you change guarantor or because the rent changes, sams like you don’t make a new mobile phone contract because you moved address. I can name the insurance company if needed, but only if necessary to answer my question. submitted by /u/Thebosonsword
Originally posted by u/Thebosonsword on r/Switzerland