I definitely pay for the connection separately!
Next black Friday?
I had three rental contracts with TV/internet included as a separate item. I have never seen it otherwise. If you have an item ‘general utilities’ (or something alike) you should contest this anyway since utilities have to be more specific. If the items are specific, it would be difficult to hide TV/internet in a different line item. How would you prove that TV/internet is part of the normal rent? I don’t think this is possible.
Not sure about this. It’s an option in your rental contract. I don’t think that you’re entitled to your money back just because you didn’t use it or you didn’t know about it. You always had the option to use it. As long as the landlord actually paid the amount to UPC, you can only cancel it going forward.
It might work if you were paying for cable already (eg sunrise Abo) because there there’s double charging for the service. (But should be sunrise reimbursing I guess, landlord has nothing to do with it)
Otherwise (eg you use fiber, not cable) yeah I don’t think it would work since technically they provided the service (you just weren’t using it).
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Yes. They can charge for an unused, uncancelled service, but not charge the same service twice. In the scenario I referred to it’s once to you, once to the landlord.
The re-charge would typically be the landlord part, since you have it in your package. The legacy contracts were Cablecom-landlord, landlord-tenant, so that’d be the way for the reimbursement (and the cancellation), as well.
Had this myself and found a brief communication with my landlord from 2017. That was for 2 months only, and when the topic was still “hot”, though.
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Why should they reimburse? They simply claim different business units that know nothing from each other 
Response:
Die Sunrise GmbH konnte uns Ihr Abonnement bestätigen. Gleichzeitig geben Sie aus Kulanz eine Gutschrift für die Verrechnungen 2025 + 2026, obwohl die Meldung Ihrerseits hätte erfolgen müssen. Wir haben Ihnen eine Gutschrift erstellt.
Saldo zu Ihren Gunsten (Gutschrift): CHF 600.75
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Congrats!
Interesting wording. Why would they need Sunrise to confirm your subscription? Also, Sunrise is a AG, not a GmbH
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I was wondering the same.
Since, in my experience, ISPs and landlords aren’t very accommodating, I suspect: Either Sunrise made a mistake and billed the landlord for the outlet, even though they should have known they weren’t supposed to, or the landlord made a mistake and billed me, without having received an invoice from Sunrise. Otherwise, I can’t imagine they’d be so accommodating.
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Or a conspiracy theory: Sunrise makes millions by always passing this cost on, but then acts “accommodating” because they don’t want any lawsuits, etc., which then ends this practice for everyone/everywhere. I mean, 90% of people don’t notice it anyway because it gets buried in the utility bills. And its free money If the majority doesn’t care. Just like airlines do:
In der Schweiz fehlt ein konsumentenfreundliches Leiturteil. Ein solches scheue die Swiss, deshalb gebe sie schnell nach, wenn man die Absicht zeige, den Rechtsweg zu beschreiten
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Because that was the main point of the claim. No gotcha here, it’s just Sunrise confirming to landlord “your tenant in apartment x already pays for this directly, we cancel it and refund you”, and the landlord passes the refund on.
Don’t think Sunrise or landlord did anything wrong. They have a contract for apartment x, Sunrise shouldn’t even know the name of the tenants in there. Even if they could match the connection to individual customer data and their internet packages, assuming they are allowed to do so, why would they?
Here, the renter missed that detail already when signing the rent and/or the internet package, spotted it now and could fix it afterwards. That’s all there is to it, consider it a happy end 
And AGs can register GmbHs. Doesn’t matter too much, and landlord might mix things up, but the GmbH is actually the organization customers are dealing with.
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Sunrise knows exactly how many flats are in this building (they need to, because as far as I understand it’s a fixed amount per flat) and how many subscriptions there are. So why doesn’t Sunrise use this data and simply bill the landlord for “all flats” - “known abos”?
Right. But to me, that’s far away from “didn’t do anything wrong.” It’s more like “did it wrong on purpose because it’s free money" and this worked the last years.
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The whole thing is historical. Back when everything was analog and the signal was broadcasted to the whole network, Cablecom (at the time) had no control over who was receiving the signal and who wasn’t (like a radio signal). That’s why it was an opt-out rather than an opt-in, and unused sockets were physically bloomed/blocked. Nowadays, the analog signal no longer exists, and everything is digital. Today, this wouldn’t even be necessary anymore.
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A tenant can also choose to not use the connection at all, i.e., cancelling the base subscription (paid via landlord) without going for a different cable subscription. I.e., it’s not quite as simple as that subtraction.
That said, I don’t want to defend UPC/Sunrise. I would think that they could have come up with some solution that eliminates double payments if they really wanted to.
Unencrypted DVB-C is still broadcast and available to anyone. But this is not relevant here.
UPC made a decision, around the same time, to:
- sell broadband (+ TV + phone) subscriptions that cover the base fee, likely to align with DSL and FTTH plans and stay competitive;
- bill individually, even the base fee.
That should have been done at once, for everyone and every building. There’s clear intent, as there are subscribers who got notified by letter, and some just moved to individual billing. Nothing justifies a 10-year limbo. Keeping those contracts likely falls under unjust enrichment, and maybe the unfair competition act if someone can prove it was systemic.
The wording used by Sunrise claiming they did a favor is pure madness.
It looks like a nice money making scheme. Maybe people move after a while and forget about it. They must be making money hand over fist with this.
And when it happens on their initiative, it seems the strategy used to convert per-building to individual billing is also pretty brazen:
- 2016: https://www.srf.ch/sendungen/kassensturz-espresso/multimedia-dreiste-masche-von-upc-rechnungsversand-aufs-geratewohl
- 2025: https://www.beobachter.ch/konsum/mieter-erhalten-rechnungen-fur-ungenutzten-kabelanschluss-814074
This kind of shit should be automatically prosecuted with fines based on the estimate man-hours collectively wasted.
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Makes my blood boil.
QOQA offer is back available now fyi
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