A 70-year-old resident of Brienz (BE) ordered two mobile phone batteries from a shop called “Alvara Zürich”. It had everything you’d look for to inspire confidence: a .ch domain, “Zürich” in the name, and the option to pay via Twint. He paid around 60 francs at the start of July. The batteries never arrived. Ever.
When he checked with an AI, he discovered that the company was probably based in the Netherlands. When he requested a refund by post, an AI replied with a generic message. When he threatened to report them, there was total silence. “They’re taking me for a fool,” he said. What angers him most isn’t the 60 francs: it’s that the company does the same thing to thousands of people, and each person loses an amount that seems small but adds up.
It is important to note that Twint does not guarantee that the seller is Swiss. Foreign companies can set up Twint in their shop via payment intermediaries such as Stripe or Checkout. The customer sees the orange logo and assumes there is a Swiss bank account behind it. This is not always the case. The Swiss Consumer Protection Foundation (the Swiss equivalent of the FRC) has already included Alvara Zürich on its list of fraudulent dropshipping shops, and has filed criminal complaints in similar cases with successful outcomes.
If something like this has happened to you, you do have the option of making a criminal complaint. This does not guarantee that you will get your money back, but in some cases it has led to convictions. What you do not have, however, is the chargeback protection offered by credit cards. The most reliable way to check a Swiss shop remains the simplest: look for a working telephone number and a verifiable physical address.