I’m sure this will create some debate so let me give you the background. My wife and I just spent 4.5 days visiting from Geneve, Zermatt, st Moritz and wrapping up in Zurich. We bought the 1st Class Swiss Pass for 4 days and we used it to go on the glacier express (paid the additional fees), stayed at very expensive hotels, and did the whole thing. It was our wedding anniversary and I was not going to debate cost. Here’s where it gets interesting… our flight back to London was early on Tuesday so we needed to take the train from Zurich Train station over to the airport. (A 2 stop, 10 minute ride) we boarded the train at 4:57 am ready for 5:03 departure. All good… until literally as we were arriving into the airport, we were asked to show our tickets by an agent on the train (like we’ve had done for the past few days). To our surprise, she tells us that the ticket expired at 5:00 am and we needed to pay CHF100 penalty for riding a train without a valid ticket. We deboarded the train since it was already our exit at the airport station, and trying to explain and come to an agreement with this person, she categorically continued to state that we were breaking the law and that she would call the police unless we paid the CHF100 each. I understand that rules are rules, and that our Swiss Pass might have expired at 5:00 and we boarded the 5:03 train for a two stop back to the airport. BUT… what ever happened to common sense and to bing able to have any kind of criteria for decision making?
When we asked them if they could somehow make an exception and let us go (again we were already off the train at the airport!)… she told us.. sure, you can make an exception by sending a message to SBB and see what they say, ask them for a refund, but how you pay or I call the police!
Think about it… what was about to become a great travel experience, on that we would have talked about for years to come, just turned out to be a super bad one. My wife is now super upset and told me she never wants to come back to Switzerland again due to the lack of empathy of those agents on the train.
Anyhow… now on to our next trip. Any thoughts are welcome! And of course if SBB wants to contact me I’m always open.
Regards
Roberto