Hello fellow r/Switzerland-ers,
I am facing an issue with my régie (=Verwaltung, I’ll refer to it as régie in this post) that is trying to charge me things as running costs, which I don’t believe should be. I am a very poor student here and cannot afford paying for any kind of advice, so I really hope somebody out here has the necessary knowledge to help me.
**For some context:** I’ve been living in this apartment since September 2021 and have received so far two annual statements regarding the running costs of my building. My apartment is heated up with electricity and the water is heated through an individual electric hot water tank. My electric consumption is paid for directly to the city every 3 months. This is the case for both apartments on the 5th floor (mine incl.). All the other apartments (afaik) have an individual gas boiler for water and heating, for which the gas consumption is also paid for straight to the city. The cleaning of the individual gas chimneys is paid for by the tenants directly to the company that comes to clean it (once per year I think?).Therefore, the only running costs that I would have to pay concern the common areas and my cold water consumption. I already pay 70.-/month of running costs to the regie as an “acompte” (pre-pay). This means that a yearly statement is established where the actual costs are compared to what I’ve prepaid during the year and a readjustment is made.
Now the problem comes from the fact that my regie is charging me for things that I believe should be charged to the owner of the building, not the tenants. Here are some examples of things I find sketchy:
* Some stuff they call “[Honoraires](https://i.imgur.com/9ayskH6.png)” (= service fees) which aren’t the 4% they charge on each bill. These are separated as fixed and variable fees (with no further details)
* Insurances of the concierge (I understand covering for the salary, as they clean the building for us, but I’m not their employer, why do I pay for their accident/AVS/AI/APG insurance?)
* [Maintenance of the roof of the building](https://i.imgur.com/JYxTFEy.png)
* [Fire extinguishers check-up/maintenance](https://i.imgur.com/5AutSh4.png)
* [Cleaning of the walls](https://i.imgur.com/z4qsw6C.png) (I genuinely believe this is a lie, the walls are still extremely dirty)
* [Cleaning (ramonage) of the main chimney](https://i.imgur.com/cZ9II3C.png) used for the exhaust of the gas boilers of each apartment. I don’t see why I should pay for that, as I do not own a gas boiler in my apartment and have physically no possible way of using this chimney.
After reading all of this on the detailed bill, I googled what can be charged as running costs in Switzerland and it says on several websites that each individual running cost that is expected to be paid by the tenants has to be written *explicitly* in the contract (and anything mentioned that isn’t allowed by OBLF/VMWG is invalid). These websites also add that any kind of sentence of the sort “any other general costs”, such as the one that seems to be present in my contract, does not allow them to charge me for whatever they want.
Here is what is written in my contract regarding running costs (in French): [https://i.imgur.com/2sogjl4.png](https://i.imgur.com/2sogjl4.png).
Here is what follows in article 5 (in French): [https://i.imgur.com/ZGfIxLF.png](https://i.imgur.com/ZGfIxLF.png).
From my broad understanding of what I’ve read in OBLF/VMWG and CO/OR, the internet (mostly asloca and some other lawyers’ websites) and what is written in my contract, part of what my regie is charging me for is illegal/abusive and I should contest it. Unfortunately, as I am no expert, I might be making a mistake and need your help to distinguish what’s right from what’s wrong and eventually how to proceed further if needed.
Thanks a lot for your help!
Edit: added screenshots and spelling mistakes
by Thebosonsword