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Incorrect invoices, confused customers, a desperately overwhelmed company – the start of Billag’s successor, Serafe, was a debacle. Since the beginning of 2019, Fehraltorf-based company ZH has been charging radio and television fees. Months later, the incorrect invoices reached the homes.
The address buffer has now been resolved based on its own information. However, the invoices are still not free of errors, at least in French-speaking Switzerland: the Council of States of Neuchâtel Philippe Bauer (FDP, 58) is upset that the French version of the letter sent by Serafe is full of spelling errors. That is why he even presented a proposal to parliament.
“Lack of respect and appreciation”
“This letter contains many errors in syntax, grammar and spelling,” Bauer complains to the federal government, “not to mention the pathetic style.” Non-native speakers are unlikely to realize this, but Bauer thinks it’s cheeky. With an invoice that is sent to almost a million people and comes from a company that has been commissioned by the Federal Council, “something like this cannot be accepted.”
His assessment is that “so many errors in a text that it does not even have nine lines show a lack of respect and appreciation for customers in western Switzerland.” Bauer even speaks of a “political misstep.”
Rüffel for Serafe
The federal government expresses itself a bit more diplomatically, but there is still a reprimand for the Serafe: “Of course”, Serafe “should be expected to issue its invoices without problems in all three official languages”, says the response to Bauer’s proposal. . . The Federal Council regrets the mistakes.
Because Serafe is not just any company, but rather sends invoices on behalf of the federal government, you must first send them to the Federal Office of Communication (OFCOM). The Bakom can make corrections and additions.
That’s what they did, according to the Federal Office. But Serafe did not take over the corrections. Due to the complaint from the Bauer Council of States, the federal government has now steamrolled the company.
Serafe doesn’t know what’s wrong
Upon request, Serafe announced that, of course, his role was “to serve customers in the three national languages with the correct texts of the invoices.” However, it appears from their comments that the company does not seem to understand what is wrong with the French text. The “imperfections or even linguistic inaccuracies” will be discussed and corrected with Bakom as soon as the errors in the texts of the French invoices criticized by Bauer are known and named. “If Serafe AG has served French-speaking customers with incorrect invoice texts, it naturally apologizes for it,” says spokesman Erich Heynen.
