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The community of Goldach could not be reached for over a week.
Jean Claude RaemyEditor Economics
“The website is not accessible”: In Goldach SG on Lake Constance, the almost 10,000 residents were unable to access the municipality’s website from December 30, 2022 until late in the morning of January 6, 2023. Anyone who wanted to make use of official services or was looking for information about school, cultural life and more had to contact the municipality by telephone – contact by e-mail was not possible either. This is because the entire domain of the municipality of Goldach was deactivated, as the “Tagblatt” reported.
Mayor Dominik Gemperli (51) explains to Blick that an invoice for 16 francs for domain hosting in 2023 has not been paid. The bill went to a person who was no longer active and had an inactive address. The domain was therefore switched off “without warning”.
Although the bill was paid immediately after the domain was shut down, the website was still offline at the time Gemperli spoke to the Blick. An assurance from Swizzonic that it would be activated within three days proved to be unfounded.
“It’s completely out of proportion,” Gemperli said indignantly. The municipality of Goldach has been a customer of Swizzonic, a successor company to the former domain monopolist Switch, for years. But now the provider change in Goldach has already been decided. Although the website is now active again.
Gemperli is relieved about this, but still calls the situation “unsustainable” and even “Kafkaesque”. He does not want to take legal action, but states: “Our employees received WhatsApp messages, among other things, in which our situation was made fun of. That was distressing.”
Swizzonic rejects the blame
Swizzonic sales director Ruben Pandolfi (46) explained to Blick that the company definitely wanted to avoid deactivating domain names. But the fault lies with the municipality of Goldach: they failed to keep their data up to date in order to receive all notifications and to avoid service interruptions. Swizzonic sends invoices early, as well as payment reminders. There was no reaction to that. The website can also always be used to see when a contract is expiring, and customer data can be updated directly. An automatic payment extension could also be set up.
Gemperli says that it was only possible to contact Swizzonic via a stored telephone number that no longer exists. Pandolfi justifies the protected number by saying that certain information is only disclosed if the customer has been clearly identified.
And why did the reconnection take so long? Pandolfi explains that the domain name can be reactivated directly from the Swizzonic control panel. After paying the invoice, this takes a maximum of 24 hours. “We did not receive the renewal order from Goldach via this automatic procedure, but by contacting customer service,” explains Pandolfi. Since it is a human process, it takes longer. “The holiday season didn’t help,” concludes Pandolfi.
Lots of technology, few people
A classic case: The provider gives the customer access to technical means to carry out various process steps themselves. For example, airline passengers can now check in themselves instead of having someone do it for them. If human interaction is still necessary, service limits often quickly become apparent.
Gemperli complains about “useless and unfriendly” telephone answers to his inquiries. In online comments, Swizzonic – by no means the only company – has been criticized for its level of service. Swizzonic hit the headlines just a week ago when the domain of the Liechtenstein newspaper “Volksblatt” was suddenly deactivated. Apparently, a technical defect at Swizzonic had caused several domains from different customers to expire. Mistakes happen. What weighed more heavily was that Swizzonic was obviously not available for this.