Refunds and Withdrawal

This translation is provided for convenience. In case of discrepancy, the German version prevails.

In short: if something goes wrong, you get your money back. And if the report is simply of no use to you, likewise, within 14 days and without having to explain yourself.

The rest of this page sets out the details and the legal position behind them.

Case 1: something did not work

Here we refund in full, with no time limit and no discussion. This covers:

• The report was not produced.
• The report did not arrive.
• The file cannot be opened or is damaged.
• You received the basic level although you ordered and paid for the full one.
• You were charged twice for the same report.
• The report contains an evaluation error for which we are responsible.

Tell us briefly what happened. The choice is yours: we either deliver the report again correctly or we refund the amount. You decide, not us.

Case 2: the report is of no use to you

You received the report, it works technically, but you think it was not worth the money.

Then write to us within 14 days of the purchase. We refund the purchase price. We do not need a reason. If you give us one we are glad of it, because we learn from it, but it is not a condition.

After the 14 days have passed, we look at requests case by case. There is no entitlement at that point, but a refusal is not the rule either. Just ask.

How it works

Step 1. Send an email to kontakt@kognita.ch.

Step 2. Give us:

• Your order number. It is in the confirmation email and at the bottom of every page of the report.
• The email address you ordered with, if you are writing from a different one.
• Whether you want a refund or a redelivery.
• If something went technically wrong, one or two sentences on what did not work.

There is no form. An informal email is enough. If you would rather write on paper, that works too:

Kai Schnider Bleuenweg 4 2542 Pieterlen

Step 3. We confirm receipt and trigger the refund within two working days.

Step 4. The money goes back the same way you paid, so for a card payment it goes back to the same card. We cannot offer a different route for the repayment, as a precaution against abuse.

Step 5. Depending on your bank it takes three to ten working days before the amount reaches you. That part is not in our hands.

No fees are charged to you. We keep nothing back.

What happens to the report

After a refund we block your download link. If you have already downloaded the file, we ask you to delete it.

We cannot check that, and we do not build in technology that takes a paid file away from you again. On this point we rely on you.

The legal position, explained openly

If you have shopped online in the European Union or the United Kingdom, you will have seen a box headed “Right of withdrawal” or “Cancellation rights”, the 14-day cooling-off period: time to change your mind, no reason needed, often with a model form attached. Many readers of this page have moved to Switzerland from exactly those countries, so it is worth being precise rather than polite.

That box does not exist in Swiss law. It comes from EU consumer law, which Switzerland has not adopted, and from the United Kingdom’s own consumer contracts rules. Neither applies to a purchase from a Swiss provider on a Swiss website. If you see such a box in a Swiss shop, what you are looking at is almost always a foreign rule copied over, not Swiss law.

The Swiss Code of Obligations grants a right of withdrawal only for particular selling situations. Article 40b lists them:

• at your workplace, in living quarters or in their immediate surroundings,
• in public transport or on public streets and squares,
• at a promotional event combined with an excursion,
• by telephone or comparable means of simultaneous spoken telecommunication.

The common thread is that you were caught off guard. Someone stood at your door, spoke to you in the street or rang you without being asked.

Buying on a website is not on that list. That is not an oversight. When Parliament revised the right of withdrawal and brought the new rules into force on 1 January 2016, it added telephone sales and extended the period from seven to 14 days. It did not take in online trade. The question came back in 2022 as motion 22.3476, which asked the Federal Council to introduce a right of withdrawal of at least 14 days for online trade. The National Council rejected it on 7 June 2023 by 75 votes to 117. The Federal Council has noted in this context that in 2014 Parliament deliberately refrained from creating a right of withdrawal for online trade.

The reasoning is straightforward: someone ordering on the internet is not caught off guard. You can read at your leisure, compare, and close the window.

For your purchase from us this means: you have no statutory right of withdrawal. We could sell you the report and afterwards take the position that the deal is done.

We do not do that. The 14 days above are our voluntary promise. We give them because we think it right, and they bind us as soon as they stand here. What you have is therefore a contractual promise from us rather than a right conferred by statute. In practice that distinction works in your favour in one respect and against you in another: in your favour because we wrote it down and can be held to it, against you because Parliament could not shorten it for us and no authority supervises it either.

Two further points for readers who are new to the Swiss system. The contract is governed by Swiss law. And if you live in Switzerland and buy as a consumer, you can bring a claim at your own place of residence; that venue is yours by mandatory law and you cannot be made to waive it in advance, whatever any set of terms says.

We write this out at such length because many Swiss shops adopt a German model box and thereby assert a legal position that does not exist here. That is convenient and wrong. We prefer an honest voluntary promise to a borrowed statute.

Staying silent would not be an alternative either. Principle C.2 of the Swiss Commission for Fairness in Commercial Communications (Lauterkeitskommission) requires a distance seller to state whether a return option exists. The statement has to be made even when the answer is no. So this page is not goodwill; the only real choice we had was between saying it clearly and saying it badly.

If we ever say no

We reserve the right to refuse a refund where someone is plainly taking advantage of the promise, for instance by ordering repeatedly as the same person and demanding the money back every time.

This is not small print aimed at you. It is aimed at the rare case where someone mistakes the rule for a free supply. If we refuse, we tell you the reason and you can object.

Any questions

Write to kontakt@kognita.ch. We would rather answer a question before the purchase than issue a refund after it, and we would rather do either than have you quietly annoyed.

If you are still weighing up whether the report is right for you, read the disclaimer first. It sets out without varnish what the test can do and what it cannot.