# E25 into Basel from France



## GMJ

Hi

Could anyone advise if there is a customs point at this crossing as I will need to sort out my payment for time in Switzerland here, upon entering later this year.

ta

Graham


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## peejay

Yes, theres a large customs post there. If its a vignette you need then they will take your money as you drive through, you can pay in €'s but change given only in Chf.

If you need to pay the Heavy vehicle tax (over 3500kg) then you will need to park up and pay at the customs office.

Pete


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## GMJ

Perfect - cheers

I have a form which I'll fill out before going

Graham


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## Glandwr

I prefilled a form for my 6 tonner as a HGV >3.5 ton. Went up to the counter and the very nice guy tore it up. Asked me if it was a camping Car and filled it in for me cost quite a bit less. 32 francks I seem to remember any toll for any 10 days in the year.

Dick


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## GMJ

Cheers

It's the 10 day option we will go for as well  

Graham


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## 100127

I did not know they did a 10 day one in Switzerland.


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## GMJ

I think you have to fill in the days that you are in the country and carry it with you. I seem to recall a minimum cost of €25 but I might be making that bit up  

Graham


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## ob1

Here is the official and easy to understand info on the Swiss road tolls.

Swiss Road Tolls

Most, if not all, Swiss main roads are toll roads, and it is difficult and not really worth trying to plan an itinerary to avoid them. You will need to pay the toll charges before entering the country.

For vehicles up to and including 3500 GVW.

Applicable to Swiss first and second class roads, which includes motorways.

The charge is a single payment of CHF40.00 which is valid from the 1st December of the year previous to that shown on the vignette through to the 31 January following the year shown on the vignette.

Proof of payment is by a 'vignette' (windscreen sticker) which is stuck to the inside of your windscreen. Payment and receipt of the vignette are carried out by personel as you drive through the Swiss border control. If you prefer you can buy the vignette from garages approaching the border or from the Swiss Tourist Board online. If you are towing a caravan you need to purchase a second vignette.

For vehicles over 3500 GVW - the vignette system does not apply. This charge is not a toll but a general heavy vehicle tax and applies to all Swiss roads.

You will be asked to park up at the border control and take your V5 vehicle documents to the adjoining customs office. Here you fill in a simple declaration form (permit 15.91) stating how long the vehicle will be in Switzerland, used on the roads or not, and you will be charged on that basis. You will get a duplicate copy of the form back as a receipt.

The charges are; 
￼￼￼￼￼Per Day (subject to a minimum of CHF 25.00) CHF 3.25
Per 10 Days CHF 32.50
Per Month CHF 58.50
Per Year CHF 650.00

If you are towing a trailer there is an extra charge, typically of CHF 0.10 - per 100kg - per day.

The 10 day permit above allowes you to freely choose your days of travel before entering Switzerland. It is aimed at people making frequent visits, so as to avoid them keep having to report to the border customs office.

If you want to extend your visit over the stated time you take your duplicate copy to the nearest main post office and pay for a further period.

Unmanned Border Crossings. It is illegal to drive into Switzerland via an unmanned border crossing without a proof of payment (permit 15.91). Drivers arriving at such crossings are required to telephone the Swiss customs who will authorise their entry to proceed directly to a designated payment point, usually a post office.

Ron


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## Glandwr

Ron has got it right CHF 32.50 for 10 days total in a year for >3.5 campimg car. You don't have to fill in days of travel apart for your own records. The cameras do it all as far as they are concerned.

Dick


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## ob1

Glandwr said:


> Ron has got it right CHF 32.50 for 10 days total in a year for >3.5 campimg car. You don't have to fill in days of travel apart for your own records. The cameras do it all as far as they are concerned.
> 
> Dick


---------------------

Dick - I don't think that is quite correct. In all cases you are required to carry proof of the dates of use entered on one document or other before entering Switzerland. That's why if you are staying for, say a month, you pay for a month and you receive a permit showing the dates covered. In the case of a ten day permit the same applies only you are free to choose the days as and when required so long as its before crossing the border each time. If it wasn't so then us lot could all buy a ten day ticket, stay on a campsite for six months, and then drive out again. That would give us a saving of of around CHF350!

My earlier post was taken from an article I wrote on Swiss travel which was submitted and verified by the Swiss customs who run the road charging system.

Ron


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## pippin

And having got your vignette or whatever at the border post do make sure you know EXACTLY where you are going when you approach Basle/Basel.

It is a maze of underpasses and tunnels with junctions within them.

Luckily, unlike Rouen, you are unlikely to rip your roof off if you take a wrong turn!


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## Glandwr

ob1 said:


> Glandwr said:
> 
> 
> 
> Ron has got it right CHF 32.50 for 10 days total in a year for >3.5 campimg car. You don't have to fill in days of travel apart for your own records. The cameras do it all as far as they are concerned.
> 
> Dick
> 
> 
> 
> ---------------------
> 
> Dick - I don't think that is quite correct. In all cases you are required to carry proof of the dates of use entered on one document or other before entering Switzerland. That's why if you are staying for, say a month, you pay for a month and you receive a permit showing the dates covered. In the case of a ten day permit the same applies only you are free to choose the days as and when required so long as its before crossing the border each time. If it wasn't so then us lot could all buy a ten day ticket, stay on a campsite for six months, and then drive out again. That would give us a saving of of around CHF350!
> 
> My earlier post was taken from an article I wrote on Swiss travel which was submitted and verified by the Swiss customs who run the road charging system.
> 
> Ron
Click to expand...

**********************************

 You are right Ron my mistake. I looked again at the paperwork and there are 10 boxes presumably for each of the 10 days. I had happlily transited Switzerland 3 times without filling a single one (apart from the chap at the border doing the first time). Ironically on the two subsequent crossings not totally knowing the procedure I had slowed and handed the paperwork to the chap at the border who gave it a cursary glance and waved me on. Even though no dates filled.

Wonder what would happen if I had been stopped in the country? What happens also if take more than 1 day to transit as we did, do you have to fill it in each morning?

Dick


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## ob1

Dick - As the Swiss HGV system is based on the time that a vehicle is in Switzerland, and not how long it spends on the road, I'm afraid that you do have to fill in the form each day, even parked up.

Their system is really aimed at lorry traffic and It's always struck me as unfair on the motorhome user as when on a campsite you are not wearing the road out or causing pollution are you? But there you go, I suppose it's a case of having to draw the line somewhere.

Ron


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## philoaks

> Perfect - cheers
> 
> I have a form which I'll fill out before going
> 
> Graham


I did the same thing 2 years ago but when I presented the form it got thrown in the bin and the nice lady then completed her own 2 part carbonated form one copy of which she gave to me and the other she kept!


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## nicholsong

Ron

Surely your '6-months on a campsite scenario' would be caught by the fact that your date of entry would be in the system and you would be unlikely to get out of the country without the journey being recorded on day of exit 6 months later.

Can anyon please advise whether the one year validity for the 10-Day pass is an calendar year or 365 days from date of entry. 

As far as filling in the days, I seem to remember on a similar thread that others have used the 10-day pass to transit Sitzerland to Italy southbound and then at a later date northbound but without knowing their return date in advance and I seem to have read that one only has to fill in any day that one is in still in Switzerland. If that is not correct it seems that they do not like the idea of free-will touring - quite possibly so in Swiss mentality.

I also feel that the charges for say one month, for parking up for 3 weeks in a mountain resort, excessive if the MH is only 200kg over 3500kg. 

It is all rather a deterent to visiting Switzerland.

Geoff


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## 113016

Geoff, the one year vignette, runs January to December

or so I thought  
It is Start of December to end of January

http://www.tolltickets.com/country/swiss/vignette.aspx?lang=en-GB


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## nicholsong

Grath said:


> Geoff, the one year vignette, runs January to December
> 
> or so I thought
> It is Start of December to end of January
> 
> http://www.tolltickets.com/country/swiss/vignette.aspx?lang=en-GB


Graham

Thanks but that link is for the Vignette, i.e. <3500kg. I was asking about the 10-day pass for >3500kg.

The answer may not be the same. Just as the 1 month pass may not be a calendar month or a foreign lorry arriving on 31st Jan and leaving on 1st Feb might have to pay for 2 months.

Geoff


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## philoaks

Geoff,

The heavy vehicle system works for 12 months from the day of purchase. We bought one in September 2013 and used 7 of the 10 days that we had purchased. The remaining 3 days was used in June 2014 when we passed through Switzerand on the way to the Italian lakes.

Phil


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## nicholsong

philoaks said:


> Geoff,
> 
> The heavy vehicle system works for 12 months from the day of purchase. We bought one in September 2013 and used 7 of the 10 days that we had purchased. The remaining 3 days was used in June 2014 when we passed through Switzerand on the way to the Italian lakes.
> 
> Phil


Phil

Thanks. I thought it was probably 12 months but good to get confirmation.

Did you fill in the return 3 days for June when you bought it or when you used it? [See Ron's post above]

Geoff


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## philoaks

> Phil
> 
> Thanks. I thought it was probably 12 months but good to get confirmation.
> 
> Did you fill in the return 3 days for June when you bought it or when you used it? [See Ron's post above]
> 
> Geoff


No, you use the form literally on a day by day basis so you don't need to plan it at all (other than leaving Switzerland on day 10 or renewing it to stay longer). It means you can hop in and out of Switzerland as you please. Unfortunately, as you said in an earlier post, you are supposed to fill in the form for every day you are in Switzerland even if you are parked on a campsite for days on end. Having said that, if you were close to the Italian/German/French borders I'm not sure if they would be able to prove that you had been in Switzerland if you hadn't filled in the form for those stationary days if you get my drift :wink: :wink:


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## nicholsong

Phil

I am sure you are right, because my friends live SW from Basel in a rural area where the FR/CH borde meanders across a country road and there are several crossings(very rarely manned) and it would be possible to claim that one had been parked on the FR bit a few hundred metres from their house. I am sure there are no cameras since no lorries would use the road except for local deliveries.

I have jogged from their house down lanes which I am sure took me into FR but there was no indication.

Geoff


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## ob1

nicholsong said:


> Ron
> 
> Surely your '6-months on a campsite scenario' would be caught by the fact that your date of entry would be in the system and you would be unlikely to get out of the country without the journey being recorded on day of exit 6 months later.
> 
> Can anyon please advise whether the one year validity for the 10-Day pass is an calendar year or 365 days from date of entry.
> 
> As far as filling in the days, I seem to remember on a similar thread that others have used the 10-day pass to transit Sitzerland to Italy southbound and then at a later date northbound but without knowing their return date in advance and I seem to have read that one only has to fill in any day that one is in still in Switzerland. If that is not correct it seems that they do not like the idea of free-will touring - quite possibly so in Swiss mentality.
> 
> I also feel that the charges for say one month, for parking up for 3 weeks in a mountain resort, excessive if the MH is only 200kg over 3500kg.
> 
> It is all rather a deterent to visiting Switzerland.
> 
> Geoff


-----------------------

Geoff

In answer to your first point. Until Dick mentioned it I wasn't aware that the Swiss use a camera based system and I still have my doubts. If this was the case then I wonder why they still bother to go through the labour intensive business of still writing up forms in duplicate (I've been in the long queues) as proof that you have paid if stopped - a camera system would already know this. Also I know several people who travel to Switzerland every year with over 3500kg vans and for years have just purchased an ordinary CHF40 vignette, knowing it to be wrong but willing to take a chance on being stopped. I would have thought that any camera based system would have caught them out by now. I think that Dick might have been given the wrong information but I am willing to be proved wrong.

With regard to your other point about not knowing your return date in advance. You do not have to - all that is required is that you enter the date/s the vehicle will be in Switzerland before crossing the border each time. This could be the next day or in six months time, whenever you decide.

Ron


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## ob1

My apologies to Phil who had already covered some of Geoff's points. I must read on.  

Ron


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