Venus Beauty Closes Swiss Studios, Refuses Refunds
Venus Beauty Closes Swiss Studios While Clients Sit on Prepaid Laser Packages
Permanent laser hair removal promises smooth skin for a steep price, but for many Swiss customers of the cosmetic chain Venus Beauty, a bargain cost has turned into locked doors and lost funds. Yvonne Hafner reported for srf.ch on November 6, 2026, that the widespread chain has shut down multiple locations across German-speaking Switzerland, leaving clients holding expensive prepaid treatment packages and struggling to secure refunds.
Venus Beauty traditionally markets full-body laser sessions for around 190 Swiss francs, or ten-treatment packages for 1,800 francs, undercutting standard market rates by up to three times. Yet behind the low prices, customer frustration has mounted on platforms like Trustpilot, where the business holds a rating of 1.6 out of 5 stars.
Venus Beauty Refuses Refund After Branch Closure
A Berner customer purchased a ten-treatment package for nearly 1,000 francs from Venus Beauty, only to discover the Bern branch was permanently shuttered before her first appointment took place. Instead of issuing an immediate refund, the company instructed her to travel to distant studios in Zurich or Baden for her sessions. When her legal protection insurance intervened and demanded a payout, Venus Beauty initially promised a reimbursement before going silent. Emails went unanswered, and when the insurance provider filed formal debt collection proceedings, the company responded with a formal legal objection.
A Zürcher customer experienced a different ordeal with the chain, undergoing 34 laser sessions over a four-year period despite developing skin changes. She criticized the initial consultation as deficient and pointed to a lack of safety measures, such as failing to cover veins during the procedures. Rather than halting the treatments when progress stalled, personnel repeatedly sold her new packages. Venus Beauty defended its practices by stating the customer received adequate written information and that the 34 visits constituted voluntary touch-up sessions requested by the client herself.
Dermatologist Warning Over Unbounded Laser Sessions
Medical experts emphasize that endless treatments are neither standard nor safe when hair reduction plateaus. Daniel Mahler, a dermatologist in Lucerne, states that four to ten sessions are typically realistic to achieve an 80 to 95 percent hair reduction, noting that a lifelong guarantee of complete hair-free skin does not exist. While minor side effects like redness, burning, or mild swelling can occur, improper energy settings or unadjusted equipment can cause burns, blisters, and lasting dark or light skin pigmentation. Mahler warns that patients should not undergo unmonitored, indefinite sessions once improvement stops, and insists that moles, tattoos, and visible blood vessels must always be covered during laser exposure.
Consumer Rights and Shuttering Studios Across Switzerland
Out of 13 original branches throughout German-speaking Switzerland, only five remain open, with closures recorded in Lucerne, St. Gallen, Aarau, Basel, and Bern. Affected clients frequently report that Venus Beauty attempts to fob them off with company vouchers or broken promises of cash reimbursements. Gabriela Baumgartner, a legal expert at the SRF consumer magazine Espresso, clarifies that businesses cannot force clients to travel to another city when a local studio closes. Studio relocations to another neighborhood may be expected, but forcing a client to commute to a different municipality constitutes an unreasonable burden, granting customers an immediate right to extraordinary contract termination and cash refunds for unused balances rather than mandatory store credit.
Venus Beauty rejects the overarching allegations, maintaining that its policy is to offer refunds for branch closures if the alternative location is more than a 30-minute drive away, and asserting that veins and birthmarks are consistently shielded during procedures. Following direct intervention by the SRF consumer magazine Espresso, both the Berner customer and the Zürcher customer finally received their respective refunds.