I got a call from a high ranking official in Chunghwa Telecom this morning. They are doing some review of their services, in the hope of making them more user friendly to foreigners.
Her question to me was: "What services does a foreigner who is coming to Taiwan need from Chunghwa Telecom?
I asked her to clarify if this was for short-term people or long-term people. She said it could be either.
Obviously, Chunghwa Telecom includes a lot of divisions, including a full range of telephone and telecommunications services, email, web-hosting, etc.
This is very funny! I just had a MASSIVE run-in with Chunghwa. They (their sub-contractor) came round and installed 2 new phone lines plus Internet over the top of our existing lines that have been working fine. No reasons were given. The subbie left a HUGE box at head height on our stairs, 7 cigarette butts, wires, plastic etc etc all over our stairway. Then they rain - though our apartment - plastic wires approx an inch think, along walls, over doors etc. He also kindly left exposed wires beside our door. Terribly ugly and unnecessary and still no explanation why. I e-mailed Chunghwa and complained at this poor service.
Anyway they called back and explained why - New service, better service, improving quality of life etc etc. But there was nothing they were going to do. So… I complained again. This time a Manager PLUS the subbie come around, rip out the wires, run the outside and remove the box PLUS clean up!
So, complain complain complain I say.
The service is there - you just have to work for it!
Make an easy to understand informational sheet in English and maybe even other languages, of all there services and how much they cost. I.E. phone rates for local and international calls. Also for internet access. Also include extra services like call waiting, call forwarding, costs, and how to use them. Put all contact phone numbers on here as well. Make them available at convenient stores and postoffices for us to pick up and look at.
Make the process of signing up and changing services simple. Especially if we pay our bill late sometimes we have no idea where to go or how to pay it. Maybe the nearest Chung-Hwa office is too far away.
If we request it have our bills in English and Chinese (or Chinese and Japanese, etc.)so if there is a problem we can understand and they can understand.
No minimun for cell phone contract. Some foreigners leave Taiwan before it expires. Make it easier for us, minimun or no deposit fees.
No more Taiwan I.D. required for setting up internet access. Is it required now? Some other services do.
No more cell phone advertisements, they are annoying and if we want to cancel them no one understands. We have to get friends to help us.
Some of these may seem asking too much, but they are only sugguestions. I have had many people complain to me about some of these things. And alot of them require us to bother Chinese people to help us do. It should be kept very simple and we will be happy and they will be happy because we won’t constatly call them.
First of all, I have to give credit to Chunghwa for doing this. The foreign community, though not small, represents only a fraction of their customers. Any proactive service by them is welcome–I just hope they follow through.
As far as the suggestions by Jeff G, one I can agree with is stopping the cell phone advertisements. With my previous service, I was never bothered with them. They are a nuisance, and I don’t understand why I am paying for a service that is throwing advertising at me.
Bills in English would help, also (including the location addresses).
Tell hinet to hire a spam expert as I have posted to
news:news.admin.net-abuse.email which you can see on groups.google.com
Hinet’s worldwide spamming reputation has caused it to become
blacklisted, resulting in email we try to send from it being refused
by many sites.
Tell them to allow spouses to register in the phone book if they want
to be equality observant. Often one must know the husband’s name in
order to look up the wife.
Eh? I’ve had Hinet dialup accounts ever since I started using email and I’ve never once had mail refused. When did this start? And where is it blacklisted?
Well the blacklisting explains why everytime I try to contact Daves Esl Cafe for their ad rates my mail is rejected. Yes, and in the garbled digits and dots and astericks you can see the line “Go away. We don’t accept mail from spammers.” Try it Sandman and see if you get the same result.