I swear EVERY bank and company does this to me.
What’s worse is when the English service only does one department such as Chunghwa Telecom. You call and select English service. Then you get told they only deal with PREPAID and not postpaid. So they say they’ll transfer you… You get transferred, select English service again and… it’s a never ending loop until you give up and use the Chinese options.
It’s because they grew up with a stupid thing called the “household registration” system.
With this… even if they move to a different country, their citizenship so to speak is tied into a house (mostly a family house).
That’s why they assume you have an address because they seem to think this stupid system is normal around the world
I agree. Although I think having a centralised system has many advantages. The problem is that it’s poorly administered, loves red tape and is used to discriminate against foreigners and NWOHR.
I think it should no longer be tied to citizenship and household registration would be a record keeping system and everyone would have the same style of ID card regardless of your citizenship status. And it should be simplified so your address can be changed just with a lease agreement. And staff be trained not to make up laws of their own accord and ask for nonsense/nonexistent documents. They can keep back end records of citizenship for things like voting and non-citizens residency rights. It would end discrimination of foreigners overnight and likely save a lot of money by having NIA combined with the household registration office.
Nono, keep NIA separate from non-foreigner stuff. Before foreigners were managed by the Household registration office, it was a mess.
There should be only 1 ID card style number for everyone, managed by MOI, then citizens would get it from HHRO, foreigners from NIA, both under MOI centralised system. Then, once someone naturalise, moves from NIA to HHRO.
In Italy, which has a similar system, it is a bit messy too: citizens are all managed by the town governments via the registrar office, foreigners are managed by the National Police (Commissioner of Police Provincial Offices), both all under the MOI system. The Registrar office can however issue IDs to foreigners linked to their residence permit issue by the Commissioner of Police Office after actual visa issuance by the MOFA.
However once you have an ID issued by the registrar office, the numbers are the same for both citizens and foreigners, there are just remarks showing your non-citizen or non-permanent status, so IT system do not discriminate.
That would work too! It would also mean ID numbers would be for life instead of claiming they’re for life but once I complete my naturalisation I will be on my 4th ‘for life’ ID number 
In Australia no one is managed by anyone Drivers licences are the de facto ID card and basically anyone can get one. They’re non-centralised and every state and territory issue their own licence but are accepted as ID in every state and territory.
Passport numbers are used to verify someone’s right to work
The stupidity is how rigid the system is. In my home country you can take a rental lease and use it to change your government registered address without much hassle. Here for some reason landlords don’t want you to do it.
Citibank called. It sounds like it’s approved but she didn’t say for sure (or I didn’t understand). Although she didn’t ask me which sign up gift I want 
The strangest request was asking which primary school I went to. I saw it on their application form but thought I misread it so I ignored it . That was about 10 minutes of the conversation because spelling out Sydenham-Hillside Primary School took forever.
Me ‘En for no, en for November, en for Nike’
Her ‘是麥當勞的m嗎？’
Pretty good service though, she was really nice.
I got very swiftly approved for the Cathay United Eva Air Infinite card. Took around a week back to back. I had to cancel the Supreme Infinite card since didn’t want to pay the 20K annual fee and there is no waiver for that, so they suggested to apply for the lower tier.
Sent by post all the docs (didn’t even bother trying the branch, useless), received and followed all the application via the very nice online tool.
Interestingly they didn’t access my credit report (I get a notification each time a bank accesses it), maybe they just kept the record of the old card, let’s see what limit they give me (old one was an amazing 400K!).
I also applied for the CTBC JCB line card, the bank called me this morning saying there was an issue with the card I applied specifically for (a neutral design) so they just asked if they can change to another one. I agreed and now I received the SMS confirming they received my application correctly, 7-10 biz days to review. Also here sent by post all application material, however cannot check application status online as they don’t accept foreigner ARC…
Maybe some kind of security question?
Be prepared to spell out that name (Exactly like you gave it to them - including all capitalization and punctuation) every time you want to change something about your account. Oh, and their system might have cut off the name after an arbitrary number of letters 
I’m expecting another call because my full name won’t fit on bank cards. Western countries would just chop off the middle name without even asking but it makes Taiwanese heads explode
ESun managed to print 20 characters (including spaces) on my card. They left out one letter in the middle of my first name though. Maybe they decided that that particular letter was of lesser importance to make it fit 
Mine is 28 including spaces
I have a double barrel surname and Amex decided ‘van’ was my middle name i asked them to fix it and they sent a new card but it’s still the same.
When receipts print to sign my name is still wonky
Man, Citi are BS. I applied for their credit card, and supplied all my docs including bank book over 20 days ago. They didn’t process it until now, and because of that they now say that they need a new copy of my bank book updated to a more recent date. The day I gave it to them it was updated to that day
I didn’t give them my bank book but they also said there’s no need. Maybe print off your labour insurance docs as evidence of your insured salary? that’s what I did. Only works if your boss is reporting correctly though.
Did s/he go through accepting the T’s and C’s with you?
Yep. It’s fine, I’ll just give them what they asked for, it’s easier than trying to convince them to accept something else. My wife was already accepted by the way, according to the online system.
Mine still isn’t showing up in the online system. My chinese isn’t great but the woman i spoke to made it sound like it was more or less approved. I haven’t received any emails or texts since the phone call though.
Same here. I’ve got a long-ass hyphenated last name and it’s always fun seeing how my name will be chopped up.
Most of my cards they chopped off the middle name. Two banks however insisted on spelling it all out, last name, middle name, then first as well.
6 digit pins work in Australia
Me waiting for E.Sun reply on my Carrefour card…Sigh…
Yes, I called. Yes, I even sent extra paperwork. Yes, they say all izz well…