EZway + Shopee + 7-11 + Cash On Delivery
Posting this here in the fervent hope that YOU, dear reader, might be spared the tedious ordeal I have just endured with this piece-of-shit app.
(feel free to skip to the end)
Sooooo…
I wanted to buy something on Shopee (from China/to 7-11/cash on delivery). Like I’ve done a million times before.
A message pops up saying that I have already reached my limit of six overseas purchases for the current six month period. I must pay a small import tax. Therefore, I’m instructed to download and register to the EZway app. No way around it.
The registration process was relatively painless.
So I go back to Shopee and try to complete the purchase. It brings me to some kind of authentication page where I need to enter my name and phone number. However, (and here’s the rub) it only allows you to enter a Chinese name. Yet it specifies that your details MUST match those on the EZway app (a catch 22 since my APRC has no Chinese name).
I return to the EZway app to see if there’s a way to add my Chinese name. Miraculously, there actually IS a space to do this! Unsurprisingly, there’s a message below explaining that this cannot be done in-app. Instead, I must put in a request by email.
I soooooooooooo don’t have time for this shit!
So I email them. Get a stock reply saying that it will take seven working days(!) to add a Chinese name to the account that I have created just five minutes ago. Are you fucking kidding me?! No other option, so I submit my details by email and wait…
Two + weeks later and still no response! Tried chatting to their “text support” within the app, in Chinese, only to receive a few robo-replies… in Chinese. Meanwhile, all of my sellers on Shopee are like: “fuck this shit” and cancel all of my orders.
Such an total pain in the hole! Moreso because, up until this point, the process had always been so seamless!
Finally, (three + weeks and several blunt emails later) they responded to say that my Chinese name was “in the process of being added”.
Checked the app and, sure enough, 我中文名字 was there! Transactions on Shopee are now going through without incident! They send a message every time a package reaches Taiwan customs. Just gotta to click “confirm” and they release it. Got my first package today. Yeah!!!
The moral of the story?
If you are a Shopee customer and are instructed to download EZway, be sure to add a Chinese name, even though it’s labelled “not mandatory”! Any three characters will do, I presume. It needn’t be an official name, since they’ve already got your deets on file.
Hope this saves someone else the hassle of finding out the hard way