So I bought a new vacuum cleaner yesterday (I was in the 3C store when the earthquake hit, by the way). Today I tried to register the warranty online. I should have known it wouldn’t go off without a hitch.
After entering my name, the very next line states:
僅限於臺澎金馬地區之本國人士
※在台外籍人士請洽顧客信箱： Limited to Taiwan/Penghu/Jinmen/Matsu nationals. Foreigners in Taiwan please contact customer service email…
Uh, why? I want to get this done now, dammit! I scanned the form and didn’t see any ID fields so I said “screw that!” and continued to fill out the form.
I entered my cell phone number, address, product serial number, etc. I uploaded a photo of my receipt and clicked Send.
Error: “You must complete Home Phone field.” WTF Taiwan?! Enter the 21st century already. Who the hell still has a landline? And even if I did, you know damn well people only communicate by Line nowadays anyway.
Determined not to be bested by a stupid online form, I chose a random phone number from the internet and entered it into the field, crossed my fingers and hit Enter once again. Success!
Two things about this unpleasant business made me smile in the end:
I managed to not throw my computer off the balcony in frustration.
I imagined the face of the service dept. rep. should they ever call my “home phone number” and realize they’ve contacted a sex toy shop.
Don’t feel bad old tech confuses the heck out of the young
Got a new upright vacuum cleaner and us old farts know there are two foot switches
One is to turn the thing on and off and the other is to release the upright from its
Upright position and allow it to angle down so you can vacuum
Wife face times me at work asking how to turn the thing on
I tell her it’s the red foot
Switch and she hangs up
When I get home ( she is much younger than me and apparently there are no upright vacuums where she comes from ) she tells me what a horrible vacuum cleaner that is
I showed her the big green release button that releases it so one can vacuum
Thought that must be easy to figure out
Well now she won’t touch the thing and I have to vacuum
See us old farts and our old tech can confuse the younger
HoBot vacuum, yes, I know the name is terrible, but both its robot vacuum and cordless vacuums are designed and made in Taiwan. No stupid online registration.
I stopped looking for US or UK brand vacuums, as they are all made in China, or straight up Chinese brands in disguise.
Legee 7 (also a terrible name) has Lidar based navigation. It can map out your place and you can use the app to place virtual barriers or tell the robot to clean a specific zone.
It also mops hard floors. If you are not looking for your vacuum to clean carpeted floors, this is definitely one of the best one I’ve tested.
I finally threw away our robot vacuum because it was pretty much useless even though it was still working
Sure it had its clever bits like finding and connecting itself to its charger but it kept trying to run off the balcony and worse was always getting itself stuck
And it was too small for our then oversized cat to ride on so it served no useful purpose
Error: “You must complete Home Phone field.” WTF Taiwan?!
Giving out your home number so it can sit in their shitty poorly secured database that they don’t give a fuck about, and syphoned off to some marketing prospect database, then to another 100 more so that you get calls all day and until 10 in the evening. Get fucked, no one is getting my home number in Taiwan, not even the bank.