Oddly enough the corporate policymakers who come out with these bizarre decrees must realize that putting impediments in the way of foreigners buying their goods and services will affect their bottom line in a bad way.
For Chunghua Telecom, the local banks and the others who require guarantors, i don’t think the “human rights” approach will work. Far more influential would be a “you lost my business to your hated competitor” letter (including a cc in chinese to the president of the company concerned) … assuming hated competitors could be found that were foreigner-friendly.
Maybe we should start generating useful data here (what we got without the need for guarantors) that could be turned into an easy-to use database for all Segue members to refer to.
I exaggerated. I’ve met one or two, usually people with foreign boy/girl-friends.
I would still liike to see the statistics on foreigner bad debtors versus Taiwanese bad debtors.
The problem is that foreigners have no newspaper, or local organisation on their side. No-one actually cares. In the West, there would be some organisation or other that would raise a stink about stuff like this.
As regards not having a comeback, I think we are talking about fairly small debts here. I would imagine in the case of a large debt a court could order a foreigner to be refused exit from Taiwan on the basis that a civil suit had been laid against him. AFAIK we’re talking about a couple of thousand NT a month at most for ADSL, and a credit limit could be imposed in relation to phone calls. This is the way sensible phone companies operate. If you allow unlimited credit for new applicants in any business you are an idiot and a certain percentage will come along and deliberately take advantage. When I got my mobile in China, people (PRC citizens) had been getting mobile accounts with roaming using fake ID cards and selling them abroad. A month’s free calls. The solution: a small deposit for roaming, and a credit limit. In this case Ironlady would have proved her credit worthiness by having paid her bills for 10 years and could be considered a reasonable risk. Phone companies here [the UK] use software to monitor unusual activity, and they are designed to predict large increases in use as when someone decides to burn his bridges. In the absence of such software, a simple credit limit will limit CW’s potential loss.
It is a bizarre situation. The customer most likely to be a heavy phone user is automatically barred. I also wonder at them not having monitoring software which can detect unusual activity.
Has there been some group of organised foreigners which has set up CW accounts and scammed heavily ? There used to be plenty of it going on in the UK - and BT started imposing very low credit limits as a result. If so, this sounds like a very draconian way of dealing with it.
Did you say Ironlady that a deposit would be accepted in lieu of a guarantor ? You would “get service” you said - presumably on very reduced terms ?
Except that they don’t argue that. They argue that “a few foreigners didn’t pay their bills” and tell us that, despite our needing degrees to work here, we won’t understand the translations of their “documents”. Even so, it boils down to the same thing: Racial discrimination evidencing backward policies in a country that seems to consider itself cosmopolitan. Sad, really.
Er…well, having seen the English translations of some of their documents, I think there might well be a grain of truth in this part. 
:shock: Now, whether or not we are capable of taking the original Chinese documents (the ones that the Chunghwa employees seem unable to read when they’re sitting on the desk between us) and understand their content is another matter. I translated a bunch of the documents that led to the breakup of their monopoly, but I guess I’m not competent to read a document about what happened…??
The point here is that very few Taiwanese know or give a hoot about what policies are or are not applied to foreigners. The folks at Chunghwa really believed (or at least acted really sincere about it ) that Chinese people in the West were discriminated against in this way (i.e., having different requirements imposed on them). I say, do it the way drivers’ licenses are handled. Give a contract only for the length of the ARC (if you’re truly determined to be pissy about it, that is), and consider the policy of the home country of the individual in granting exact reciprocity. That is, if the US requires no special stuff from them, then don’t ask for any from me. End of story. Either that, or don’t expect the darn seventh fleet next time China starts rattling its sabers.
I can see it now: “Sorry, I couldn’t call the Navy to get that carrier into the area, because I couldn’t get online with my dial-up service. Oh well.” 