Obviously the best of us.
rocket & the_bear
Shit. I was betting on cake and welcome.
Please contact the e-commerce platform. If they would not change the code for some reason, please contact Ms. Wu from MoEA at: 02-23212200 ext. 8751.
Source: Frequently Asked Questions — MOEA #7
Thank you!
We are planning to crowdsource services that are not validating new ID numbers and inform them about the upcoming change.
But might need help if they are ignoring us.
Please @audreyt help us increase consumer protections and make the implementations of equality mandatory with fines as punishment. We’re tired of being second class.
The lack of equality regulations unnecessarily cost us time and money, hurting our economic productivity. We WANT to contribute to and support Taiwan.
Companies and financial institutions are not going to change their ways if there are no teeth to the regulations.
I’m glad to help as needed. Note that regulations cannot impose fines — an Act is required to impose them. (c.f. Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 619)
There is a Complaint and Mediation process in the Consumer Protection Act, which may be a good addition to the crowdsourcing platform.
I appreciate your help as always.
We appreciate your help. We hope a stronger Act can be passed by Parliament that brings stronger anti-discrimination protections for foreigners. Many of the systems, not just for ARC IDs are not adequate enough to protect against discrimination. We love Taiwan, I love Taiwan but we need a fairer environment to ensure Taiwan remains a stronger-than-ever country.
A big problem is that the Consumer Protections Act makes no mention of discrimination by age, race, sex, nationality, gender, sexual orientation and more and makes only two mentions of ‘equality’.
Switching the conversation to a slightly different topic. I visited Kaohsiung’s NIA centre a few times recently and found out that they are no longer able to assist Gold Card holders, as all paperwork related to our visas has been brought online and is exclusively managed by the relevant office in Taipei. It seems that officers in the NIA centres do not even have access to the Gold Card online platform. While I welcome the digitalisation (changing address online was smooth and easy) of visa services, I am wondering how we will apply to change our ARC numbers from next month, considering that the NIA centres cannot do it for us (the officer just confirmed it to me). And, general thought, wouldn’t it be better to integrate the Gold Card office and online platform with the existing NIA system and “physical” centres rather than keep it separate like an exclusive club?
Thank you for your input and assistance as always! As a computer scientist myself and resident in Taiwan, I’ve always hugely admired and appreciated the work you’ve done. It’s nice to know someone is listening to the concerns of even a relatively small (but hopefully influential) population.
I hope you’ll continue providing your input here and there on the forum when you have the time.
I don’t think anyone in the foreign chamber actually understands the root cause of the problem. If they did they wouldn’t praise this change which frankly does nothing reg. the problem.
“ spokesperson reiterated that 37 government agencies will have updated their systems by Jan. 2, but she could not rule out that there may be some technical difficulties in the beginning and that private companies may be slow to update their systems.”
So they could have done this with the existing numbers too 
why change the numbers at all !
“Slow” as in never for the private ones
Focus Taiwan has posted a helpful FAQ about the upcpoming changes to ARC/APRC numbers:
Guy
Freddie Hoglund, CEO of the European Chamber of Commerce Taiwan (ECCT), said the chamber has been studying the issue since 2010 and he was happy to see a solution.
That’s a pretty long study.
But now, after we update our cards to have another format that has 8s and 9s that still won’t be accepted because systems are coded to read 1s and 2s, we have a hotline to call to which the government won’t issue fines but probably…perhaps will enter the details into a database where it will get ‘looked into’ further.
I’ve always been lucky that the services I use have always accepted the current ARC number format, so have never encountered the amount of hassle others on this forum have. What annoys me now is that I almost definitely will encounter problems with the updated format as sites will not accept it straight away. Why couldn’t they have consulted the foreign community or literally even one programmer who could have told them their ‘solution’ won’t solve anything before doing this?