I’m just gonna YOLO it and not update anything (unless the banks get notified and I need to show my new UI.
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If you have any credit cards the banks will be notified of the ID number change.
Tung’s Taichung Metro Harbour Hospital:
Can’t look up an appointment despite having one. ARC number produces a “can’t find what you’re looking for” error. However, I can make an appointment with the ARC number. Taiwan ID is working as intended.
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Yesterday I got a SMS that they are working on a fix and it will take 2-4 weeks to make ID number changes possible for EasyWallet.
Just half a year after the ARC holders started getting new ID numbers…
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Sure. But they won’t necessarily do anything about it, other than deactivating your account. Then have you go in to settle it.
not the order of months. Great.
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I received a new Gold Card this morning with the new ARC number. Update of Driving Licence and Bank Account (CTBC) completed without issues nor questions. My 6 months in Taiwan are next week so I will apply for the NHI card directly with the new number.
I remember someone talking about possible issues on credit cards. Mine is debit, so take my report with a pinch of salt, but according to the clerk changing ID number is no more than updating e-mail or phone number. No effect, she claimed, on T&C whatsoever. No changes on LinePay, either.
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Seems to say that it isn’t their fault, but the companies that don’t allow foreigners to register. And that they will help foreigners who can’t register with various companies
I expect a generic reply to say that they cannot force companies to accept the card so… tough luck
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Wonder why though… why does a drama theatre or a cinema need to check if I’m a Taiwan national or no before opening an account. Doesn’t make any sense.
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I don’t know the specifics here. But often these odd (and oddly onerous) regulations are leftovers from the martial law period, in which the authorities attempted to tightly regulate all organizations and gatherings. If you hit oddities like this, it may be a residual trace of this history.
Guy
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Well martial law ended in 1987 right? Let’s take a service like pchome which started in 1998. What’s the excuse for them to ask for a national id to register ?
In fact none of the services like HSR, TRA, etc would have internet websites before martial law, whose system would carry over.
Again I don’t get it.
They didn’t intend to ask about nationality, just ID. and, they didn’t know there were foreigners in Taiwan when they started business.
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Or even know that foreigners have a different ID number.
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Again, why ask id for watching a movie or drama?
And if you’re really asking for id, how about actually enforcing it? I have never been asked to show my id in trains or buses or cinema. Not that we should have to, but just saying. To get around the useless id problem, some people just put a fake generated id, since it’s never checked in any case.
So what exactly is the point ?
All business owners, managers, tech, advisors in all entities cannot be this stupid over decades. I think there has to be some bureaucratic undercurrent here, which is asking them to do this. To make sure that non- RoC-ese do not easily get a seat at the table. Our giving excuses for their tech incompetence, is playing into their apartheid.
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obviously, they can.
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I can assume this is the outcome they wanted.
They want to enforce the reality that we are outsiders and are only guests in their country.
I believe the initial Idea was benevolent but the people charged with the management and implementation of the project did not have benevolent intentions.
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It’s not obvious at all. There’s no hard evidence either way. But common sense would suggest there are other factors at play than mere mass stupidity over decades.
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If there’s no law requiring it, then I guess that it’s one of those things that companies use it because everyone else uses it, and have been doing so for decades.
The Taiwan ID number is a convenient unique identifier. They know everyone has one and they are always different. It’s quicker to give over the phone and in other situations, rather than trying to give a Chinese name. I’ve heard people giving their names for bookings and they often have to go through a lengthy rigmarole along the lines of “It’s Wang…Wang Fu de Wang, then… Ying…YingWen de Ying, Lin…SenLin de Lin”. It’s worse when their name has an uncommon character. Additionally, there are lots of people in Taiwan who have the same names.
So for the developers of the database systems, there is a lot of benefit to making use of a standard, unique ID that’s given out to everyone. You do get this somewhat in some other places…e.g. in the US the Social Security Number is often used, in UK it’s the National Insurance number, Hong Kong uses the HK ID etc. True they perhaps aren’t as pervasive in everyday transactions like they are here.
There is a mindset here where companies try to collect so much unnecessary information about you, and people seem to accept it unquestioningly. Perhaps if there was more pushback on privacy issues by the locals here, then companies would be forced to behave differently.
In addition, for companies, especially those doing online sales, they probably think collecting the ID might help prevent fraud.
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But there is no excuse for these companies to take decades to realize there is a problem. It persists because they are so used to saying… sorry mr waiguoren the system doesn’t allow you to register… please take a few hours out of your day between the hours of 930 and 3 to bring your ARC and passport to our offices and wait while the xiaojie tries to figure out how to enter the data and what type of restrictions they need to add to this foreigners account. Meanwhile a local can apply online and is finished in minutes, the product or service shipped right to their door.
Then await a post online where some new to Taiwan foreigner will say how all the old folks on Forumosa are always so salty 
without any hint of irony
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