I sought to buy compulsory car insurance from Fubon Insurance. I don’t speak Chinese.
The insurance agent I spoke to assured me I would be buying compulsory car insurance. After paying, she sent me the insurance documents.
From my very basic Chinese, I saw the characters (san ren/third person) and got suspicious. I asked the insurance agent many times via email - back and forth about 50 times (not joking) and finally found out I was sold more than what I asked for.
Everyone’s English there was so bad - including a few different Fubon agents who were specifically assigned to my case because they were “English” speaking.
I’m still not sure if I paid for Compulsory + Third Party or Comprehensive insurance. The communication with them is so awful.
I’m now trying to get back the excess money I paid. They gave a number of excuses such as I need to come sign the forms in person (after doing so they claimed the person at the Fubon branch didn’t understand what I was asking for, and I will have to do it again), etc.
A number of weeks has passed with different excuses (person in charge on holiday), no replies to emails, the money will be sent in a few days (it never has been), etc.
I wasted a day visiting the Fubon Insurance branch and another day visiting the Vehicle Licensing Agency after the insurance agent said my car was insured, and the officer at the agency said it wasn’t on their system (yet).
Essentially my allegations against Fubon Insurance are:
They sold car insurance beyond what I specifically asked for
They make it difficult to get a refund
They make it difficult to get any clarity on what I bought or am paying for
They have wasted two days of my time, including multiple emails and complaints
They don’t reply to emails or calls, and don’t give the refund they say they will give
No sense of responsibility to fix a mess or repay a customer for a mistake made
How the sale was handled and how they are dealing with it now, makes me feel that Fubon’s conduct is bordering on deceptive selling practices and not a “misunderstanding”
My questions are:
What are my next courses of action?
Can I ask for compensation for time wasted as well? What’s the likelihood I will get it?
What are my odds in the Small Claims Court if I don’t speak any Chinese?
Yes I’ve asked my Taiwanese friends to help translate and speak with them, and to their credit they do, but I feel I have troubled everyone enough already.
I don’t think that’s a valid reason to contest a contract.
Did you check what you were signing (maybe using Google Translate)? Or did you blindly trust the word of the insurance salesman?
There is no legal requirement that companies in Taiwan provide English service to foreigners. If they provide English documents, there is usually a disclaimer that the Chinese version is the legally binding one.
Haven’t heard about this. Are you from the US by any chance? Taiwan doesn’t have any kind of punitive damages in those case mostly. So it’s not like one can expect a big payout in those kind of cases even if the insurance company should be in the wrong…
How much money are we talking about…?
You’d probably need to hire a lawyer - not sure if that would be worth in this scenario…
Probably best to take it as a lesson learned and do those things online in the future. Or at least do some basic research online on how much compulsory insurance costs before you pay a much higher amount…
It is, if you were sold something on false or deceptive pretenses.
Are you a lawyer? This isn’t punitive damages, its demonstrable damages by having to not work for two days plus about 50 emails asking mostly the same thing in different wording.
It’s because of attitudes like yours that these insurance companies get away with selling more than what foreigners ask for, by deception or “errors in translation”.
Taiwan isn’t run by lawyers, you don’t get to sue for big payout over little stuff like this. How much money are we talking? Even in the US few cases goes to court, arbitration is how most cases are handled. Insurance companies are not responsible for your lack of due diligence.
No insurance companies are legally required to speak English, anymore than anyone in the US is required to provide services in any language other than English or maybe Spanish.
Feel free to hire a lawyer but you’ll likely spend far more on legal fees than any price difference for the insurance.
Nope. But you should probably be looking for one as this:
doesn’t sound like a reasonable way to resolve this kind of situation. I feel that any judge would see it as rather excessive to try to get compensated for two days of work and 50 emails to resolve a dispute like this
But again: Not a lawyer (and definitely not offering legal advice), so you do you…
Yeah, most of them will probably just stop doing business in English at all if it just leads to complaints like that…
I am NOT suing for a big payout, please everyone get that out of your head. I want the extra I paid refunded, and if possible demonstrable losses for fixing this mess.
Where I am from insurance is a regulated industry, which means they cannot sell you things under false pretenses. Is it the case here in TW?
It’s different, an agent of theirs that spoke English (albeit broken) sent me a payment barcode, on my understanding that it was for compulsory insurance.
It is reasonable that if they cause harm by their deception, they pay for it.
And let’s face it, there will be no change in such marketing tactics if it doesn’t hit their bottom line. After much frustration to the customer, if the insurance company only needs to refund the excess, they will keep doing this.
And yes a few of my Taiwanese friends say this is a known tactic.
Many things in Taiwan are tightly regulated on paper, too - but in practice those laws and regulations are somewhat “elastic” so to say…
With all due credit (I mean your intentions might be good!) - but if you really want to go through with suing them, do expect to spend considerable time, effort and money (possible much more than you’ve already paid for the insurance!). And don’t expect to do it by yourself as a foreigner who doesn’t speak Chinese without a lawyer…
And even if you “win” in the end - don’t expect to be compensated much more than the price of the insurance. I’d say you’re already lucky if they’d end up paying for your lawyer…
Insurance is a highly regulated industry in Taiwan. The organization I linked you to has been set up by the government to deal with this kind of dispute with the financial services industry.
Everybody says they’re going to sue until they find out how much lawyers cost
Realistically I think suing for less than 300k is a waste of time and money. Suing Fubon for 100k and you will likely lose a lot of money. How do you know you won’t get cheated by the Chinese speaking lawyer?
For small things like this, sure you can sue, but the reality as others mentioned already is you are going to rack up a lot more cost and time trying to fight such a small thing that any win would still be a loss.
Plus places like Fubon would have an entire boardroom of lawyers on retainer, I would bet you that you will spend a long time to even find a lawyer that would take this on.
The only part I find interesting is that people that can’t read Chinese technically shouldn’t be allowed to get into a contract because they don’t have capacity to understand what they are signing. If anything, if you sued and won, companies might just get more restrictive where you either need to understand the entire contract and prove it or if not, have a legally licenced translator come with you to sign contracts. Citibank said that to me decades ago, sorry no account for foreigners because you can’t read the Chinese contract.
After we talked on the phone, the insurance saleswoman just sent me a barcode to pay the insurance via cash at a convenience store. There was NO contract sent yet.
Yes it sounds sketchy but I checked her email address and it was from Fubon Insurance, and they do not deny that I paid them.
Only after I paid, did they send the contract. But although I understood almost zero of it, I was told by the Vehicle Licensing Department when I showed it to them (the day after I paid and was told by Fubon my car insurance was active) that it was just the T&C of our contract, with no confirmation of payment on the document - therefore it couldn’t be accepted as proof of a paid insurance in force.
Some here have claimed that Taiwanese are off the hook because they don’t have to speak English here. It’s true - this is their country and they can speak whatever they want. But without making this a political thread, I’d like to remind everyone that Taiwan would be asking for help from other English speaking countries in the event of a Chinese invasion. Taiwan is also an export driven economy and apart from China, English is the lingua franca for business deals and international trade.
What you should be receiving is a document similar to this (don’t mind the design…). I think in my case they sent me a text message with a link where I could download it:
That one is proof that you have a valid compulsory insurance. Form my understanding, the data should also be electronically transmitted so the police can check based on your ID/ARC number.
Yes, that does sound shady.
Lesson learned: Don’t pay anything before you have a contract. Or at least an itemized invoice…
Yeah, I’m looking forward to you presenting that argument in court…
Obviously I won’t play that argument in court. It is enough that the agent presented as being competent in English, heard my instructions for ONLY compulsory insurance, sent a payment barcode without the T&C, made it so difficult for me to find out I paid for more than what I asked for and they now make it disproportionately difficult for me to get my money back.
In the past when there were Asian students/workers/immigrants in my country who could barely string a sentence together I was a lot more liberal and agreed we should provide taxpayer-funded translators for them.
Now after experiencing how merciless Taiwanese can be to foreigners who don’t speak Chinese, I believe Asian immigrants should speak the native language or tough luck.
Incidentally can anyone recommend a car insurance other than Fubon that you’ve had positive experiences with? I’m looking at the ratings of the Fubon branches and they are not impressive.
Just remembered this thread as I’m currently renewing my car insurance.
Cathay charges $808 for the compulsory liability insurance (when getting it online). That one only covers bodily injury, though, with a limit of $200k per person (yes, NT$!). Can be done completely online after registering an account. Foreigners are supported but apparently need to have a new UI number (「新式外來人口統一證號」變更提醒事項).
Personally, I still chose to add a couple of other options (most notably third party insurance and vehicle damage insurance). My total premium for the year is about $27k:
