Banks here are so retarded as to have become my personal pet hate/winge about Taiwan.
The bank where I have the account for my business sees plenty of money going through my account and they kow that I own the company. Could they give me a credit card given they have seen me there often with access to all those $$? No f@!#$%^&*(ing way. I went to 2 other banks trying to get a credit card. Two of them (HSBC and Chinatrust) both said it was possible if I met a long list of criteria including income over NT 100,000 a month and have lived here several years. I have PERFECT credit history back “home” (Australia) and they also have branches there. Both banks refused my application without giving a reason. For what it is worth my ARC is pink not green but some bank workers seem to be incapabel of undersanding “yongjiu” in their own language.
More examples of bank BS. They would not let me use a credit card machine in my shops. Not have a credit card of my own, but the machine to accept other people’s cards… Now I have ones registered in a now basically bankrupt Taiwanese person’s name… but that is OK!!!
Another is that since I run an import business I need to send lots of money overseas. One wierd supplier in the USA actually likes to be payed by credit card. I eventually got a card by putting money in a term deposit greater than the credit limit and longer than the card validity. Sometimes if I am making a bigger order I need to go over my normal credit limit. Then I have taken money to the bank in cash, put it in the account, asked them to temporarily raise the limit which they always say they will do, but usually it takes several requests and rejections before they get it right. I could rant on all day, but they would probably just tell me it was because I don’t understand DaiWarn banking culture or something…
Agree with the complaints about banks here.
First point I’ll make is, the bank robbery the other day. They’ve caught the culprit, but it seems banks here a very unsecure. As I remember in Australia, all banks have bullet-proofed screens that they can draw up in these circumstances. I seem to remember that a would be robber was killed when he was pinned to a roof by one of these screens.
Second point is, I’ve just logged onto FCB’s internet banking for the first time. They too use that weird birthdate + first two letters of your surname id. Once into the system… OMG. It’s terrible. Unfortunately, as a software engineer who has worked very closely with Taiwanese on made for Taiwan systems, it is indicative of their idea of design and usability.
I use Taipei Fubon’s online banking and I find the user interface quite slick. What I don’t get though is WHY you can’t make an online payment to whoever you want; you have to go to a branch and sign a form for each account you want to make payments to (although you can pay some stuff like tax and certain bills without setting it up in advance).
What some people do is buy a card reader, so that they can swipe their card (at home, on their own computer – it plugs into the USB port) and thus make payments to whoever, like having an ATM at home. I find this bizarre.
Wow, so can I buy this card reader thingy and withdraw cash at home?
Er, no.