I recently signed up on Ruten using my ARC and all went smoothly. But now I’m trying to place an order with shop to shop for delivery, and the system will only let me check out with a Chinese name for the recipient (I don’t have one). Same issue for home delivery. Has anyone found a way to use a non-Chinese name?
You could just make a Chinese name for yourself. No need to register it anywhere, you can adopt a Chinese name by yourself.
Quite a few systems are not set up to take latin script because this is a Chinese-speaking country. Getting a Chinese name is easy and free.
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I’m pretty sure I don’t have a Chinese name linked to my account, and I’ve successfully ordered from Ruten in the past using my real first name, or possibly a truncated version of it like “Andre” or “Andr” - are you sure that the issue is the Latin characters, as opposed to just exceeding the character limit?
Maybe you could try just entering the first few characters of your name instead and see if that’s accepted. I’d do COD though rather than paying in advance if possible - if the item is already paid for, some convenience stores can be strict about seeing ID with that name on it to collect the order, so could cause a problem if you use a Chinese name that doesn’t match your ID (this isn’t a problem I’ve ever had myself even when using truncated versions of my name, but I’ve read of others having issues with it).
Also, is there a reason you need to use Ruten rather than Shopee? There’s admittedly some stuff that’s hard to find on Shopee but available on Ruten (often borderline illegal/gray area things like vape stuff, I think), but unless you’re trying to buy something like that Shopee might be a more convenient option.
I find Ruten quite unpleasant to use, even for a Taiwanese website, and haven’t used it for a couple of years now (so my info about the name above might also be outdated).
Yeah Shopee is much easier! Unfortunately there’s some things I can only find on Ruten though.
Maybe this is something new with Ruten. When I fill out the recipient info for shipping, the site gives me the error message “姓名欄位格式錯誤，請輸入中文且最多為5個字。” (“The format of the name field is incorrect. Please enter Chinese characters with a maximum of 5 characters.”). Same error if I type in only 5 latin characters.
I would love to avoid getting into trouble with Ruten, or with specific sellers, by placing an order for COD and then having a convenience store refuse to release it since the name doesn’t match my ARC. Short of getting an updated ARC w/ Chinese name, I wonder if there’s another kind of official ID I could get where I could include a Chinese name?
Oh okay. Yeah, maybe it’s a new thing then. I registered maybe 5-6 years ago and have only made several orders since then.
In my experience, for COD convenience store workers don’t care as long as you give them the phone number and name and pay them. I don’t remember ever being asked to show ID for a COD order, and when there’s a genuine reason you couldn’t use your real name (like Taiwanese websites generally not considering the fact that foreigners live in Taiwan) I think you’d be able to blag your way out of it. If I were you, I’d just use my transliterated real name to place the order (so that, on the off-chance you do get an unusually strict convenience store worker, they can at least see some connection between the two names) and it’ll almost certainly work out fine.
I can see where you are coming from, I’ve had the occasional administrative pedant here check something out letter by letter. But the convenience stores are lax as hell about this these days and just want to move the parcel off their premises as quickly as possible.
Try having an administrative pedant check your name out letter by letter but none of the systems support the nearly-40-character long name, so it’s truncated and then people whinge about it not being exactly the same as my ID, but you can’t use your Chinese name because we need to have the name you have in your passport because you’re a foreigner and we don’t use our own country’s ID despite owning one.
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