Why are simple things so hard, easycard, einvoice, easy wallet rant

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
1

Why are ‘simple’ things so hard in Taiwan.
2 wks ago my easy card broke, so I bought another one, no problem I thought, get it registered, get it onto easy wallet (which I hardly use since it rubbish) and get my einvoice number attached the easy card so when I use it to buy stuff that einvoice is dealt with automatically.

a) Register easycard - there is no registration option on the English part of the website. You have to use the Chinese one, then because you have to upload photos of your ARC you then have to switch to using your phone and photo the ARC etc etc. Then it takes 3 days for approval. But most frustrating of all this was actually finding the application page in Chinese and understanding it all.

b) Card now registered off to easy wallet, which took 3 days to figure out how to add the card, it also wanted me to re-register 3 times each time wanting ARC photos. Even now the card value is wrong, it still has the card value from yesterday and not the top-up and usage from today. Totally rubbish app.

c) Off the einovice Chinese website to register my easycard, go to 7-11 get the hidden numbers, all goes well until I click send for registering the card, now I get a page saying I need to change the confirmation code, I enter a new one, click send and … nothing, card does not appear in the list, can’t try again because the confirmation code (old and new) are rejected. So back to 7-11 and there is a new confirmation code which is different to both the old and new one I set. Back to the website, enter the card click send and again I get a message asking me to enter a new changed confirmation code. I give up at this point.

Easycard came out in 2002, how come 21 years later we still can not have a webpage for registering one in English. EasyWallet is 4-5 yrs old but is still one of the worst apps out there. Why can’t it do the simple things that everyone wants it to do reliably- tell you how much is left on your card and allow you to top it up - reliably! My easywallet number is usually 24-48hrs behind and I have never been able to figure out how to top it up using the app.

Why is setting up einvoice so hard? Why isn’t there a simple English app to go with it, give a bar code, allow scanning of receipt, tell you if you have won, allow linking of your easycard.

I read things about Taiwan being bilingual in 2030, yet here we are 23 yrs after easycard started and you can’t even register one in English on their website.

Very frustrated rant over. Who can be talk too, who has the ability to make changes, who can help?

2

There’s no point doing now what they can put off until December 2029. Nice rant though.

3

This might help you get through this.

https://www.translatingtaiwan.com/2018/05/14/top-up-your-easycard-automatically-from-your-bank-account/

https://www.translatingtaiwan.com/2017/09/06/taiwans-receipt-lottery-get-virtual-receipts-and-connect-to-your-bank-account/

4

Thanks for the links - those are the ones I was using anyway, the person who wrote them did a fantastic jobs back in 2017/18 and in the main they still work fine today but with the websites have small changes which could do with being updated. The einvoice one in particular has changes.

It’s just for a country that is supposed to be bilingual in 2030 why is routine every-day stuff such as registering an easy-card (which is one of the first things anyone arriving here buys) still not an option in English?

More to the point where can issues like this be raised?

5

@fifieldt Tries to improve the situation at Taiwanese banks and other private companies.

We constantly try to encourage them to do better. Alien residents and English service has not much priority though.

@au Digital Minister also jumps in to mediate, but private companies are not required to do anything customer friendly. One can only petition and complain.

6

Why dont you read Chinese ?
no offense meant, but this is the mindset that the developers hav. the app and easy card were designed for the TW market, they didnt think they need to accommodate us, and that makes sense. If Chinese speakers traveling to London complain that the oyster card website isnt in Chinese most people will say “well duh…”.
I share the frustrations you have, best solution I found was to improve my Chinese skills.

7

No sure how speaking Chinese would help with reading it though and reading Chinese is a whole different thing to speaking a bit of it.

8

thank you for clarifying, i edited my original post to make it more clear.

9

I think you’ve hit on part of the problem, here developers may well think ‘well learn to speak Chinese’ but then forget the reading part of it. I know lots of people who can speak a little Chinese, enough to get by, but reading it is something far beyond them.

10

:face_with_raised_eyebrow:

You’ve had ties to Taiwan for at least 14 years. I don’t know if you’ve been in Taiwan for 14 years, but in the last 14 years, you didn’t learn Chinese at all?

11

Launched: June 2002
EasyCard - Wikipedia

12

Yeah sounds more about correct.

13

Whilst having English versions of websites would make it easier for many, this is Taiwan, and the lingua franca for taiwanese people is Guoyu, i.e. mandarin chinese with traditional characters.

Not all foreigners speak English, and I would never expect any content from gov or private companies like back home in Italy to be in Chinese or any other language than Italian. We look down a lot on foreigners living in Italy who can’t read and/or speak Italian. Our privilege to be westerners here in Asia and pretend to live in a country without the local language is quite appalling. Pay attention, I said living, not touring. Tourist related content must be in different languages, but that’s another topic, and e-invoice or easywallet is not exactly a tourist related thing.

I am busting my balls every day in trying to learn this difficult language more, but I do this as a matter of respect.

14

I don’t know. OP’s been here a while, has he not earned the right to a little complaint? They do jerk off about bilingual Taiwan a lot here, not a lot of substance to it though.

15

well, even more so he should be able to navigate in Chinese then :laughing: I have been in Chinese speaking areas for 5 years, arrived with basically no Chinese at all, now I do 90% of my things alone, still some support required for very difficult stuff.

16

Not really, I’d say. It’s up to him whether he wants to learn Chinese or not. There’s nothing wrong with making a request. But to expect everything to be presented in English to the level of making a complaint seems silly. If “bilingual Taiwan” becomes a reality, it could be another story, but there may well be a wait :slight_smile:

17

Plus by 2029 you will have learned Chinese so you won’t care of Taiwan is bilingual or not. 巨嬰.

Helpful hint: Don’t take the Taiwanese government literally when they say nice things to the international community such as ‘Bilingual 2030’. They don’t really mean it at least not in the sense that you apparently mean. Your life will be easier if you stop complaining and learn Chinese.

18

I’m always quite impressed by the amount of stuff they do bother translating into English - laws, national statistics, garbage truck schedules, even the operational details for refuse incineration plants. I can’t imagine many countries do that, and it seems to border on unnecessary at times.

It’d be nice if people were able to enter ARC numbers without websites throwing up error messages though, and if choosing “press x for English” didn’t consistently direct phone calls to surprised customer service workers who speak no English. I realize the majority of people living here are Taiwanese, but around 800,000 (ca. 3%) of the population are foreign residents, and that isn’t really a negligible value.

19

Sure, I’m not saying there are no possible causes for complaint.

20

True, but how many of them are English speakers? why not translate to Vietnamese or Bhasa?
I feel the frustration of the OP, the language barrier is a handicap, for me too. But complaining that a Chinese speaking nation doesnt localize to English is akin to a guy with crutches complaining he can’t play basketball :slight_smile: