While many of the nation's over 400,000 credit and cash cardholders remain dogged by escalating loans, a 27-year-old woman has made profits of more than NT$1 million (US$31,300) over the past three months using just her credit card.
However, this has raised the ire of her card issuer, Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中國信託), which decided to halt her card on Wednesday.
"If consumers refuse to follow the regulations [stipulated in contracts] when using our products, we're sorry but we have to invalidate their cards as we don't want to see them bearing high risks and distorting the nature of financial tools," said Michael Chang (張智銓), director of the bank's credit card division, during a phone interview yesterday evening.
"As of now, we haven't yet received any response from her. Nor has she contacted us for further negotiations," he added.
Chang refused to disclose the contents of a certified letter that the bank has sent to the woman, citing the Law for the Protection of Computer-managed Personal Information (電腦處理個人資料保護法).
Dubbed the "goddess of cards" by the local Chinese-language media, Yang Hui-ju (楊蕙如), a citizen of Taitung City and a MBA degree holder from the University of Queensland, Australia, stumbled upon the money-making scheme accidentally while surfing the Internet at home.
According to Yang, Eastern Home Shopping Network (東森得易購), the nation's largest television shopping service provider, allowed their members to purchase vouchers worth NT$20,000 (US$627.35) by paying only NT$19,000 when using a credit card.
What caught her eye was that, if the vouchers are not used after one year, Eastern Home Shopping will redeem them by presenting each customer with a check worth NT$20,000, a move that guarantees customers a five-percent return ratio, higher than the interest rate offered on deposits.
She then discovered a preferential bonus-point program provided by Chinatrust Commercial Bank, the nation's biggest credit-card issuer.
By paying a monthly membership fee of NT$800 to the bank, cardholders can earn eight times the amount of bonus points from purchases made using the card.
Having discovered the incentives, she raised capital of NT$6 million from her relatives and put it into her Chinatrust account in order to earn a higher credit line in October last year.
After spending all the money to buy Eastern Home Shopping vouchers using her credit card, she earned 1.6 million bonus points.
She then sold the vouchers on auction Web sites, some of them being bought back by her relatives, who then did the same for her. By doing so several times, her bonus points quickly snowballed to over 8 million points.
The points allowed her to obtain 20 free first-class airline tickets to the US, exchanging 320,000 points for each ticket, which she then sold on the Internet to rake in NT$900,000.
As Chinatrust also allows cardholders to transfer their bonus points, she sold her remaining points via the Internet by selling 1,000 points at NT$300.
This way, Yang said she has amassed more than NT$1 million in profit.
Chinatrust reportedly accused Yang of deception by colluding with her friends and relatives. But the non-profit Consumers' Foundation (消基會) said the bank should apologize to Yang and has no right to invalidate her credit cards.
The bank still profits from Yang's purchases by way of handling fees and if it finds her behavior improper, the bank should instead adjust the promotions, rather than accusing its consumers, said Terry Huang (黃怡騰), the foundation's secretary general.
"If it is OK for banks to make money from consumers, then why can't the reverse happen?" he asked.
On Ireland’s blustery western seaboard, researchers are gleefully flying giant kites — not for fun, but in the hope of generating renewable electricity and sparking a “revolution” in wind energy. “We use a kite to capture the wind and a generator at the bottom of it that captures the power,” said Padraic Doherty of Kitepower, the Dutch firm behind the venture. At its test site in operation since September 2023 near the small town of Bangor Erris, the team transports the vast 60-square-meter kite from a hangar across the lunar-like bogland to a generator. The kite is then attached by a
Foxconn Technology Co (鴻準精密), a metal casing supplier owned by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), yesterday announced plans to invest US$1 billion in the US over the next decade as part of its business transformation strategy. The Apple Inc supplier said in a statement that its board approved the investment on Thursday, as part of a transformation strategy focused on precision mold development, smart manufacturing, robotics and advanced automation. The strategy would have a strong emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI), the company added. The company said it aims to build a flexible, intelligent production ecosystem to boost competitiveness and sustainability. Foxconn
Leading Taiwanese bicycle brands Giant Manufacturing Co (巨大機械) and Merida Industry Co (美利達工業) on Sunday said that they have adopted measures to mitigate the impact of the tariff policies of US President Donald Trump’s administration. The US announced at the beginning of this month that it would impose a 20 percent tariff on imported goods made in Taiwan, effective on Thursday last week. The tariff would be added to other pre-existing most-favored-nation duties and industry-specific trade remedy levy, which would bring the overall tariff on Taiwan-made bicycles to between 25.5 percent and 31 percent. However, Giant did not seem too perturbed by the
TARIFF CONCERNS: Semiconductor suppliers are tempering expectations for the traditionally strong third quarter, citing US tariff uncertainty and a stronger NT dollar Several Taiwanese semiconductor suppliers are taking a cautious view of the third quarter — typically a peak season for the industry — citing uncertainty over US tariffs and the stronger New Taiwan dollar. Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科技) said that customers accelerated orders in the first half of the year to avoid potential tariffs threatened by US President Donald Trump’s administration. As a result, it anticipates weaker-than-usual peak-season demand in the third quarter. The US tariff plan, announced on April 2, initially proposed a 32 percent duty on Taiwanese goods. Its implementation was postponed by 90 days to July 9, then
RSS