China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) said yesterday it would absorb all costs incurred because of an error on its Web site — which offered one-way tickets from Kaohsiung to New York at only NT$2,600 (US$79) each, a 90 percent discount from the usual price.
“We are still investigating whether the mistake was caused by a system or human error,” CAL spokesman Bruce Chen (陳鵬宇) told Taiwan Television station yesterday.
SUPER LOW PRICES
The offer — NT$2,600 instead of the usual price of NT$26,600 — was posted on its Web site for two days. About 10 people bought the super low-priced tickets, costing CAL about NT$240,000.
The incident is the latest in a string of Web errors that have dogged online sellers this year.
US computer giant Dell Inc, for instance, experienced two such blunders this year — one with its notebook PC and the other for liquid-crystal-display monitors.
In July, Dell listed the selling price for its Latitude E4300 notebook at NT$18,500 on its Taiwanese Web site, far below its normal price of NT$60,900.
The mistake followed another slip-up 10 days earlier, in which the Web site priced a 19-inch monitor at NT$500, rather than its usual price of NT$7,500
VOUCHERS
Dell didn’t absorb all the cost as thousands of buyers booked orders to take advantage of the super-low price. Instead, the company offered discount vouchers as compensation for consumers who placed the orders.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last