Chunghwa Telecom and other mobile phone service providers are violating consumers' rights with unreasonable security deposit practices, the Consumers' Foundation said yesterday.
"Because Chunghwa Telecom and other service providers recently stopped requiring a security deposit for starting a cellular phone account, it is only fair that account holders who paid a security deposit in the past be entitled to a return of their deposit money," said the foundation's secretary general, Cheng Jen-hung (程仁宏).
Chunghwa Telecom representative Hsueh Tian-chu (薛菾助) responded by explaining the provider's policy change.
"In the past, all applicants were required to pay the security deposit. Right now, we still require security deposits, but we have special promotions during which the deposit can be waived after an investigation of one's credit history" Hsueh said.
"For those who applied for the service when the deposit was mandatory, our policy is that the deposit will be returned upon the termination of service," he said.
The Consumers' Foundation however reiterated that despite a good credit history, account holders who had paid the security deposit had no means of getting the deposit back without terminating their accounts. At the same time, most of Chunghwa Telecom's new customers do not pay security deposits anymore, Cheng said.
"If the account holder is not delinquent in bill payments and has proven to have good credit, the deposit should be returned in a timely fashion," a Chunghwa Telecom account holder said.
In addition, the foundation stressed that most service providers failed to notify customers of their right to the security deposit return.
"Several providers, including FarEastone, Eastcom, and KG Telecom, automatically extend the account holder's contract, with no notification of expiration of the contract or information on the right to a deposit return at the expiration of the contract," Cheng said.
Mao Ying-fu (毛英富), a Consumers' Foundation lawyer, said that the length of time needed for a deposit return was unreasonable and further stated that a contract that violated consumers' rights could legally be made null and void. According to the foundation's research, most service providers needed 45 days to return the deposit after it was requested.
"Taiwan Cellular is more reasonable with a 15-day return period, as is FarEastone with a two to three-week return period. However, most of the others require 45 days, or a month-and-a-half. With TransAsia Telecommunications, you get half of the deposit after 45 days, and the rest after six months," Cheng said.
However, Ministry of Transportation and Communications Directorate General of Telecommunications Tsai Ping-huang (蔡炳煌) explained that providers were required by law to return the deposit within 45 days. He further stressed that the figure had originally been three months, but had later been changed after having considered the needs of consumers and businesses.
Tsai vowed to further investigate the issue, looking specifically into whether providers should be required to notify customers of their contracts' expiration before automatically extending them, and to inform customers of deposit return procedures.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching