Telecom carriers must provide clear information to customers about international data roaming services and give warnings when customers are close to reaching preset spending limits, the National Communications Commission said yesterday.
Officials from the commission and from the Consumer Protection Committee met with telecom carriers earlier this month to address an increase in consumer disputes over international data roaming services, with a growing number of smartphone users reporting “bill shock” after accessing the Internet while abroad.
Liang Wen-hsing (梁溫馨), a specialist at the commission’s operational management department, said the companies had agreed to implement three measures to reduce consumer disputes and protect their customers.
He said that telecom carriers should establish an alerts system to inform customers when they are close to running out of credit.
“It is generally assumed that the upper credit limit for customers should be set at NT$5,000. However, that amount can vary based on customers’ preferences,” Liang said.
If the amount spent on international data services reaches this figure, then the service should be suspended automatically unless a customer indicates they wish to continue using the service.
Carriers should also send notifications to customers when 70 percent of their credit has been used, he added.
Liang said that carriers must also switch off international roaming when customers return to Taiwan and would have to waive additional charges if they failed to do so.
When a customer arrives in another country, Liang said, Taiwanese telecom firms should ensure that customers are connected to the local networks offering the best rates by default, adding that they must relay to customers the conditions under which the service is offered and offer them the chance to accept or reject the service.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,