Consumer disputes regarding online games are the second-most common after disputes over transportation, with account theft the top complaint, the Executive Yuan’s Consumer Protection Committee said on Wednesday last week.
The number of disputes has grown steadily since last year, likely because more people are staying indoors during the COVID-19 pandemic, senior consumer ombudsman Wang Te-ming (王德明) said, predicting that the number would continue to rise as the pandemic continues.
More than 1,440 disputes have so far been filed this year, in addition to more than 3,600 from last year, committee statistics showed.
Of those filed last year, 1,177 were over allegedly stolen accounts, while 1,102 were over canceled refunds, the data showed.
Additionally, 277 disputes were over poor Internet connections, more than 100 were over in-game item theft and more than 140 were for underage purchases, the data showed.
The highest amount disputed was about NT$100,000 that a teenager spent on game tokens, the committee said.
Once a player realizes that their account or in-game item has been stolen, Wang said that they should first contact the game company to confirm the theft, and suspend the account or item.
However, if the player did not use free security features supplied by the company, it might not be responsible for providing compensation or restoring lost items, Wang added.
If a player wishes to cancel their subscription, they have the right to submit a written request to the company within seven days of opening the account, he said, adding that no reason needs to be given.
Players may also request refunds for any unused store credit and request a subscription cancelation at any time, Wang said.
The company must then refund unused credit or fees within 30 days, although it has no obligation to refund game tokens or items, he added.
However, the committee also reminded players that these rights only apply to Taiwanese game companies — disputes with foreign companies without a representative in Taiwan might have no means of recourse.
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