(photo source: 自由時報 screen capture from video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8bE9DgSPCo>)
Chunghwa Telecom offers several contract deals priced respectively at NT$ 399, 499, and 599 per month, each with a contract period of 30 months. However, last month, the NT$ 499 deal (henceforth referred to as the 499 deal) attracted a great number of people. The deal promises not only 180 minutes of free phone calls, but also unlimited access to the Internet. This special deal causes lots of people to give up their original telecom service and would rather pay a compensation for breaking the original contracts in order to change to Chunghwa Telecom for the 499 deal.
Chunghwa Telecom lunches the 499 NT deal to undercut its competitors, FarEastOne and Taiwan Mobile, who want to attract more clients and make them enter into a long-term binding contract. This was the reason why there was a long line of people waiting in front of every Chunghwa Telecom store. Besides, too many people wanted the 499 deal, the Chunghwa Telecom staff were forced to work over time. Most of them were exhausted, and there was even one who collapsed during the chaos. However, the other two telecom companies were afraid that they would keep on losing their clients to Chunghwa Telecom, so both began to offer deals similar to the 499 deal.
Seeing the chaos gets wilder and wilder, someone finally stepped in. National Communications Commission (NCC) fined Chunghwa Telecom NT$ 2,000,000 for inappropriate business operation, over working its employees, and impairing consumer rights. In addition, FarEastOne and Taiwan Mobile also got fined.
In fact, a similar situation where people swarmed in for something happened in February this year—the tissue paper panic. There was a rumor that the tissue paper manufacturers would raise prices around April. Many people didn't want to pay more for tissue paper. Therefore, they bought a lot of tissue paper to hoard before prices rise. However, why would people in Taiwan have such crazy behavior just for saving a few dollars? On the one hand, it is probably because the average salary in Taiwan is low; on the other hand, it shows that we’re now experiencing an economic recession. These two reasons make people try to spend as little money as they can and limit their spending on money-for-value consumer goods so as to save money.
The same situation might happen again in the future. Unfortunately, the salary issue and our economic recession does not seem likely to go away in a short time. What we can do now is hoping the government can do make some changes as soon as possible; otherwise, there might be more exhausted and overloaded employees during potential follow-up chaoses or panics.
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