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`Card goddess' has account canceled
BANKERS: Chinatrust has halted the account
of a savvy customer who took advantage of offers to make some money,
much to the ire of the Consumer's Foundation
By Jackie Lin
STAFF REPORTER
Friday, Jan 13, 2006,Page 10
While many of the nation's over 400,000 credit and
cash cardholders remain dogged by escalating loans, a 27-year-old woman
has made profits of more than NT$1 million (US$31,300) over the past
three months using just her credit card.
However, this has raised the ire of her card issuer,
Chinatrust Commercial Bank (????), which decided to halt her card on
Wednesday.
"If consumers refuse to follow the regulations
[stipulated in contracts] when using our products, we're sorry but we
have to invalidate their cards as we don't want to see them bearing
high risks and distorting the nature of financial tools," said
Michael Chang (???), director of the bank's credit card division, during
a phone interview yesterday evening.
"As of now, we haven't yet received any response
from her. Nor has she contacted us for further negotiations," he
added.
Chang refused to disclose the contents of a certified
letter that the bank has sent to the woman, citing the Law for the Protection
of Computer-managed Personal Information (???????????).
Dubbed the "goddess of cards" by the local
Chinese-language media, Yang Hui-ju (???), a citizen of Taitung City
and a MBA degree holder from the University of Queensland, Australia,
stumbled upon the money-making scheme accidentally while surfing the
Internet at home.
According to Yang, Eastern Home Shopping Network (?????),
the nation's largest television shopping service provider, allowed their
members to purchase vouchers worth NT$20,000 (US$627.35) by paying only
NT$19,000 when using a credit card.
What caught her eye was that, if the vouchers are not
used after one year, Eastern Home Shopping will redeem them by presenting
each customer with a check worth NT$20,000, a move that guarantees customers
a five-percent return ratio, higher than the interest rate offered on
deposits.
She then discovered a preferential bonus-point program
provided by Chinatrust Commercial Bank, the nation's biggest credit-card
issuer.
By paying a monthly membership fee of NT$800 to the
bank, cardholders can earn eight times the amount of bonus points from
purchases made using the card.
Having discovered the incentives, she raised capital
of NT$6 million from her relatives and put it into her Chinatrust account
in order to earn a higher credit line in October last year.
After spending all the money to buy Eastern Home Shopping
vouchers using her credit card, she earned 1.6 million bonus points.
She then sold the vouchers on auction Web sites, some
of them being bought back by her relatives, who then did the same for
her. By doing so several times, her bonus points quickly snowballed
to over 8 million points.
The points allowed her to obtain 20 free first-class
airline tickets to the US, exchanging 320,000 points for each ticket,
which she then sold on the Internet to rake in NT$900,000.
As Chinatrust also allows cardholders to transfer their
bonus points, she sold her remaining points via the Internet by selling
1,000 points at NT$300.
This way, Yang said she has amassed more than NT$1
million in profit.
Chinatrust reportedly accused Yang of deception by
colluding with her friends and relatives. But the non-profit Consumers'
Foundation (???) said the bank should apologize to Yang and has no right
to invalidate her credit cards.
The bank still profits from Yang's purchases by way
of handling fees and if it finds her behavior improper, the bank should
instead adjust the promotions, rather than accusing its consumers, said
Terry Huang (???), the foundation's secretary general.
"If it is OK for banks to make money from consumers,
then why can't the reverse happen?" he asked.
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