After receiving my dcard, I saw my name on the card was in the horrible romanji spelling and backwards (last name, first name). I didn’t notice this at the shop when the staff was filling it out online cause my kid was having a meltdown. Card works so no biggie. Go to book a flight and it doesn’t work cause the name is all sorts of weird romanji spelling that doesn’t match my real spelling. I called Docomo and they acted like I was asking for world peace when I said can you change the name on my card to match the exact spelling of my gaijin card/driver’s license. Staff says they have to mail me a form to do it and if it doesn’t match my bank acct name, they might not be able to do it. But I feel like that’s BS cause I have two other credit cards and my name is spelled correctly on them–not weird romanji spelling. Also they said it has to be last name first, then first name. Not true on my other cards, and my husband’s. Please tell me I don’t have to walk around with this crazy spelling of my name on the card…
by yokoyokogirl
7 comments
Sometimes you can shortcut (or at least accelerate) some of the BS by going in and talking to someone in person, where you can demonstrate the difference in cards rather than wrestling with someone over the phone. If it’s a big enough store perhaps they already have the form you need to submit. Generally I’ve found people are much more helpful in person, this works for banks as well.
When I got my Rakuten card, this is exactly what happened…from Ramos…it became RAMOSU. I called them and had then ship me new cards. The thing is, it also happened with my Enos JCB card as well as my ANA Master…I needed to call them all to have my name changed. It’s a pain.
Even many Japanese names could be written in a few ways in roman spelling. For example, a very common last name 佐藤 could be Sato or Satou. Honestly, they should correct your name on the card since the name on the card is their made up.
Usually when you apply for a card, there will be three fields for name: Kanji, Katakana, and English name on card. The English name on card are often auto-filled with with the Katakana to Romaji alphabets which works for Japanese 100% of the time but rarely works for foreigners. You just have to remember to check every field before submitting. And for the last name first name problem, it’s just the staff’s ignorance. They think it’s better to have their last name first on the card so they would often adivse people to fill the name the other way around intentionally. Just make sure you get everything fixed to build your credit score. Their credit system is based on Name/DOB (not MyNumber) so even a small typo in the name will make the card’s record become “someone else’s” record.
They didn’t print out anything to show you to confirm the card first? Or did you just not look at it carefully? This is finance – your name has to match your bank account and your ID.
Store staffs may be able to handle sign-ups, but those forms are all processed off sight by another part of the company. The store staff is not technical support for every service the company offers – if they are telling you it may not be possible it is only because they don’t have the authority to make that call. Of course this needs to be done by a paper form – it was already botched once and they are going to want a paper record for it.
I normally despise Docomo with the heat of a 1000 suns, but they don’t sound unreasonable by asking you to fill out paperwork.
Just take a deep breath and do what they asked one step at a time and it will probably be fine.
Okay…. So you need to:
A. Cancel this card
B. Apply again, but pay attention to details this time
It’s unlikely you can’t easily adjust the existing card.
I’m Japanese, and I have one account in romaji only because I used my passport to open the account. In order to fix that, I would have to close it and reopen it.
My Docomo card also came out Last First, but the spelling was correct at least. My guess is that it may be easier to cancel and reapply than jump through hoops trying to get it changed, but best of luck either way!