tl;dr - Renewal of an e-Gate membership is not automatic, even if your membership appears to have been extended online. I'd advise entering via the manual lanes and processing the renewal at the enrollment counter in the departure hall. You'll need a new set of thumbprints and a new photo.

Well, that was easy enough... (Pay no attention to the erroneously placed Finland entry stamps.)



Things rapidly deteriorated from there though. I went up to one of the first few e-Gates, and they were a newer type. The gate wasn't even reading my passport, so I turned around to use one of the older style a little further away with the red LED. Certainly I'd know how to position my passport at exactly the right angle on those even if it had been 3 years. Nope. Do not pass. I forget the exact message, but if I remember the screen was flashing red. The attendant took notice of my struggle and quickly came over while flailing his arms in a no motion and then pointed to the line for visitors as if to communicate, "No, silly laowai! What are you trying to do?!" Mrs. Majuki hadn't gone through yet because she wanted to make sure I could use the gate successfully and, if necessary, go back to NIA to correct the situation if the e-Gate didn't work.

The officer at the desk who had given me the stamp exemption endorsement said that I had reapplied under the old system, and I needed to be in the new system or it wouldn't work. I quickly filled out a paper arrival card and did the walk of shame to the visitor line. The NIA officer at passport control handed me back my paper arrival card immediately, so at least the electronic declaration took! As a bonus, at least I had an entry stamp for any ticketing agents cosplaying as immigration.

As a side note, Mrs. Majuki couldn't use the e-Gates either due to an expired household registration. (This had been our first time in Taiwan since January 2020.)

As it was late, we had been traveling all day, and we had a southbound train to catch, we decided to rectify the situation upon departure.

We had some time the night before heading out, so I asked Mrs. Majuki if we could take the MRT out to the airport and stop by the e-Gate enrollment counter landside. There was a younger gentleman staffing the desk who said I had to go to the NIA desk next door first. This is the same NIA desk where multiple airline ticketing agents have tried to send me in the past as a suspected overstay, and coincidentally, I was standing at the overstay counter. The e-Gate employee came over to explain the situation to NIA and because he had never seen an e-Gate for Global Entry applicant. After a brief consultation including two NIA officers at the immigration counter, the e-Gate employee, and Mrs. Majuki, the NIA officers said they did see me in the system - no clarity on whether this was the old or new system - and that I had paid for the renewal. As a side note, the timestamp on the receipt was my original application from 2017. The e-Gate staff member pointed out that it was showing a 106年11月 date. The receipt number itself was different though upon looking at my original records.

NIA determined that since this was a renewal that they didn't have to interview me a second time, merely have the e-Gate enrollment employee take a new photo and fingerprints. While doing so, the e-Gate guy also inquired how I got the stamp exemption endorsement already to which Mrs. Majuki provided the earlier explanation. Unfortunately, I can't provide a data point on whether an initial enrollment or renewal gets the stamp exemption endorsement now.

Furthermore, per BuBu4 in the previous post, there wasn't really a test we could do upon leaving the other day since everyone was getting routed to the e-Gates. We'll have to save that for the next trip, which hopefully is sooner than December 2025.