dave111223

"I'm looking at about 30,000b per m2 for the building costs"

None of my business, but what are you building, the Taj Mahal?

Agreed, seems pretty high. Better to get the builder to cut the building costs to "standard" stuff (15-20K per square meter), then refund/upgrade the individual items yourself (Tiles, fixtures, doors, etc..as you go) If you just say "give me the best" from the start they will rip you off.

For example there is no point getting a quote which includes a budget of 3000 baht per square meter for tiles, then going and picking out 2000 baht tiles.

Better to get a quote with a 500 baht tile budget, then when you pick out the 2000 tiles, just pay the extra 1500.

You sound a bit foolish banging on about a birth certificate when you are don't even know if she is actually pregnant and you aren't even in the same country as her...

Maybe you should ask some questions about starting a college fund for the little one? Just so you get all your ducks in a row.

So the delivery guy is also the restaurant owner (hm...)?

Global expat health insurance plans (purchased outside of Thailand) are often quite cheap to add children to the plan. For example a plan that cost $500 per parent might only cost $100 extra per kid. So as expats we are lucky to have this option and i think should be utilized.

The opposite seems to be true for Thai health packages; where the childrens packages can cost twice as much as the same thing for an adult!

Keep in mind that most brands have a range of qualities available. You get what you pay for, if you buy the cheapo stuff from any brand it's going to suck.

I have used several brands/models and now on all projects I use:

• TOA Duraclean for inside
  
• TOA supershield for outside
  

Beware that Thai painters love to buy the cheapest paint they can find, and then make it even worse by mixing it 50:50 with water. If you hire paintser make sure you buy paint yourself and don't let them mix it with water.

Villa has it, but like the scotch eggs, they run out quick. You've got to empty the shelf when you get the chance.

This is not the chair in question - but a very expensive model for sale here if money is not a concern - it is also sold by TV Direct I believe.

http://www.pantipmar...oducts&id=58983

Going to be way too sticky/sweaty for the climate i would think; mesh is the way to in Thailand. If not mesh then at least something breathable. (P)Leather is very uncomfortable in the heat/humidity.

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Nice chair.. How expensive was it?

And where did you get it? I've got a mesh back, but I can't find a chair with mesh seat also anywhere.

My house party cost me more than 100,000B. Ok we not had only the traditional 9 monks, caterers to do the cooking but also music with singers and dancers. A

You have been robbed.

I am afraid he is a familymember of owners wife

Uh oh then, sound proofing time?

As I understand it the boy playing the music is an employee of the building owner (not a family member?)

If so I would just continue to ask the owner about the problem daily, the boy will probably be finding a new job soon. If one of my employees was pulling that sh*t and causing me hassle they'd certainly be out on their ear. Sounds like this kind of employee would probably get fired on his own accord pretty soon for drinking, stealing, drug use etc...anyways.

Remember the employee is the problem, not the owner, getting irate at the owner will not help your cause.

If the boy is actually a family member or something...then you're dealing with a much bigger problem.

NVM

I go outside every day, people point at me and shout things to me because I'm white ("Hey you", "Farang", "You!" etc...)... they try to charge me a higher price at every shop because of my color.

I don't care at all, does not bother me one bit; seriously minorities in the USA need to <deleted>!

I would not congratulate you as it seems that you are the scammer in this deal and the person who is charging for an company which made an mistake.

If we take the OP at face value in his original story, that he just happened to buy this domain with no prior knowledge...then I think it is only right he gets paid something for the inconvenience caused by this company.

In a decent world you could just notified them for their mistake and they would have renewed their own domain name.

I mean really who goes to Godaddy.com types in a domain, it says "AVAILABLE"....you then go research the domain history and email all the previous owners just to make sure they didn't want it anymore???

But the more the OP posts, the more it seems like he probably had this domain setup for months just hoping they'd let it expire so he could squat in and earn a payday for doing nothing...but maybe i'm wrong.

I myself have domain expiration dates marked off on a calendar, but not because I want to cybersquat them, because they were domains I wanted to buy for various projects, and there were unavailable, i just stick them on a calendar and see if they become available in the future.

Your pricing seems a bit unrealistic for what i've seen? 10kg for 3000THB?

For example I bought a copy of this box set the other day: http://www.google.co...d=0CHoQ8wIwBjgo

Brand was Enlighten brick or something like that. Fake one cost about 400THB, real one at Central would cost about 1500. But that set only weighs about .3kg...! So cost for 10kg at that price would be like 13,000THB.

All the toy carts at shopping malls have various replicate box sets.

You'd probably do better to order a big box of 2nd hand lego off ebay if you are looking for 10kg at per your link; some sellers are willing to ship to Thailand.

(Above prices are rough, i don't remember the exact amounts)

Sorry mate cant reveal it now. I just signed a NON Disclosure agreement with them.Still negotiating with them i hope this can end soon and ill get some cash out of it.. update soon

What i can say is that .net.info.org and other domains for this 5 words are all taken up by them before ... found out my .com was registered 8 years ago and recently expired i was just in time to grab it .

Basically you are screwed then, some idiot at their company forgot to renew it and you bought it out from under them. If they actually have a trademark on it too, you've got no chance.

If I was you I'd try and turn a quick buck off the situation...maybe 1000USD? At that price it's probably worth just bunging you the money instead of going through the whole process. If you start getting greedy it may just be easier for them to process the thing with ICANN and just get the domain taken back.

And if you start getting really greedy you may really piss them off and they might decide they want to come after you for lost revenue etc...

Having a rep. come out to Bangkok to do the deal...some pretty unrealistic/unreasonable to me...come on...

Are you ok with 2checkout now ? Or do you have to use Paypal again ?

I have been happy with 2Checkout. Note that 2Checkout also allows customers to pay via Paypal (so customers who were previously paying with Paypal can continue to do so) but without me having to deal with Paypal bullsh*t at all.

Paypal allows you to withdrawal money any time, whereas with 2Checkout there is a weekly automatic SWIFT transfer for your entire balance. The Paypal transfer takes about 5-7 days, the 2checkout transfer takes 1-2 days.

2Checkout fees are a bit higher than Paypal (about 1% higher), and they charge you a month fee of about $11. However because 2Checkout does SWIFT transfers in USD you get the real THB exchange rate, which is about 2% better than the exchange rates on the Paypal withdrawal. Total cost-wise with all things considered it works out to about the same.

I'm talking with 2Checkout now to try and get my fees reduced, i'll post the results here as to whether they are open to negotiation.

I have had zero chargebacks with 2Checkout and they do a fraud pre-screening on all orders, so this seems to do well at catching fraudsters.

I left Paypal to spite them, but actually end up with a better solution i think.

What did you do to unlock your account so fast ? 180 days is just a maximum but they usually proceed faster ?

Called them and emailed them daily, sent lots of documents proving that they were wrong, filed a report with the BBB in California, wrote the story on any many complaint websites as I could.

And because there are only like 2 reps that handle the Thai language support my wife was able to constantly complain to the same people (no one wants to go to work and get the same irate customer calling them every day) When you call the English support it's likely the person on the other end with never have to listen to you again, it will be some other rep that has to deal next time.

Nothing major, but a 20 year mortgage of say 2mill thb (total inc. mortgage rates) = 8,333thb p/m

Think your math might be a bit off...or is someone giving you a 0% interest rate?

A 2mil loan for 20 years you'd be looking at least 15k a month.

Move to Rayong, or Chonburi city, or Sriracha etc... all close to Pattaya (easy to go back and visit friends), but totally different scene.

You're example is still trademark infringement.

No it's not if the domain was purchased in good faith and is unrelated to the trademark owner.

For example:

ABC.com sell empty beer cans, and has a trademark on "ABC"

I buy AB-C.com and start an online dating website; without any knowledge about ABC.com trademarks etc..

No customers could get confused between the two companies as they are running totally different businesses. ABC.com would have to prove bad faith (such as me planning on selling my own empty beer cans, or me only using the site as a parked advertising placeholder to capitalize on ABC typos, etc..)

P.S. To the OP I would make sure I put up a quick HTML page on your domain (NO ADS) which says something like "This is the future home of XYZ, we will be doing this and that etc..".

Again this all assume that you will be running a different business from the complaining company.

Not really. They're a jewellery company selling to celebrities. I bet they generate most business from word-of-mouth/personal referrals. No need for a web presence.

There's 101 reasons why a business doesn't want/need a web presence but would want to protect their trademark.

So they have no interest in buy their own register trademark .COM? Yet they pay lawyers to find the owner of the domain as soon as it is registered (before there is even a website there), and hunt them down?

Spending $1000s for lawyers, or spend $10 to just register the domain....makes sense to choose the lawyer route...

They probably don't have a trademark on the domain at all. They probably got trademark on "abc.com" and the OP registered "ab-c.com" and now they want to kick his butt.

But I guess we'll only know once we actually know the real domain in question.

They have the trademark, presumably before the OP registered the domain. That's all that matters. Protecting themselves with a trademark negates any need to register all TLDs for that name.

The OP specified that it's a .com...obviously no one wants to register all the obscure TLDs...but they don't even register the .com...strange..?

You found a 5 letter .com domain that was unregistered...that someone had a trademark on...something doesn't add up?

What's the domain?

Mine just has a whole in the mouth area. I heard the ones with switches are really expensive.

Does the apartment offer different rate periods? (ie Daily, Weekly, Monthly?)

If so just go and tell the reception that you will pay the weekly rate for the last 2 weeks of your stay...shouldn't be a problem.

But if it's a place that only offers monthly rentals...then obviously you'd have to pay a full month