ThaiVisaCentre

We have updated the filtering logic to include rooms. So now you can select a duration, price range, and room features and it will filter hotels that offer rooms with those features that are in your budget.

Before we only used the lowest room price, and combined all room features but this was not a good user experience.

Here is an example of searching through all Bangkok ASQ hotel rooms(500++) for rooms that have a balcony, and bathtub under 26,000 THB.

Rooms with a Balcony, and a Bathtub under 28,500 THB

Thats a 1 year extension of stay based on retirement (2.22).

Like @BritTim has stated it has nothing to do with 2/5 year extensions. This type of extension needs to be done year by year with a max permission of stay 1 year at a time.

Your friend should clarify what exactly the agent was speaking about.

38 minutes ago, captpkapoor said:

Many thanks for quick answer, Joe! Much appreciate.

Any pointers to an inexpensive Covid insurance provider, acceptable to Thai authorities?

 

You can refer to the price table on this page

https://asq.in.th/thailand-entry-requirements

At the moment we only recommend this insurance if you are trying to meet the bare minimum to enter the country.

They seem to have decent coverage of the Bangkok ASQs around 90 out of 130. Which is by far the best we have seen.

But they don't have any ALQs for Pattaya, or Phuket. 

If you're looking for full coverage try using our platform ASQ.in.th (190+ ASQ/ALQ Hotels) as most of the other platforms are biased, and filtering lower priced options out (or simply not updating pricing).

Also we have MUCH better filtering options, and put you in direct contact with the hotels (no middle-man).

@Kiujunn It seems it was not our staff that said "stop", it was you.

When our robot sees the "stop" keyword the robot honors the word, and your conversation is sent for manual review, and deprioritized due to lack of general information. 

So if anyone reads this please do not tell our robot "stop", and avoid the general questions if you are looking for a rapid response.

If you do disengage, and avoid the questions we will get to you but it may take much longer than if you answered the basic questions.

We do this to keep our level of service / responsiveness very high for the cooperative potential clients, and existing clients.

7 hours ago, Kiujunn said:

I just called the number they give in the OP.

I got a robot who told me that they don't have a phone. 

Very trustworthy impression. 

So I sent a message by Line,  got their robot and typed "stop" as they suggested. 

I will see if anybody answers. 

 

Someone in this thread said they are not a "real agent"....

 

We turned off our phones due to the influx of calls, and we switch to a callback service.

This has made things a lot easier for our team as they can respond to each call at their own pace.

Majority of our clients contact us over LINE, and we do indeed use a robot to gather initial information.

If someone has typed ".stop" it means they were disabling the robot, and taking over human control.

We use a robot initially to gather general details, and link those details to our CRM, and eventually the client profile.

This is done to ensure we can effectively respond to each clients case, and have a complete history of the relationship across multiple forms of communication.

Once we have a general profile you never reach a robot again, and your messages are prioritized.

Our offices are open Monday to Saturday if you doubt we are real, you can make a in-person appointment here:

https://tvc.in.th/APPOINTMENT

Also you can read more than 1,000 reviews over facebook, and google if you doubt our level of service to clients.

GOOGLE REVIEWS

FACEBOOK REVIEWS

Also if you are getting a delay in response you can always check what our client load is at this link

WAIT TIMES (You may disregard the office hours if you are trying to contact us over LINE, as we will respond every day from 10AM to 11:59PM)

6 minutes ago, Tanoshi said:

How is this legitimately possible?

We specialize in helping people stay in Thailand, but I am sure you know this by now.

But we must know the full situation, which is why he would need to contact my team first so we can review it, and see what we can do.

That being said if anyone is planning on coming to Thailand, and converting to retirement we advise to NOT get an STV visa. They should be getting a TR visa, or coming in on Exempt entry. By coming on STV you will be making things much harder, and in some cases impossible especially without assistance.
 

5 hours ago, DrJack54 said:

OP, you cannot obtain a tourist visa or visa exempt from your STV.

Which means you won't be able to obtain a non O. You could ask an agent however pretty sure they will say CANNOT.

If you had entered on VE or TV you could have obtained a non O.

@ThaiVisaCentre any ideas

He should contact our team, we have assisted with similar situations. 

7 hours ago, ParkerN said:

 

Well, lets agree to differ then shall we? having just obtained a new extension for less than 1 year. I've been wrong before but not this time, unless my reading skill has declined somewhat. Perhaps the custom is different for different offices; I am not so confident about it as you seem to be. Good luck.

 

Please check the expiration of your passport, this would be the only situation I could think of as to why they would not give you a yearly extension of stay based on retirement from the last day of your previous visa expiration date.

Also if the visa is OA they may reduce it if your health insurance doesn't cover the full year.

EDIT: sorry just read @DrJack54 pretty much said the same thing ????

50 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

Of course,  That’s widely understood.

But, the Fit to Fly letter was not required when I flew in on the 1st April - yet I was asked for the Fit to Fly letter both upon Check-In and upon arrival. 
 

IMO - it’s far better to be in possession of the document to avoid any hassle should the op (or anyone else) find themselves in front of airline check-in staff who have not been informed of the updated regulations. 
 

Two weeks have passed since the regulations were updated, so one would hope all personnel involved in the ‘travel & arrival process’ are up to date by now. 
 

For the cost of 400 baht F2F letter, I’d choose to have my bases covered. 

 

At the time we were hearing issues from enough people to advise everyone to get a Fit to Fly certificate.

We have not heard any recent reports of issues in the past week in relation to not having a Fit to Fly certificate (unless it is required by the departing country).

So our current recommendation is to just confirm with the exit requirements of the departing country, and if they do not mention any certificate, then you do not need one. 

You may refer to this regularly updated page about the Thailand Entry Requirements.

3 hours ago, bodo said:

Thanks, Tanoshi.

In reality, is it doable to get an agent assisted retirement visa in Bangkok and then move to Chiang Mai or is it much better to find such an agent in Chiang Mai?

By the way, a while ago I read that immigration in Chiang Mai is much stricter than for instance in Pattaya. True?

My staff are happy to answer all of your agent related questions via LINE.

But as @Tanoshi said, if you meet all the requirements, and do not need any support you simply can submit on your own for 1,900 THB.

15 hours ago, Travis179 said:

I think you're right about the multiple open web pages. Also correct about the better deal with AXA & SafetyWing (more comprehensive coverage). I apparently lost sight of that, and inadvertently selected the more restrictive, COVID only policy. However, my primary objective was satisfying the COE criteria. Which that one does. Lesson learned. I travel to Thailand frequently...or at least did pre-COVID. I'll save the info on AXA & SafetyWing for future reference. Thanks again for the intel. 

Yes most travelers are just wishing to meet the minimum requirements to enter the country ????
 

6 hours ago, Peter Denis said:

@Travis179

Hi,

Thanks for PM-ing me a copy of the policy you subscribed to. 

As I suspected it is a 100.000 US $ covid-19 ONLY insurance policy, and you wrote

> I ended-up purchasing a policy from Dhipaya Insurance, with the link you kindly provided (cheapest one). For 90 days coverage, it was only 3,840, roughly $128

But when you are over 39 years of age (as you confirmed), this is for sure the cheapest CoE compliant covid-19 insurance you can find.

 

But I find it very, very strange that when filling in your data on the SafetyWing travel-insurance site, that you would be redirected to Dhipaya...

I actually think that you had several web-pages open and ended up subscribing to this one. 

As I wrote higher, absolutely cheapest deal I ever came across (3.840 THB for 90 days coverage), and absolutely worthwhile when you already have foreign/international insurance that would cover you in case of accident/illness but does not cover covid-19.

But if you do not have any foreign/international insurance, I would have recommended going for the SafetyWing or AXA Sawasdee travel-insurance package, as those insurance packages do not only cover covid-19 but provide coverage of ANY accident/illness you might encounter while in Thailand.

Also as mentioned before when under 40 years of age the 3-month SafetyWing travel-insurance only costs 128,70 US $ (same as what you paid now for covid-19 insurance ONLY), but when in the age bracket of 51-60 it would cost approx 325 US $, and in that case the 7.400 THB for 3-month coverage provided by AXA Sawasdee would be a better deal.

 

I think you are right, we are fairly certain that they would not redirect you to another insurance site.

It seems like a whole different package was purchased from a different insurance company.

Currently we still recommend Safetywing if you are looking for general coverage at a cheap price, another advantage is they are a pretty modern company so the whole process is fairly streamlined.

9 hours ago, ozfarang said:

This is a Thai company providing COVID only insurance. Country of origin USA, cost ฿6400 for 90 days coverage.

 

https://covid19.tgia.org

The cheapest COVID-19 only insurance we have found so far is this one. But please note that it will not cover hospitalization if you are hospitalized without any symptoms (asymptomatic).

The follow prices are for someone that is 39 or younger.

45 days - 2000THB (exempt entry)

90 days - 4000THB

1 year - 16500THB

The prices will vary on length of term, as well as the age of the traveler. But if you are looking for a very inexpensive COVID-19 travel insurance to just meet the entry requirements this is a good option.

 

We have many clients that use us that are living in Pattaya.

There are also a few other reputable big agents over there.

Just make sure to use one of the big ones, and you should be fine.

This was a very busy week but after many emails, and phone calls we were able to get 128 hotels to release 10 day prices for all of their rooms, as well as 113 hotels to release 7 day prices for all of their rooms.

We have also released a dedicated page for reading ASQ/ALQ reviews across all of the hotels, and have had over 300 reviews submitted through our platform.

If you would like to submit a review you can do so here ASQ.in.th/REVIEW, if you wish to read all of the reviews you can do it here.

So far the only countries listed are
 

1. Republic of South Africa
2. Republic of Zimbabwe
3. Republic of Mozambique
4. Republic of Botswana
5. Republic of Zambia
6. Republic of Kenya
7. Republic of Rwanda
8. Republic of Cameroon
9. Democratic Republic of the Congo
10. Republic of Ghana
11. United Republic of Tanzania

18 hours ago, crazykopite said:

if you live on one of the islands if I could get it for 16 k I would jump at it

Please send my staff a message, we offer our services to those who live outside of Bangkok as well.

6 minutes ago, l4ml4m said:

 

 

I will not share any information !

And the only scam I have found until now is your clearly overpriced service !

 

Our services are very competitive, and you seem to be making things up.

1 minute ago, treetops said:

 

The recent changes also included one that said if you arrive in Thailand before 6:00pm then you can count your arrival day as Day 1, not Day 0 as before.  Thus a 15 night package becomes 14 nights and one of 8 nights becomes 7.

 

Are your hotels aware of this and offering the shorter packages?

It would be good to clarify that with each hotel at the moment.

They are still standardizing policy, our main goal right now is to at least get them all to release their pricing.

After that we can start to work on getting them to standardize, or at least release as much information as possible if they are not following the majority.

Happy to say that most of the more inexpensive ASQ hotels have also updated their pricing.

Cheapest hotel being 15,500 THB for a 7 day package.

Currently we have 7 day prices for 67 Hotels offering 232 rooms with 7 day pricing.

Hopefully by the end of the week we hit 100+ Hotels, and 400 Room Types (similar to the 10 day packages)