K2938

11 hours ago, stratocaster said:

Just received e mail from elite that if you wish to upgrade from the 5 year to the 20 year you now have until 3 months before your 5 year expires to renew. The new dead line has been cancelled.

Good!  Sounds like too many people complained that their rights were violated by the Aug. 15 deadline and so Thai Elite eventually decided not to pursue this any further.

25 minutes ago, BritTim said:

Just do not maker a bank transfer until you are ready. I assume they do not have the ability to remove money from your bank account without your consent.

Well, they could theoretically sue the applicant for breach of contract as the applicant needs to sign the agreement at the time of submission of documents, i.e. at point zero, way in advance of approval.  And with this they would then also have an enforceable claim regarding the applicant's bank account, depending on the country involved maybe also even abroad

19 hours ago, BritTim said:

This is true for all Thailand Elite applications. You do not need to make a final decision and pay until the application has been approved.

I in no way doubt that what you are saying is right, but since we are talking about big amounts of money is there somewhere where this is actually stated in writing?

34 minutes ago, Willy333 said:

The process takes 6 weeks and you can back out at the end before paying.

Where does it say this?

On 8/3/2023 at 11:31 AM, ezzra said:

Beware of AirAsia, once you need to contact them there's no one to talk to, no email, no phone number only a Bot, and even that is very limited.

Yes, I also encountered this problem, but surely there must be some way to contact them?  Or is the only option to sue them in case of problems (which depending on the country might not lead to much)?

8 hours ago, CMBob said:

Not 100% sure what you're asking but at CM Immigration you can obtain another annual extension up to 45 days prior to your current extension expiration date.  

And how long is processing time?  If all your documents are in order, you get the extension stamped in your passport immediately on the day of submission or is there some longer processing period for a Non-O retirement extension?

6 hours ago, freeman01 said:

my thought was they got a bit overwhelmed with low class Chinese and Russians since the end of covid and want to up the standard a bit, was told Phuket is a bit dreadful in that regard these days.

The vast majority of the Russians and Chinese who have enough money to pay the current prices will also have enough money to pay any reasonably increased prices.  These are not the poor.  So price increases would not really solve this problem very much

2 hours ago, JJJJJJJJ said:

2. Unlike Elite visa, if at the end of the first 5 year permit, you can not qualify for LTR, for example, laid off or salary reduction, etc. will the second 5 year permit still be granted? if not, will BOI refund the visa fee? Since you paid 10 year visa fee at the first stage. 

Re 2 definitely no

2 hours ago, Mike Teavee said:

Make this kind of stuff mandatory for New Visas by all means, but retrospectively making changes for existing holders that they cannot meet is simply unfair.

So how fair is it that the Thai Elite Easy Access visa was sold us upgradable to a longer term over its exisiting life (20 years instead of 5) and now this upgrade possibility is suddenly only available to Aug. 15?  And on top of this people are only informed about this approximately two weeks in advance?  Is this fair?

13 hours ago, JBChiangRai said:

The Elite visa company (TPC) do have access to our bank accounts, when I applied I was asked about major repeated withdrawals made by my ATM card in Australia. If they have access, probably every gov’t agency does.

Just to clarify: You mean access to your THAI bank accounts?

On 7/30/2023 at 7:07 PM, Caldera said:

I think they'll have a hard time sustaining demand at the current level anyway, as it's mostly due to special circumstances like Covid and Russian warmongering. Marketing-wise they've done what they could, so the target group is long aware it exists amd either bought one already or wasn't interested. 

 

Also, a good number of 5-year packages came up for renewal in the last few years, which created demand and generated revenue without leading to any net gain in members.

 

Then there's new visa schemes like Smart and LTR. While flawed in their own way, for those who qualify they are usually more attractive than the Elite visa.

Well, I think we can all agree that prices are unlikely to go down!  And making a product too narrow by price rises does not seem to be a concern.  The LTR program is also much too narrow and nobody in power seems to care

On 7/30/2023 at 2:01 AM, ukrules said:

That is not the official page of Thailand Elite - it's merely an agent at best.

 

The official URL is www.thailandelite.com - this one has a - character in the domain so it's a completely different company.

When applying for Elite is it better to use the official page or an agent?

On 7/29/2023 at 11:35 PM, aldriglikvid said:

What official agents have been told is that the ESE is to be scrapped entirely, and replaced with a new 20Y visa costing +2m. We'll see

Will the new prices be announced before Sept 15, i.e. while one can still apply for the existing packages?

On 7/20/2023 at 10:06 AM, GroveHillWanderer said:

The only evidence I was going off, was the article I quoted. You're right, it could be inaccurate. Other articles I've seen (that were written earlier) said that Takeda was intending to apply for approval in Thailand. But since this one was dated more recently, I thought they must have done so.

I now believe that it has actually been approved in Thailand:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/peter-streibl-3117422a_ตรวจสอบผลตภณฑ-activity-7061678608972468224-y675

https://pertento.fda.moph.go.th/FDA_SEARCH_DRUG/SEARCH_DRUG/pop-up_drug_ex.aspx?Newcode=U1DR2C1072660000411C


So should actually be locally available sometime in the not too distant future

5 hours ago, GroveHillWanderer said:

I think you're conflating the two different Dengue vaccines. Your first point about it working better if you've already had Dengue, only applies to the Dengvaxia vaccine. Also, Dengvaxia can actually be dangerous if you haven't had Dengue before as it can make the disease worse when you do get it.

 

The new Takeda TAK-003 vaccine, marketed as QDENGA, does not have the same drawbacks as Dengvaxia - it works well, whether you've previously had Dengue or not and it doesn't carry the risk of enhancing the disease when you get it.

 

It's true that there isn't clinical trial efficacy data for people over 16 but it has been shown to elicit a potent immunological response in older people and has been approved for all individuals aged over 4, in the EU, the UK and other countries.

 

According to the article below about QDENGA, it has been approved for use in Thailand but when I checked at one of the local clinics last week, they said it wasn't yet available for sale anywhere in the country.

1) No, if you actually look at the trial data the Qdenga vaccine is more effective if you already had dengue.  See for example: At the 18-month timepoint, vaccine efficacy against all dengue in dengue immune recipients was 76.1% and 66.2% in dengue non-immune recipients.  You are absolutely right that Qdenga does not have the severe and potentially fatal drawbacks of the previous vaccine.  However, it is less effective if you did not already have dengue.  (See also: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41541-023-00658-2; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477893923000583).

2) I have also seen the article stating that Qdenga has been approved in Thailand, but while I do not know I actually suspected this might be a typo as just a few days before I read some senior Thai scientist saying the opposite.  So just wanted to ask you if you are really sure about it having been approved in Thailand.  When I looked, I only found - like in your article - a side comment on Thailand in articles on the withdrawal of the application in the U.S. and this could be just one article copying from the other a potential typo.

5 hours ago, Pib said:

I expect these U.S. retirement income amounts are similar to other western countries like in Europe.

As the U.S. has a much higher GDP per capita than most European countries, Europe is probably much lower on average

9 minutes ago, anrcaccount said:

Spot on.

 

With respect to ThailandRyan Pib etc, who I can completely see why this visa is great for them, the overall scheme has been a flop from the BOIs perspective. 

 

Attracting "wealthy pensioners" who already resided in Thailand, to change their visa category, to get a smoother admin ride,  was not the goal of the BOI in the LTR program.

 

The number of approved applications overall is minuscule after nearly a year in operation, with many of these being the above type.

 

The program needs a serious overhaul, if it is to attract "new" foreigners who actually wish to relocate. 

True, but the BOI appears to have no interest in this.  On the contrary, various LTR requirements were actually made more restrictive over time rather than the opposite.

9 hours ago, MPoll said:

There have been well over 3000 LTR’s approved.

Applied, not approved.  There is a reason that the number of approved LTR visas is not disclosed

9 hours ago, GroveHillWanderer said:

Just to point out that while the new dengue vaccine Qdenga has not been submitted for approval in the US yet, that is more due to technical reasons related to data availability than because of any doubts about its efficacy or safety.

Not quite true.  It had been submitted for approval in the U.S. and due to data deficiencies Takeda just withdrew the approval submission in the U.S. again as stated in the link I posted a few posts higher up: 

https://www.empr.com/home/news/drugs-in-the-pipeline/takeda-withdraws-us-application-for-dengue-vaccine-candidate/

So all does not seem to be going as smoothly as one would wish unfortunately.  The EU and other countries approved the vaccine, but maybe the U.S. authorities - but that is just speculation - were looking deeper.  Certainly it would have been nicer if the U.S. had approved it.

https://www.empr.com/home/news/drugs-in-the-pipeline/takeda-withdraws-us-application-for-dengue-vaccine-candidate/

45 minutes ago, G Rex said:

I hope not to contract it again - as the severity of the disease increases with subsequent infections.

What do you specifically do to protect yourself, having already been faced with it once, if I may ask?

13 minutes ago, Pib said:

Yea...former and current governments have pretty much just been giving lip service to air pollution control/reduction.

Is there any realistic chance that the new Move Forward/Pheu Thai et al. government, if it comes, will do anything differently?

3 hours ago, jacko45k said:

I dropped a letter off at Mailbox Inc (or whatever in Big-CX) which took about 5-6 daus to UK using Thai Post registered, I think it was a few hundred baht. 

Does this have tracking?