auntyedna

Now sorted - I try NOT to update software because it always seems to create more problems than it's worth. But this time, I grudgingly allowed Firefox to update itself.  Result!
In response to your various comments:
- Yes, Wise has been getting a lot of earache from users this year.
- Different browser: I tried to download/instal the new duckduckgo browser. You choose one of two weird installer files.  I tried both - they both failed. One commenter said, Why couldn't they offer a simple .exe. file?  Quite. I will look at Waterfox and Ecosia; I haven't come across them before.
- New Wise account fail: Probably due to my attempted use of an early 19th century version of FF.
- VPN: I don't use one.
- Wise helpline numbers: Most useful, particularly when everything else has gone pear-shaped and you just can't access them online.
- Wise "reason for transfer": I have always put down "Funds for long-term stay in Thailand" and had money transferred instantly.
- Smartphone: no, I don't want a spy in my pocket that wants attention every other minute.  For further explanation why, I recommend the book "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Prof Shoshana Zuboff.  It's all about yielding power to Big Tech.  The french philosopher Michel Foucault warned about the loss of power to "institutions" half a century ago.  System of a Down wrote a song about it ("Spiders") 27 years ago. And sure enough...
- CAPTCHA: Yes, this verification system, and its associated Cloudflare, seem to be choosy over browsers as well.
Thanks again for the useful comments. Yes - I am a Luddite, and proud of it.

Thanks guys.

BenQ - I tried signing in from Firefox "private" - the login page just froze again, couldn't even complete my email address.  Stocky - I don't use a VPN.  Oldcpu - I don't possess a smartphone.

I guess I'll have to try a different browser.  Everything was fine last year.  When I started my career in software development (in the 70's) one of the golden rules was to make software updates backwards-compatible. Those were the days.

Thanks again, scube:

Download 12.8Mbps; Upload 5.5Mbps; latency (London) 248.8ms.

I have heard of complaints about internet bandwidth in Khao Lak.

No. I don't possess a smartphone.  But I have just now tried to set up a new account - the screen froze as I typed in my email, then I got the spinning star on the 'Next' button, then blank screen with spinning star.  There seems to be something seriously effed up with the wise.com website.

Also, I notice on general consumer blogs that Wise has been getting very bad reviews just this year.

Thanks for your reply.

Is anyone else finding it impossible to sign in to their Wise account? The log-in button does not go live, but just spins... for ever.  And you cannot get Help, or complain, because you have to log in first.

Everything was fine up until December last year. i have tried from different laptops - same non-result.

Alternative recommendations welcome.

Wise told me a month ago that it can longer send more than THB 49,999 in one go to any bank except BB, SCB and Kasikorn (I use Krungsri).  Now it tells me it can't send more than Baht 200,000 in one go to Bangkok Bank.  I have tried xe.com, but it won't accept Thailand as country of residence.  They say banking regs have changed.  Can anyone advise on this?

On 4/13/2021 at 1:09 PM, placnx said:

Hydroxychloroquine was debunked in clinical trials a while ago.

Hydroxychloroquine got "trumpized" by the left.  I suggest you go to Wikipedia, read the heavily censored article, then click the Talk page where you will discover the real hydroxychloroquine debate, and an interesting quote from Larry Sanger, Wikipedia founder, on the "neutrality" of Wikipedia articles.

10 hours ago, jacko45k said:

Odd, mine ends in .co.uk and has not given me problems.

Do you mean via the App particularly as I use my laptop.

This was at the 90-day page on the government immigration website on the Phangnga Immigration laptop - no app involved. The official said that I must have a .com email so I took her word for it.  Didn't try .co.uk or .co.th, but for sure, .in.th doesn't work.

Two more tips regarding the dysfunctional 90-day online system:

1.  An email address is a required field.  Any email address that DOES NOT end with .com is NOT accepted, and the field reverts to blank with NO explanation.  My email address ends ".in.th" Fail.

2.  The roll boxes for address fields work OK in Thai (great if the expat applicant can read and write Thai) but not OK in English.  So if you try to enter the accepted English spelling for the sub-district Bangmuang, the field reverts to blank when you hit the "g", with NO explanation.

Despite the 200km round trip, I prefer to do the 90-day reporting in person to save all this faff.  However, today (03Nov20) at Phangnga Immigration, a very pleasant and friendly junior official insisted that online was the way to go, and offered to take me through it.  What with the stops and starts outlined above, it took us 20 minutes.  I would never have succeeded if I had tried to do it remotely.

Satisfaction score at the local immigration office so far this year: 

February (90-day report) - 10/10,

August (retirement extension) - 0/10 (my worst nightmare, documented in an earlier post),

Today, November - 8/10.

Suggestions for improvement: get someone with IT experience to sort out the 90-day app.

Something smells here.  The above picture and story have been published by Khaosod but the perp's name - Police Captain Akarawin Taechaubol, has NOT been mentioned, yet, in either of the main English language papers.  That's not all.  Earlier today, I posted as a "related topic" the question of omission of the entire story in Bangkok Post, and my post got moderated out.  This latest rich kid atrocity looks like a potential Red Bull - Part 2 epic, with one difference...  Is the story being covered up by order from above?

14 minutes ago, Peter Denis said:

The Royal Thai Police Order 35/2562 you referred to, dates from January 2019.

In an attachment to that order issued October 31, 2019 < see attached file > the mandatory thai IO-approved health-insurance requirement was introduced for 1-year extensions of stay based on a Non Imm O-A Visa for reason of retirement.

 100.74 kB · 0 downloads

Thank you.  The revised order you usefully provide still refers exclusively to Type O-A visas.  I am on retirement extensions of a plain vanilla Type O visa, so I hope I am exempt.

On 8/9/2020 at 12:52 PM, Peter Denis said:

That quote is from a non-official commercial website.  And it is not correct as it fails to mention that when you apply for a 1-year extension based on your original Non Imm O-A Visa (even if that dates from yesteryear) that the thai IO-approved mandatory health-insurance requirement is ONLY applicable when applying for reason of RETIREMENT.

A Non Imm O-A 1-year extension for any other reason that retirement does NOT require the mandatory health-insurance requirement.

As this is Thailand some Immigration officers are confused by their own rules/regulations and may want to impose the health-insurance requirement when applying for the 1-year Non Imm O-A extension for reason of marriage.  In that case a call to the IO Helpdesk (1178) should quickly solve the matter and confirm that it is not applicable in that case.

Royal Thai Police Order 35/2562 section 2.22 item 6 refers only to O-A visas with regard to health insurance

Clarification re: health insurance... "According to the order [the Jan 2019 police order], health insurance is not required for those applying for an extension of stay of a non-immigrant category O visa based on retirement or Thai wife."  Seems like it's just Type O-A.

Source: https://www.thaiembassy.com/travel/health-insurance-thailand-new-requirement-for-retirees.php

I'm sorry to ask this macabre question, but what happens to the married visa if one's Thai spouse dies first?  Does it remain valid and extendable?  If not, then the misery of the bereavement will be compounded big-time.

3 hours ago, OJAS said:

So are we to infer from this and points 3 & 4 in your OP that you are a Brit who has recently had to endure the bureaucratically tedious process of getting your passport renewed from Thailand, thanks, in particular, to the requirement for 2 enforced route marches to an office building with an exceedingly silly name somewhere in deepest darkest Bangkok - which presumably had to be undertaken all the way from Phang Nga in your case? IMHO the ridiculously cumbersome procedures which those incompetent fools at HMPO have inflicted on us Brits in LOS at passport renewal time since 2014 are far more worthy of complaint than anything that Immigration here has imposed on us retirees!

Yes, yes, yes, and yes.  AND the Liverpool office rejected my photo without saying what was wrong with it - I had followed all their guidelines and measurements to the nearest millimetre.  I sent several photos back printed with different contrast, brightness, and weights of paper, and I incorporated in my letter a checklist of photographic parameters for them to tick or cross if none of the new set was satisfactory.  That shut them up.  But here's a question - why couldn't the minions at the "office building with an exceedingly silly name in deepest Bangkok" accept or reject the photo at the time of submission??

1 hour ago, Scott Tracy said:

What does 'act British' mean?

 

Not to refer to the contract...? why have a contract?

 

 

Acting British: in this case, how about pedantic, righteous and pompous?

Why have a contract?  When designing and constructing mass transit railways, they are generally required.

4 hours ago, nobodysfriend said:

And what about health insurance for retirement ( O-A ) Visa extensions ?

As you did not mention it , I think it is not needed ....?

Last year it was not necessary ...

This is item (6) on Police order 35/2562 of 18 January 2018.  It does NOT appear on the current Phang Nga list of required documents... yet.  That will be a real killer if it is ever implemented.  Getting health insurance over the age of 70 is either prohibitively expensive or refused.

56 minutes ago, Bipolar said:

Sorry can someone tell me if the Nation is still in existence or they died! Their website ie online news is not updated for the last few days...except for one of 2 small stories but some trash stories by some of their garbage journalists can be found on other sites? What is happening? Am I left to only read the newsletter of the Central Group ie Bangkok Post?

I'm afraid The Nation committed suicide.  It had a great investigative reporter, Piyaporn Wongruang; her fate is unknown.

Try Khaosod english at http://www.khaosodenglish.com/

Not a huge amount of news, but two good reporters, Pravit and Teeranai. 

The new Nation is getting worse.  Today, adverts for a Toyota are obliterating the text so you can't read the articles.  There are still no Opinion columns.

The Have Your Say index page has been removed so you can no longer access the letters archives.  But the old letters up to June 28 are still online, now under www.nationthailand.com/your_say/ 

instead of www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/your_say/

But without the index page, you have to rely on an external search engine... and know what you're looking for.

This is very sad.  Time to move on, I guess.  Khaosod English anyone?

7 hours ago, Lungstib said:

My two attempts to open the Nation this morning have failed. So much for a new platform.

Agreed.  Pravit of Khao Sot say The Nation got rid of 75% of its editorial staff.  And what's happened to Have Your Say?  Where are you sending your letters now, Uncle Steve?  I miss Nigel, JC, Dr Frank, Eric.

Only Baht 200k is needed in the bank for retirement visa extension if your visa has been continuously extended for retirement since 21 October 1998.   This is according to the Immigration Dept website (Criteria for retirement, para 6a). 

Two questions: 1) has anyone managed to pull this off? 2) what happens if you have been here continuously for 20+ years but initially on a different kind of visa (e.g. Non-Imm + work permit)?