thaisail

Thanks for giving me the location of your financial end. I am actually doing the solar installatoin mainly for the same reason as you but buying an electric car for someone who is retired, is not the same as when you are working and making the daily commute. I think the car will accually be using less power then all the AC units combined. I have 3 x 12000 btu inverter, 1 classic 10000 btu in the garrage/workshop. And one 9000 btu inverter in the separate bungalow. None are running for almost 3 months now here in Chiang Khan! I think you made a good move and you will get a good return on your investment. But for me it is the principle of not putting more of a strain on the fossil fuel power grid to feed an electric car.

No time now to start a thread. On a visa run to Cambodia tomorrow. Need only a ball park figure about labor cost to beable to see if this project is even worth starting. I don't want anyone else involved in my labor. So I really just need to know todays cost with the newest geneneration of materials. No need for batteries at this stage. I will have enough headache dealing with the batteries on the Nissan Leaf which are already 4 years old and the cars are still in the show room all over Thailand. But the price has not dropped enough so I am waiting to see how low they will go before shipping them back to Japan! They were 1,9 new and the price is now 1.45.

I am just trying to get an idea of the cost of each item required to see if it will be worth the trouble. We are looking at a Nissan Leaf as a second car and want to provide sun fuel verses fossil fuel to run it. We plan to run the meter bacwards as long as we don't get caught which is really unlikely where I live.

For those of us who want to do our own instalation it would be helpful if you would give us a break down of the cost of the materials and labor. Great job!

We found a solution! A friend in Singapore was able to use his phone with a Singapore banking app and once I gave him the SWIFT number for ABA Bank in Cambodia and we got the address of the recipient, he was able to transfer 50 USD to the person in Cambodia. The only down side was the 20 Singapore dollar service fee. The transfer document was send to the recipient and he knew he would get paid so the service was rendered. I hope! I then transferred the equivilant amount in Thai Baht from my Bangkok Bank to his SCB account plus a little extra and everyone was happy! We created our own little mini blockchain!

Does anyone know the fastest way to get $50 US from Thailand to Cambodia. I have a Kasikorn, Bangkok and SCB bank account. I have to send urgently $50 to a private person in Cambodia who has given me his Cambodian ABA Bank account number, a copy of his ID card and Cambodian mobile number. He wants me to send the money by Wingmoney app but I think you need a Cambodian SIM card to set it up and I can't see show the Wingmoney will work in Thailand. Anyone out there have any ideas?

By changing to a new US credit card, my problem with Lazada is completely resolved. I have made 6 purchases with my Navy Federal Credit Union credit card and all transactions are being processed without any problems. I truly believe that Capital One is at fault which is exactly what Lazada was telling me. There are hundreds of US credit cards. Some just do not function anymore with Lazada. If this is the case just drop the cards that no longer function and get new cards that work!

I just ordered 2 new credit cards from Navy Federal Credit Union that give 1.75% cash back and just got approved. I can also keep my old card that gives 3%cash back on restaurants! The Navy Federal Credit Union has updated my mailing address to Thailand so my delivery and billing address are now the same. I can now buy on line with Lazada and I will dump my Capital One credit cards. I thought the trouble was coming from Kasikorn and Lazada but now I am sure the problem is with Capital One! Must be the same issue with Chase.

I contacted Navy Federal Credit Union and changed my billing address to match my delivery address in Thailand. The NFCU fraud department was familiar with the 3D Secure issue and offered to assist. I was also offered a new VISA credit card that gives 1.75% cash back on all purchases with no annual fee or any other conditions. This beat the 2% cash back from Cap1 with the $59 annual fee. I called Lazada and bought a 2100 baht memory card for my phone and the Kasikorn payment window popped up with "Verified by Visa" but no OTP was generated. The sale went through and everything is working perfect now! I will order the new cards which NFCU will send in the normal mail to Thailand for free. One card for my wife and one for me. One big advantage is that when you call in to NFCU for help on the phone you get fast service from someone in the US not Manila or Nicaragua. I am dumping my Cap1 card and switching over to NFCU! I will make some more purchases on Lazada and try to pay my AIS monthly fee and see if the online issue is now resolved for the 3D Secure. I will keep everyone updated. If anyone else out there finds a solution like I did please post. It may actually be that the problem was from Cap1 all the time and not from Kbank and Lazada!

Capitol One was not helpful at all!

The following email was just received from Lazada. It appears that the Thai banks want all money entering Thailand to pass through them so that they can get their commision. They can't stand the thought of someone using their home country credit card to purchase items in Thailand without paying them their commision. It is time for those of us with this issue to file a class action lawsuit against Kasikorn who seem to be the main culprit. Following text quoted from an email just received from Lazada. It seems that Kasikorn has an exclusive contract to handle the credit card transactions for Lazada. I wonder if the parent company Ali Express is aware of this huge loss of revenue now being caused by Kasikorn. "Thank you for taking the time to contact us. Regarding your feedback for payment issue, please be inform that we have been passed on what you have told us to our technical team for the further assistance. As per checking , the relevant team had been found that the unsuccessful transaction in your payment was caused by your card which is not support 3D payment. Following this case, may we suggest you to contact to the bank or card issuer for the further asistance. However, you can try to use a different card for your payment as well." I think Kasikorn would like us to buy their debit card so that they can get our business. But Thailand is a tourist destination so this will be very bad if tourists are unable to purchase anything on line using their home country VISA cards. I can't even buy movie tickets using the mobile app! I hope they don't go after my Schwab debit card for ATMs as well. That will be a sign that they don't want us expats anymore in Thailand!

Thank you for your valuable information! I had some good luck two days ago and was able to purchase two items on Lazada for less than 500 baht using my US Cap1 credit card. I was also able to create a payment method using my Cap1 credit card. But on the third purchase for 2200 baht, I got blocked again by Kasikorn yesterday. Today, I decided that I did not want my dog to go hungry so I had the 2200 purchase of dog food shipped by COD and I will let my wife pay for it in cash. But today, I tried to buy a second bag of dogfood using my Cap1 card and this time, I was sent an OTP to my Thai phone number. I typed in the OTP on the Lazada website but got blocked again by Kasikorn. This time the Kasikorn screen changed several time but in the end, the purchase failed. I called Lazada and tried again while talking ot Lazada on the phone but this time no OTP. But at least they are working on the issue.

I like the Kasikorn app and use it all the time, but in my case if I have money to send to the US, I would never take it out of a Thai Bank. I get 100% of my retirement money in USD and it is deposited into my Schwab bank account in the US. If I need to pay something in the to US I pay with my Capital One account or my Schwab account. However the Kasikorn mobile app is great and I use it all the time in Thailand. It is really great and the Thai banking system is really great to allow me to pay almost anything with my mobile app. As for T-Mobile, I finally gave up on them a few years ago and I switched everything to Google Voice. I have my own US phone number now that anyone can use to call me from the States. I also use it to get all those "verified by visa" authenticatation codes. I can call any US cellphone and fixed phone in the US and any house or office phone in Europe. All for free! I just told T-mobile to put their SIM card where the sun don't shine!

I transfer 40K baht every month for the purpose of immigration to justify the marriage visa extension. The Thai baht is building up in my Thai bank account. I used to buy items almost every day with Lazada using my Capital One credit card which was super convenient for me and I was a good customer of Lazada. But now that they will no longer accept my Capital One card, I will look elsewhere to purchase. Remember that I get the best exchange rate out there with Capital One and I get 2% cash back and it used to be super easy using the Lazada website and I could buy with virtually one click! But now I have to go into the Bangkok Bank mobile app and type in a reference number, my phone number and spend 10 minutes clicking around the Bangkok Bank moble app to buy even a tiny screw driver! It would be great if the customers service people can explain exactly why they had a change the software just to <deleted> off their customers and make their life difficult.

I guess Kasikorn doen's like Capital One!

That is great news! I will try again to make some purchases. I have uploaded my Cap one statement three times and I know they are working on it. Please PM to me and we can stay in contact.

You got it right! I found a great price for a Samsung memory card for my phone. As soon as I got it, I checkit out on line and found out it was a fake. I returned the fake card and got a full refund from Lazada. Had to pay 3 times the price to get the authentic memory card from the JIB store on Lazada and everything worked out in the end. But all the time Capitol One was standing by waiting if things turned sour.

How do you get an American credit card to use a Thai billing address?

You are preaching to the choire with me about Schwab. I have a Schwab One account with checking and brokerage. I am curious to see if you have found a way to get Schwab to work with "WISE"? I find Schwab to be absolutely the best bank to use for expats in Thailand. I find it very hard to find a dummie that answers the phone at Schwab. They also provide me a phone number I can call with my Thai cellphone that is free of charge. I do have a Schwab Visa Debit card and I can get cash easy with all fees reimbursed for the Thai ATMs at the end of each month. The exchange rate has always been the best I have ever found in Thailand. But you have to be a US citizen with a US social security number to get that account. The issue is convenience. I was in France on Vaxation for 7 months and just got back. I tried to buy things through Lazada while I was in France. My wife would call me on What's app and say she needed dog food or some other item and I would log in to Lazada App on my phone and order with my Capitol One credit card. Everything was perfect until this credit card mess started. I was unable to change the deliver phone number to my wife's phone because Lazada kept sending verification codes to my Thai SIM card which was suspended before I left. So I was not able to authenticate until I got back to Thailand and installed my Thai SIM card. Things like this make it very frustrating because the delivery guys could not call anyone to arrage delivery times since I could not change my phone number on the Lazada website.

I tried a conference call with Lazada and Capitol One a few days ago. Capitol One told Lazada that there were no attempts to use my card despite having made three attemps to purchase about one hour earlier. Lazada was on the phone with me when I did the purchasing attempt. I am pretty sure the issue is with the biling address on Lazada being in Thailand (no choice about that) and when Kasikorn software must pick up the discrepancy between the billing addresses and shuts down the purchase before it hits Capital One bank. I think that this will be a dead end for me with Lazada. I will have to use Amazon (more expensive) or Ali-express (slower and less easy to use). Too bad for Lazada, loosing customers for no good reason!

This issue is been going on since my wife's birthday on October 20th when I tried to buy her a new phone. We finally received the new phone only because I had to pay using Thai Baht with my Bangkok Bank mobile app. Lost 4%????

All my income is in US dollars. I have no income in Thai baht. So if I send US dollars to Thailand there is usually an exchange rate commision and there are wire transfer fees. Schwab Bank charges $15 per transfer. I am guessing that all of these charges result in 2% loss by the time the money arrives in Thailand. The other 2% is a loss from the credit card itself which pays me 2% cash back on all of my purchases. It seems that only domestic US credit cards offer this feature but if anyone knows of other countries that offer this please let me know. So, 2% + 2% = 4%. That is what I am loosing in having to pay using a Thai bank. All of groceries, fuel, shopping are paid with my Capital One. Only Navy Federal Credit Union Visa Card offers 3% cash back for restaurants so I pull out that card when eating out!

My experience with Kasikorn has not been great. I think this issue is far above the heads of the people responding on their customer help line. Besides, I have no proof that Kasikorn is behind this issue. It could be just Lazada trying to avoid loosing the credit card margin. I tried to set up transferwise with Schwab bank about a year ago. The name has now changed from Transferwise to just "WISE". I am looking into that option. However, the immigration needs to see transfers from a foreign bank to a Thai bank. With "Wise" the transfer is recorded as a domestic transfer instead of a foreign bank transfer. I will try to talk to immigration to see if they will accept "Wise" transfers. But I think we all know how that will go!

Lazada has changed their website and mobile app to block the use of my US based Capitol One Visa credit card. I have built my house in 2020 buying all my AC units and tonnes of building materials on Lazada with good success. But suddenly a few months ago, the card I have used for the entire year was no longer accepted by Lazada. There had been a few times I had to jump through some hoops to make large purchases like my Air Con units and had to modify my billing address to get the "verified by visa" system to function but now I can't even by a dog collar with my Capitol One credit card! I also have found that when I call in to find a solution, they are now blocking me from reaching their "financial services" department. All they do now is send an email and request different documents. Things like screen shots of the credit card payment failure screen, photos of credit card front and back, passport copy and the latest credit card statement. I have now been blocked from Lazada for almost 3 months and they keep requesting the same documents. It seems that Lazada has taken on Kasikorn Bank to handle their Visa transactions because the Kasikorn window pops up to verify my credit card just before rejecting my payment. Capitol One has no record of any of these 20 rejected credit card transactions so I am sure the Kasikorn is blocking me. I assume that the issue is the billing address which in in Florida for my Capital One credit card while the billing address required for Lazada seems to be restricted to Thailand billing addresses. So, if there is anyone out there with a similar issue and has found a work around, please let me know. All of my retirement income is deposted into my Schwab Bank account in the US and payment of my credit card bill each month is easy through the American banking system. I know that most people transfer their retirement income to their Thai Banks but this is costly with bank charges from both ends and poor exchange rates. On top of that US persons must complete a FBAR form every year to declare their combines foreign bank accounts to the IRS if combined balance exceeds $10,000 even for one day during the tax year. But the main advantage of using a Capital One credit card is getting the best exchange rate available and the 2% cash back on purchases. Also the push notifications I receive from Capitol One through my Google Voice messaging system lets me know instantly when my wife uses the card. (my way to keep some control of the family finances!) Because of this new Lazada policy, I must now pay for a debit card from my Thai bank. I calculate that I am now loosing 4% total between bank charges, exchange rates and loss of my 2% cash back commision. Is there anyone else out there who can offer a solution to the Lazada-Kasikorn conspiracy (perhaps Thai government interferance)?

On Vaxation in France since May 2021. Vaccinated with Pfizer 2 times in July 2021. Waiting for the border to open to fly to Phuket and stay in Thailand!