OJAS

That thread dates back to August 2022, which suggests to me that @SpaceKadet has recently applied for a further retirement extension at HH. If that is, indeed, the case then maybe he could indicate whether the info he provided in that thread still held good in his experience in 2023.

Only insofar as CW is concerned in theory, given that this particular facility is only available to those registered in Bangkok, it would appear. And those using it could still, in practice, be subject to inconsistency between individual officers at that particular office as regards supporting document requirements. And I for one would earnestly hope that VFS never roll out this facility nationwide nor extend it to non-immigrant annual extensions of stay for retirement, marriage, etc. Being forced to make a couple of trips in person to their office in Bangkok every 9-10 years as required for us Brits at passport renewal time is already bad enough as far as I am concerned, without further mandatory trips to that hell-hole called Bangkok being imposed on us every year for Thai immigration purposes! ????

I have come to the conclusion that a secret edict went out from Immigration Bureau big-wigs to all offices a few months ago requiring bank statements to be now provided in support of all marriage and retirement extension of stay applications based on 400k or 800k in the bank, in addition to account confirmation letters and updated passbook copies as previously. I was similarly told to go away and obtain a 12-month bank statement when I applied for my latest retirement extension at Rayong a couple of months ago.

Medical extensions of up to 90 days are possible under para 2.25 of Immigration Bureau Orders 327/2557 and 138/2557, English translations of which can be downloaded by clicking on the relevant links at 12 and 16 (not the Siam Translation ones, though!) of the "Laws, regulations, Police Orders, etc" pinned thread (linked below for ease of reference):- https://aseannow.com/topic/981135-laws-regulations-police-orders-etc Your friends will therefore need to establish, as a matter of extreme urgency, with their Thai hospital whether a stay of more than 15 days will be needed in their case; and, if so, what assistance the hospital can provide in obtaining the necessary medical extensions from the local immigration office on their behalf.

Might be possible to use the online method if the transfer of stamps from old to new passports has already taken place. But would it not, in practice, be better to do a 90-day report in person at the same time as the stamps transfer (as I did after renewing my passport last year)?

Only if he is a Brit. However I get the impression from his OP that his home country's (whatever said home country might be) passport renewal procedures from Thailand are far more civilised than those which apply to us Brits! Quite frankly, I think that the only options now available to him are (1) to book a flight ticket to enable him to fly back to his home country before his current permission to stay expires, (2) obtain a "lost or stolen passport" police report here in Thailand, and (3) leg it to his home country embassy in Bangkok clutching both ticket and report in order to obtain the necessary emergency travel document/passport. It could be that his embassy requires firm evidence of travel plans out of Thailand before being prepared to issue him with the necessary emergency travel document/passport (certainly this is the case for us Brits). Then once back in his home country apply for a replacement passport there, and once this has been issued return to Thailand visa-exempt with a view to applying for a non-o conversion for retirement at his local immigration office as detailed in the following link:- https://www.immigration.go.th/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/9.FOR-RETIREMENT-PURPOSES-50-YEARS-OLD-NON-O.pdf He should also bear in mind that a certified translation of his Thai "lost or stolen passport" police report into either English or whatever the official language in his home country is will almost certainly be a prerequisite to applying for a replacement passport there. IMHO this thread is a salutary reminder to us all of the perils of leaving it until the last minute before renewing our passports. As stated in his OP: "My passport was about to expire in October, and at the same time I had to renew my one-year visa, so in August, I sent the passport by a reputable Southeast Asian forwarding firm to my embassy in Bangkok." IMHO 2 months definitely comes under the "leaving it until the last minute" category.

Indeed, Jomtien insist on 2-month seasoning of the 800k for retirement non-o visa conversions, contrary to the official rules.

Provided that he already has a Thai bank account with at least 800,000 THB safely stashed in it. In connection with the 65,000 THB monthly income alternative, neither the British nor the Australian embassies in Bangkok will issue him with the necessary letter of guarantee: https://www.immigration.go.th/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/9.FOR-RETIREMENT-PURPOSES-50-YEARS-OLD-NON-O.pdf

And HMRC are by no means alone in the Great British Government Machine in inflicting this sort of nonsense on us, as I have already stated in this thread. Equal bucketloads of shame on HMPO and DWP, I think.

But no-one - and I mean absolutely no-one - can surpass the legions of clueless dimwits employed by HMPO in the daftness stakes! They are in a league of their own.

I believe that at one time UK embassies worldwide used to provide a one-stop shop to local expats needing services provided by HM Government. This is, unfortunately, no longer the case, with the result that expats are now required to deal direct with a whole raft of Government organisations depending on which service they are after - e.g. HMPO in the case of passport renewals, DWP in the case of the State Pension and HMRC in the case of taxation issues generally. And this shift of responsibilities appears to have happened at the same time as the "joined-up Government" concept, which was being so enthusiatically espoused by the likes of Tony Blair 20 years ago, has been steadily eroded in the meantime - with the result that it appears that each component part of HM Government is now required to confine its activities to responsibilities which fall strictly within the purview of their particular silo, with blinkers firmly attached so as to prevent any "undesirable" sideways glances into other silos. I strongly suspect that a negative consequence of all this, as far as we are concerned, is that embassies' detailed knowledge of local issues which could affect how HM Government services are provided to expats living abroad is almost certainly not passed on these days to those sitting in HMPO, DWP and HMRC ivory towers.

This requirement has negative implications not only for those who need to open a Government Gateway account in order to check their State Pension tax payments but also, more generally, for those needing to open an account in order to file tax returns online (meaning that this particular option is, in practice, not available to them).

Looks like most of us State Pensioners here in LOS are going to miss out on an 8% increase in our State Pensions from next April:- https://www.ft.com/content/b83d60d1-8002-47c4-a4a1-f6a1e58e47f0 And no doubt HMRC will seek to tax a fair few of us on the basis of the full increase in the hope that we don't notice this. But at least, all being well, we should be spared the biennial Life Certificate nonsense next year!

But only 1 trip in connection with your Aussie passport, I take it, with your new passport being mailed/couriered to you direct? 2 physical trips are mandatory in the case of British passports, firstly to submit your renewal application and secondly to collect your new passport a number of weeks later. And no physical trips at all to central offices are needed in the case of those who are permitted to apply for new British passports online from a fair few countries (including Malaysia and Singapore in this part of the world), but not Thailand for some mysterious reason.

Easier said than done for the OP if he is not, given that, according to @hotandsticky elsewhere on here, new Government Gateway accounts can these days only be created by those with UK addresses. Personally speaking, I think that it would not be unreasonable to conclude from the OP's (and others' similar) experiences that the UK government as a whole could well be pursuing an agenda aimed at making the lives of us Brit retirees living in LOS just as difficult as is humanly possible, with both HMRC and DWP playing their full part by adding insult to injury to those on frozen State Pensions through taxing them as if they were in receipt of the full whack. And this coming on top of the cumbersomely bureaucratic procedures which have been inflicted on us over the last 10 years or so by DWP and HMPO in the areas of State Pension life certificates and passport renewals respectively. And then we have the Thai government who IMHO have clearly demonstrated, through various actions directed against those of us on annual retirement extensions over the past few years in particular, that they would be more than willing to provide their UK counterparts with whatever assistance they might require in this connection! Rant over!

If by this statement you mean the actual visa itself (rather than the latest 12-month permission to stay granted under it, which in any event should already have been safeguarded with a re-entry permit), you would only, upon your arrival back in Thailand, be granted a permission to stay expiring on the same date as the visa itself (on the basis that this also coincides with the expiry date of the mandatory health insurance policy you obtained for the OA visa). So you can, to all intents and purposes, kiss goodbye to using the OA visa to gain a further 6-month permission to stay, I think. And I would strongly recommend that you delay re-entering Thailand through using your METV visa until after the OA visa has expired, to prevent any potential IMM problems arising at BKK Arrivals, as referred to by @Red Phoenix.

IMHO says it all about the ridiculous procedures we Brits are subject to at passport renewal time these days that we appear to be alone among Western nationals living in LOS in needing to fork out extra for the services of agents to make them bearable!

Which IMHO is pretty meaningless without a list of the 54 provinces affected.

As I pointed out to the Embassy at the time, all that the "extra step" to which you refer should involve for them would be to enter our NI number into a secure online link which they had established with HMRC in order to check that whatever supporting docs we had provided for our income confirmation letters in the form of latest tax returns or P60's matched HMRC's latest records (although P60's are issued by our pension providers, they are required to notify these to HMRC as part of their payroll obligations). A task which should normally take 5 seconds max per income confirmation request to accomplish, plus a further couple of seconds to plonk a suitable stamp for Immigration purposes on our supporting docs, I would have thought. Whilst it would not, of course, be possible for the Embassy to verify future (but only historical) income on this basis, the same is equally true in the case of their Norwegian counterpart according to the OP. Can't speak for the American and Australian embassies, but, as far as their British counterpart is concerned, all that I can say is that, if they consider their officers to be incapable of conducting quick and simple verification checks taking a handful of seconds in each case, it isn't exactly complimentary about said officers' level of intelligence, is it?

The $64,000 question, though, is how long will it take for the provisions of this directive to filter down to officers working on the coal face at BKK and DMK airports in particular.

The following link sets out the procedures for obtaining non-O visa conversions for retirement:- https://www.immigration.go.th/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/9.FOR-RETIREMENT-PURPOSES-50-YEARS-OLD-NON-O.pdf As already said, though, your pal will first need to do a border bounce in order to kill off his non-OA visa.

Well, at least the Norwegian Embassy are still providing an income confirmation service for their expats, in stark contrast to their American, Australian and British counterparts! Makes me seriously wonder why that particular trio of embassies were unable to come up with similar documentary requirements, instead of merely hoisting the white flag of surrender by throwing their arms up in the air and pulling the plug.

The main difficulty to which you refer actually lies with Thai banks rather than Wise. None of them, apart from Bangkok Bank, seem capable, for some mysterious reason, of assigning specific descriptors in statements and passbooks to identify transactions originating from abroad, as per Bangkok Bank's "International transfer" and FTT (standing for Foreign Telegraphic Transfer) descriptors.

Indeed Wise are not a bank - and they are most certainly not covered by the £85k Financial Services Compensation Scheme deposit guarantee which applies to onshore UK banks. IMHO while a Wise account might well provide a stopgap way of dealing with the immediate consequences of onshore UK bank account closures, it would be most inadvisable to treat it as being an alternative permanent long-term solution to UK personal banking needs.

However Barclays' terms and conditions state that they can close an onshore account if they find out that you're not eligible for it, including if "You (or a joint account holder) reside outside the UK or do not have leave to remain in the UK". This implies to me that Barclays at least do have non-resident British nationals in mind. https://www.barclays.co.uk/content/dam/documents/personal/site-hygiene/BAR_9910542_UK 10.18.pdf and scroll down to page 20.