OJAS

Indeed it says absolutely nothing about what is IMHO the most vital piece of personal information relating to its holder: namely the date when their current permission to stay in Thailand is due to expire.

Most certainly when compared to its British counterpart (His Majesty's Passport Office), as most Brits who have had to endure the agonies of renewing their passports from Thailand (myself included) will probably readily attest to!

And what I found particularly galling was that, in common with their counterparts worldwide, they were more than happy to sit idly by while ol' Boris was, gleefully and with much fanfare, cheerfully giving away vaccine doses deemed surplus to UK requirements, to find their way into the arms of any Tom, Dick and Harry across this great planet of ours who wasn't a British citizen!

Mostly of little relevance to the routine needs of local expat retirees, I think. They have completely thrown in the towel on (e.g.) providing an income confirmation service and witnessing State Pension life certificates - in other words genuinely useful services to the local expat retiree community.

As far as us expat retirees are concerned, Bill, it has become clear to me that the Embassy regard their key role these days as acting as a go-between in developing a joint UK/Thailand inter-governmental strategy aimed at making our lives here in LOS just as humanly difficult and miserable as they can be. The imposition of cumbersome bureaucracy on us over the past 10 years or so in the areas of passport renewal, proving that we are still in the land of the living for State Pension purposes and legalisation of UK documents as alluded to above is, I think, clear evidence of the UK government's gleeful enthusiasm for the development of such a strategy.

Could you not have downloaded these from the Immigration Templates pinned thread to spare you at least 1 chaotic trip to Jomtien? Or is it the case that they have their own special version of the TM7 which they always insist on being used?

It is precisely because of this particularly shining example of UK Government bungling incompetence and ineptitude as highlighted by the OP that I have only elected to pay income tax on my occupational pension through my tax code, with tax on my remaining income consisting of the State Pension and rental income on a UK property being paid to HMRC on account separately. And, even though I no longer need in theory to file tax returns following the sale of the UK property in question 18 months ago, I have opted to continue doing so since the effort involved in filing a tax return is, in my perception (although others may well disagree, depending on their personal circumstances), considerably less than that involved in calling HMRC and/or DWP each year by phone to correct a tax coding error on their part - involving, as this always seems to, being placed on hold for an eternity until some real live human being can finally be bothered to pick up my call, with my long-suffering eardrums being "serenaded" in the meantime by the entire suite of Beethoven symphonies from start to finish or whatever other irritating muzak is inflicted on them!????

And then the information presumably needs to cascade downwards through the Immigration Bureau structure at an extremely leisurely pace in all probability, until it finally reaches immigration officers working on the coalface.

A further point which you should bear in mind is that the one thing which no agent can help you out with, as far as I can tell, is in obtaining mugshots for the new passport which comply with what are IMHO HMPO's over-fussy requirements in full. The issue is not so much with photographic & facial sizes (for which a template illustrating acceptable dimensions is available), but rather with the particular shades of plain cream/light-grey background colours which are deemed acceptable by HMPO. Probably not an issue with professional photographers here in LOS if you live in or near a major urban centre, but could definitely be one if you live out in the sticks.

Just be aware, though, that there is little which agents can do to speed up the whole process when compared to doing it all yourself. All of the unexpected delays of recent times to which you refer have arisen courtesy of those masters of bungling incompetence and ineptitude known as HMPO. And if I were in your shoes I would be thinking about renewing my passport sooner rather than later, even though your existing passport still has a year to run before its expiry date. I actually applied to renew mine last October, even though it was not due to expire until this coming September.

In any event what is probably of considerably greater interest to you and your fellow Americans is the current furore over his USA visa application running in parallel: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/prince-harry-visa-america-meghan-markle-b2353629.html What particularly mystifies me is why the US Customs and Border Protection consider it necessary to seek the permission of this particular renegade to the disclosure of his visa application form.

Your old passport was almost certainly cancelled when your new one was issued, meaning that it could not, in fact, be used in lieu of the new passport if lost!

In a nutshell HM Government back in the UK is stuck in some antediluvian time warp as far as we expat Brits in LOS are concerned - not just when it comes to proving that we remain in the land of the living for State Pension purposes, but also when it comes to renewing our passports. The imposition of unnecessarily cumbersome and onerous bureaucracy on us as a result seems to be their tip-top priority bar none in either case.

In exactly the same way as the strict requirement for us Brits to complete our passport renewal forms in BLACK ink "is just more British Government B*****T", do you not agree?

@BritTim - if they were to cancel his existing passport as part of this process, though, might this lead to problems with Immigration upon his return at BKK Arrivals?

Prior to reading your excellent report I had been labouring under the impression that the Immigration Bureau's appointment booking system was, in practice, only in use in Bangkok (Chaengwattana). The above link is therefore of particular interest to me since my office (Rayong) also comes under Division 3. Unfortunately, given that, unlike Hua Hin as stated in your report, they require supporting bank docs for retirement, etc extensions to be obtained on the same day as these are applied for, I'm not sure that this system is likely to be of much practical use in my case as the big unknown, of course, is how long it would take for me to obtain the necessary supporting docs depending on how busy the bank branch I dealt with was at the time. On a very minor point, given the absence of any mention of the mandatory health insurance requirement in your report, would I be correct in inferring that your retirement extension is based on an original non-O visa?

More likely it will bring her sleepless nights with its constant croaking, I think!????

Not holding my breath, personally.....☹️

Definitely check this specifically and in advance with the airline you'll be flying back to Thailand with, if I were you.

Well the fact that "this kind of info is found at many websites" indicates to me that pigs will fly before any proof to the contrary comes to light!

Please let us know next Monday (on the basis that last Monday was a bank holiday in the UK) whether they were, in the event, as good as their word!

Maybe that has something to do with the Royal Mail strikes referred to by @youreavinalaff? And/or to last year's major hack of their website which, I gather, is also still impacting negatively on their international delivery services? And/or to a leisurely attitude taken by customs officials at either (or both of) the UK and Thai ends in clearing international mail destined for us? And/or specifically in the case of Life Certificate requests to DWP's apparent policy (judging from the postmark on the envelope containing their latest request to me) of routing these to us through some sorting office on mainland Europe, presumably with the aim of minimising their postage costs?

Or alternatively you could phone 'em!???? https://www.gov.uk/international-pension-centre Yep, those parts of The Great UK Government Machine we expats have to deal with from LOS really are at the cutting edge of advanced e-comms technologies, aren't they?????

Having got heartily sick and fed up to the teeth with having to wait around 15 minutes for my laptop to boot up following the installation of each and every Windows 10 update requiring a complete restart, I have finally taken the plunge and migrated to Windows 11. It appears to be a considerable improvement over its predecessor in that regard in my case: for example the rebooting process following the installation of the 2023-05 Cumulative Update Preview for Windows 11 Version 22H2 for x64-based systems (KB5026446) only took 2 minutes and 40 seconds in the case of my laptop, when compared to MS's estimate of 4 minutes! So definitely a case of goodbye and good riddance to Windows 10 as far as I am concerned, I think!

The following link seems to be working OK:- https://tm47.immigration.go.th/tm47/#/login