OJAS

I certainly obtained an FWD policy which was deemed acceptable for a Thailand Pass application I submitted last year - only for the Thailand Pass requirement to be scrapped the day before my return to Thailand following a foreign trip!

And, when conversions of visa-exempt/tourist visa entries into real genuine McCoy non-immigrant visas of the "O" variety (which have become increasingly popular in recent times for those wishing to ditch original non-OA visas in order to avoid mandatory health insurance requirements in particular) are thrown into the mix as well, the scope for unnecessary confusion as a result of the use of incorrect terminalogy is, I think, even greater nowadays!

Reverting to your previous question, I paid £128.51 for my new passport last October. However, this is of the "jumbo" variety, and a standard passport would have cost me £10 less. In addition to HMPO's fees, though, you also need to factor in other costs like (a) photos (£12.99 from a Snappy Snaps branch during a trip to the UK in my case), (b) colour copies of each and every page of your existing passport (150 THB in my case), and, most significantly, (c) 2 return trips to a rundown office building with a silly name from wherever you live (10,000 THB in my case from near Rayong).

And now things seem to be going from bad to worse as far as Royal Mail's overseas services are concerned at the present time, thanks to a cyber incident. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64231473 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64244121

Chance would be a fine thing if we were able to use the online facility for renewing our passports from Thailand in place of cumbersome antediluvian procedures based on Stone Age "hi-tech"!

Well, you certainly won't find me skipping up and down my soi in a state of unbridled ecstasy fulsomely singing the praises of HMPO to the very highest heavens as being the best thing since sliced bread in the area of fast and efficient passport renewals, at least until such time as they see fit to dispense with the ridiculous requirement for 2 physical trips (whether undertaken in person or by an agent at extra cost) to a rundown office building with an extremely silly name in Bangkok or its Chiang Mai equivalent (which may well, however, be rather more sensibly named and less rundown, for all I know)!

Well, it would appear that passports are being specifically targeted by the PCS Union for further industrial action from 1 February if this ES article is to be believed: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/civil-servant-strike-february-government-departments-full-list-pcs-b1052407.html Although HMPO are not explicitly included in the ES's list of affected government departments, they do, of course, form part of the Home Office who are specifically mentioned. If this further action materialises, therefore, the recent improvement in renewal processing times does not look like being sustained in the short-to-medium term, I fear.

In particular, how much is like being compared with like, I wonder?

Sadly, your assertion does not appear to be borne out by the INRIX scorecard referred to in the BBC news item, though - according to which 156 hours were lost to traffic delays in London last year, compared to only 67 hours in Bangkok: https://inrix.com/scorecard/

Whenever it does take place we'll no doubt know well in advance when plethoras of loud boom-boom convassing pick-ups start cruising our neigbourhoods and terrorising us with their ear-splitting racket. And then on the great day itself there will almost certainly be a zealously-enforced (for all and sundry, including expats who don't have the vote) nationwide booze ban in place from 18:00 the previous day, since we cannot possibly run the unacceptable risk of having electors hauled in by the BIB for VUI (voting under the influence), can we? ????

Bit of a mystery to me as to why the good residents of Chadlington seem to have objections to humans eating in a farmyard barn but presumably not livestock animals!????

Whether this improvement is sustained going forward during the early part of 2023 at least is, however, dependent on how things shape up on the current wave of civil servants' strikes. To the best of my knowledge HMPO staff have not, to date, been specifically targeted for industrial action - but that, of course, could all change to the detriment of passport processing times. So, if your passport is due to expire over the next 6-9 months, you would still IMHO be strongly advised to set the wheels in motion for its renewal ASAP.

I agree!

In that case the only financial avenue open to you is the 800k money-in-the-bank option referred to by @DrJack54. Absolutely no chance that you will get away with a series of consecutive 45/30-day visa-exempt border runs over a 12-month period (which is what I assume you are contemplating) before applying for a 90-day non-O conversion for retirement at your local immigration office leading in turn to annual extensions of stay.

Exactly the same can be said about people in Western countries, of course.

Provided, of course, that you are prepared to be put on hold for an eternity and "serenaded" with irritating muzak until a real live human being in the International Pensions Centre picks up your call and then bombards you with a plethora of security-related questions which you must answer correctly in order to start the process!

The postal service isn't in great shape at the UK end either at the present time at least, thanks to the postal workers' strikes which show no signs of ending any time soon. But I somehow doubt whether that will prove of any impediment to DWP's overwhelming desire to rub salt into the wounds of our perpetually frozen State Pensions by inflicting the Life Certificate nonsense on us in the most cumbersomely and onerously bureaucratic manner as is humanly possible.

And, as a result of some memory-jogging (and with Google's assistance), I have now come across a second more recent incident involving a crooked Kasikorn branch assistant manager in Pattaya, which definitely did have a negative impact on some local expats: https://www.pattayamail.com/news/pattaya-fraud-victims-ignored-by-bank-and-police-stage-protest-384080 Even so, 2 incidents in 5 years do not exactly constitute "numerous" cases IMHO!

I don't think that there have been numerous cases, but I am certainly aware of one particular incident involving a Bangkok Bank branch in Uttaradit in 2018, where at least 3 customers had their accounts relieved of significant amounts, thanks to fraudulent activities perpetrated by a bent bank official. It is, however, not clear from this Nation article whether any of them were foreign retirees: https://www.nationthailand.com/national/30357034 It is, of course, impossible to eliminate completely the risk of those of us retirees using the 400k/800k method having accounts holding required minimum balances depleted through bank fraud. While we can certainly minimise this risk through having no cards nor internet access linked to relevant accounts, there is, unfortunately, absolutely nothing that we can do to guard against the predations of crooked bank employees as in the 2018 case in Uttaradit. That said, however, it is IMHO essential that we retirees using the 400k/800k method weigh up the risk of falling victim to bank fraud in this way against other risks which we face in our daily lives - including, for example, being involved in a horrific road accident while en route to our local immigration office to apply for our latest retirement extension.

I would strongly advise you to open a new dedicated account for the 800k, like I (and quite a few others on here) have done. There have been numerous instances reported on here of those using their day-to-day account for this purpose (which I assume is what you are planning to do) inadvertently finding the balance dipping below the required 400k/800k (depending on the time of year, as referred to by @Liquorice above) minimum, with obvious dire consequences at extension of stay time! And definitely have no card nor internet access linked to this new account either IMHO.

Are you doing so on the basis of a non-OA visa obtained before October 2019? If so, would be interesting to know whether Phuket are still waiving the mandatory health insurance requirement for such original non-OA visa holders.

In which Thai bank? If Bangkok Bank, then provided that you have selected the "Funds For Long-Term Stay In Thailand" option for your Wise transfers, this should result in these being classed FTT (Foreign Telegraphic Transfer) in your passbook. You might also wish to download and print off the Wise transfer confirmation PDF's for each of the transfers in question (assuming that these total at least 800k) so as to show a trail from your home country to Thai bank accounts, on the off-chance that you will be asked to prove their foreign origin - although, as already said, this should be unlikely in practice.

So it might be a tad difficult for you to provide a 3-month statement (which should IMHO be obtained at the same time as your account confirmation letter)! Maybe you need to start making periodic token transfers of, say, 100 THB into the account as to show some activity on it for statement purposes? That's certainly what I do in the case of my dedicated 800k account with Krungsri - the first transfer a week or so before I go to the immigration office for my retirement extension and the second 6 months later.

So does this really mean that Buriram Immigration Office will no longer issue extensions of stay for retirement to anyone who isn't the proud possessor of the "hallowed" Yellow House Book? Absolutely disgraceful if that is, indeed, the case IMHO - as well as being another office to add to the "rogue" list, I think. ????

No Special Measures for Chinese Visitors In stark contrast to the Special Measures bureaucratic nonsense which were was in place for Western visitors this time last year, as succinctly summed up by @gearbox So why are the Chinese being treated more favourably now than Westerners were then? The $64,000 question, I think!