OJAS

"Embassys doing their own thing" = "Embassys doing SFA" IMHO.

This is by no means the only problem IMHO. What about the difficulties which some appear to be experiencing with Wise transfers, for instance? And, if you're American, Australian, British, Canadian and (soon) Norwegian, you can kiss goodbye to any chance of being able to obtain a 90-day non-O visa conversion for retirement from your local immigration office on the basis of 65k monthly income since the IMM rulebook clearly states that supporting evidence must be provided in the form of an Embassy income confirmation letter/affidavit!

Referring back to the OP, the thing I find particularly baffling about the Norwegian Embassy's decision to cease issuing income confirmation letters is that it was only as recently as September 2023 that they modified their procedures for obtaining these letters, presumably so as to satisfy IMM verification requirements!

+1 in the case of the British Embassy IMHO.

Click on the "22. Embassy letter rule 2013-05-29" link in the pinned "Laws, regulations, Police Orders, etc" thread.

This approach even works for Wise transfers to Bangkok Bank accounts in my experience. I've set up a standing order with my UK bank for transfers to my Wise GBP account, and as soon as I receive confirmation from Wise of my latest transfer (around 8am) I initiate an onward transfer to my Bangkok Bank account which usually turns up there at 14:00 the same day (unless it is a public holiday in LOS, of course).

Indeed, I wonder whether this whole registration issue lies at the heart of all the problems identifed in this thread (in which case Wise should clearly not be made the sole scapegoat for them). Although Thai banks are not, I understand, supposed to start rigorous checking for SIM registration compliance until the end of June, it is possible that some (if not all) of them are jumping the gun.

Some useful info about their activities (which seem to go wider than Thai domestic transactions) in the FAQ's on their website: https://www.tranglo.com/support/ What might be of possible interest to some is whether or not they offer a service for making transfers from Thai bank accounts to home country accounts given the current issues with Dee Money.

The link below appears to suggest that all subsequent amendments to existing AIS SIM card registrations (including for new passport numbers for foreigners presumably) can only be physically undertaken at an AIS Shop, AIS Telewiz, AIS Buddy or any of the 2,400 authorised dealers nationwide: https://www.ais.th/en/consumers/help-and-support/cyber-threat-alerts/mobile-banking

How does this work? Do you enter what is now Wise's 10-digit ref number for this purpose? Or do Tranglo send you their own code to be used instead?

Something to do with this, maybe??

Are you signed up to BKKB's internet banking service? If so, I suggest that you do what I did some time ago and dump their app which in my experience proved much more trouble than it was IMHO worth. With internet banking you should be able to transfer 100k to your SCB account in 2 chunks of 50k without having to endure any of this facial recognition nonsense (although you might need first to add your SCB account as a new payee and possibly change some max payment settings).

As it has been since last September, according to the following thread you initiated at that time!

I would have thought that living in Ibiza would be a real horror for her!!

Since the OP was flying from BKK to the UK via Doha, strikes me that the likeliest culprit was Qatar Airways.

In any event it strikes me that he could experience big, big problems in proving his residency status in Thailand to VFS's and then HMPO's satisfaction if he is leading a nomadic existence throughout his 90-day stay here. However, he can obtain the official lowdown on renewing UK passports from Thailand through a single click on the following link (which will then spare him the need to drill down through several layers of the GOV.UK website): https://www.passport.service.gov.uk/overseas/information/thailand/renew/adult

And, assuming that your BBL account is your general one (as opposed to a dedicated 800k one for IMM purposes), you presumably need to take particular care to ensure that there are no transactions recorded on it during this 3-5 day period since the latest balance on the statement won't otherwise match that in your passbook or account confirmation letter (assuming that you obtain this when you pick up the statement) - resulting in all probability in flat rejection of your retirement extension application by your local office. All in all, definitely best to have a dedicated 800k account but not with BBL IMHO!

Well, if @newbee2022 had said Rishi, Liz or Boris instead of Sir Keir, you might have had a point!

Plus the fact that a major flaw IMHO is that it contains zilch info on what is surely the most important piece of personal info in the case of us foreigners: namely the date when our current permission to stay expires. Until such time as this crucial piece of info is somehow included in the card - through either a specific "permission to stay expiry" date or even card expiry date matching that when your current permission to stay expires - I certainly don't plan on jumping through all the hoops needed in order to obtain one.

Thanks, confirms my suspicion. In practice I think that your friends' experiences answer the OP's question perfectly - notwithstanding his (IMHO perfectly understandable) confusion about the wording of the GOV.UK website - since I somehow doubt whether there are all that many male expats out there who were born before 6 April 1951 and have yet to claim their (old) State pensions! https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10114/

Not possible, as pointed out in the following link (in other words, blame the Bank of Thailand): https://www.moneymgmnt.com/managing-money/transferring-money-out-of-thailand/ Furthermore, it would appear from a number of threads on here that there are now problems with using Dee Money as per MoneyMgmnt's second suggested option. To seek these threads out do a Google search of "site:aseannow.com dee money" (without the inverted double commas, though).

More likely a case of bungling incompetence and ineptitude at the KTBK end, it seems to me.

I suspect that this would largely depend on whether BKKB had a presence in their home countries. As far as I'm aware, BKKB only have foreign branches in London and New York.

Highly ironical, I think, given that at one time they were one of Wise's partner banks here in LOS!

So are you seriously advising me to make a 12,000-mile round trip to the UK each time I wanted to arrange a transfer from my "home bank" there to my "home bank" in LOS?