OJAS

The OP's question is as clear as mud to me. However, taking what he has said literally at face value, what he first needs to do IMHO is to apply to the Royal Thai Embassy in London for a non-immigrant visa of the OA or O variety for retirement. Full details of the Embassy's requirements are set out in the following link which includes a reference to the need for evidence of monthly income equalling at least 65k THB in the case of the non-OA visa:- https://london.thaiembassy.org/en/publicservice/84508-non-immigrant-visas

Or maybe they had all spent yesterday trying to register on the Thailand Pass website instead!

Time alone will tell, I think. It should not be forgotten that Wise are steadfastly refusing to provide a cast-iron guarantee that tagging will necessarily result in an FTT/International Transfer coding in all cases.

These can be found at many locations detailed in the following link (hopefully):- https://www.kasikornbank.com/en/branch/Pages/result.aspx?q=dummy&option=6&lat=13.724599&lng=100.6331106

£10,000 is rather on the high side for a test transfer IMHO. To check whether or not my BKKB account registrations on Wise had been tagged I initiated token transfers each of £100.

Bangkok Bank are normally pretty efficient in crediting Wise transfers to their accounts in my experience. This is usually done at 2:00pm or 2:01pm and the latest it's ever been in my 14 months of Wise transfers to date was 2:08pm on one occasion.

You have truly excelled yourself with this "remarkable" display of nit-picking pedantry, I think.

No doubt those who are currently attempting to access the Thailand Pass website and who also attempted to register their details on the Expatvac website the day it went live are currently experiencing feelings of deja vu!

According to this unofficial website it would appear that there is "a bit of a backlog" across Royal Mail at the present time, presumably as a result of a combination of COVID-19 and the current UK lorry drivers' shortage:- https://www.royalmailchat.co.uk/home.php Although Heathrow has not been specifically mentioned on this website as far as I can tell, I imagine that any shortage of drivers would, in their case, be compounded by the need for drivers to have airside clearance in order to collect mail originating from abroad and drive it the short distance to Langley where it is first recorded on tracking systems as having been safely received in the UK.

According to the (recently-updated) London Embassy website, the minimum health insurance cover requirement for all foreigners wishing to enter Thailand from Monday will be 50,000 USD (or equivalent), down from 100,000 USD previously:- https://london.thaiembassy.org/en/publicservice/requirements-for-foreigners-travelling-to-thailand-during-covid-19-tra?page=5d6636cd15e39c3bd00072dd&menu=5f4b6eb3f6ae4b236972c562 Makes me seriously wonder, therefore, whether there this could eventually turn out to be a standard requirement for all foreigners seeking permissions to stay in Thailand, be these through visa exemptions, the use of tourist or non-immigrant visas, or applications for retirement, marriage, etc extensions of stay.

Thankfully I have never had any problems with my local postie in the delivery of mail from the UK. However, I do wonder whether another contributory factor towards delays which others have experienced over the past year in particular might have been an increasingly leisurely and relaxed attitude taken by UK and Thai customs officers in completing rigorous checks on outgoing and incoming mail respectively. This is a possibility which I have raised in the context of an item of mail of mine which appears to have got stalled en route from Thailand to the UK, as referred to in this thread on the Home Country forum:-

Although a registered item of mine was recorded by the Suvarnabhumi Mail Centre as having departed the Outward OE on 13 October, it has apparently still not been received at the Langley HWDC in the UK 16 days (and counting) on. Whereas the State Pension Life Certificate I sent to the IPC by registered mail this time last year was received at Langley 11 days after departing the Outward OE. I am at a loss to understand why it is taking so much longer for my latest registered item to complete its journey from Thailand to the UK than was the case for my last Life Certificate – the more so since the impact of COVID-19 on postal services should, I would have thought, have more likely diminished rather than increased over the past 12 months. The only explanation for the delay which springs to mind is that more rigorous and time-consuming customs checks might have been put in place on outgoing and incoming mail at Suvarnabhumi and/or Heathrow in the meantime. It might be relevant in this connection that I did have to complete a customs declaration form for my latest registered item, unlike in the case of last year’s Life Certificate. However, what has others’ experiences been in sending trackable mail to the UK in recent times?

That sounds plausible.

I am unable to recall any reports on Thaivisa/Aseannow from non-Brits who feel a need to fork out an extra 5,000 THB or so for an agent to deal with onerous passport renewal procedures on their behalf!

That's how I've been contacting Wise - and specifically in connection with a particular transfer I've raised - and have yet to experience the "pleasure" of receiving a reply from the "delightful" Maria. My contact there both in connection with my original tagging request this time last year and, as it happens, again over the past week or so has been Kareem G who, in my experience, has proved most helpful.

Indeed, and it was completely inaccurate of Wise to suggest in their reply to @atpeace that it was obtainable in the case of our 40k/65k minimum monthly transfers. This is what the FET form looks like in case anyone is interested:- https://www.bankofchina.co.th/dam/en-th/service/self-service/forms-download/foreign-exchange-transaction-form/P020170525615529265916.pdf I had to complete this form several years ago for a GBP transfer which exceeded the then minimum (as I recall) of 20,000 USD.

More likely, I would have thought, that he was asked to provide evidence of a TGIA-approved 40k/400k health insurance policy if the non-immigrant visa which he originally used to enter Thailand was of the OA variety. @buick - was it?

So presumably this means that we would, in practice, only be able to obtain FET forms if our monthly 65,000 THB transfers for retirement extensions were each based on an exchange rate of 1 USD = 1.30 THB max! And in the case of monthly 40,000 THB transfers for marriage extensions the rate would need to be 1 USD = 0.80 THB max!! Clearly a case of Wise talking through their corporate hat, I think!!!

You might need to brace yourself for having to pay a "generous supplement" over and above the standard 1,900 THB for a retirement extension at that particular office according to this thread:-

Some of us may have booked our last flights with Emirates as well.

I've been quite fortunate in that respect in that I've been receiving replies in connection with the current issues under discussion in this thread the day after. Moreover, the person in their Customer Services Unit with whom I've been dealing happens to be the same as the one I dealt with when I originally set up tagging this time last year. Today's Wise Problem Of The Day relates to some trigger which I have somehow managed to activate and results in my receiving emails informing me that I'm sending money to myself! What I need to do after selecting Notification Settings as advised is as clear as mud.

Well, they certainly had no problem in inflicting this particular example of cumbersome HMG bureaucracy on us this time last year when the pandemic was in much fuller cry than it is now! Q: How will we know when they start requiring life certificates again? A: When the next request drops in our mailboxes the day after whatever deadline the IPC have set for the return of witnessed certificates and some itchy finger there has already gleefully pressed the button suspending our State Pension payments. EDIT: Appreciate this strapline of yours:- "Why be difficult? With a bit of effort you could be bloody well impossible." Sums up the IPC perfectly IMHO!????

Wise have confirmed to me in a follow-up exchange that this is, indeed, the case.

Indeed, it's these bungling incompetent cretins who are to blame rather than Bangkok Bank in this particular instance, I think.

And one could, I think, be reasonably forgiven for coming to the conclusion that the London Embassy are steadfast in their determination to trick, hoodwink and deceive foreigners seeking to enter (or return to) Thailand from the UK into continuing to submit COE applications which are now fruitless, given that there still isn't a dickey-bird mention of the Thailand Pass on their website as far as I can tell! ???? https://london.thaiembassy.org/en/publicservice/requirements-for-foreigners-travelling-to-thailand-during-covid-19-tra?page=5d6636cd15e39c3bd00072dd&menu=5f4b6eb3f6ae4b236972c562