thaiwanderer

Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban said on Saturday the luxury tourist resort Phuket would be a safe destination for talks as the Democrat-led administration enjoys stronger support in the south.

'I believe there will be no protest as the meeting will be held in Phuket where local people, along with those in other parts of the south... want the meeting to be a success,' PM Suthep told reporters as he toured possible venues.

But he admitted the army would be drafted in to provide security for the summit in a bid to reassure Asian leaders.

i.e. we aren't inclined to let it happen again, Phuket very Yellow and mass protesters would have to cross the bridge.

cheers, i follow karma too, but do make efforts to protect your position

good luck

Apologies.

thanks

ehmm i don't see how my expectations would be unreasonable, if you go to make any kind of purchase, would you see paying for what you pay unreasonable just because there is someone around selling the same product at a much higher price? sorry i cannot agree with this kind of views, however i agree with the fact that due the high levels of dishonesty around we really have to be carefull, the company in question offer free consultation and it's boasting up the fact that they can match the big ones on the sector on just a fraction of the price, quoting this as one of their main reason to be succesful on that field, but IMO i believe the real reason they are accumulating profits are very different from what they say and i am a living proof of it...

those validly charging a much higher price to which i refer are NOT selling the same thing as the firm you instructed - they are selling what you apparently wanted

no matter what this firm may have told you i personally would not have believed them if they had said they will advise you on your options and draft a decent lease that protects your position for the fee quoted

if i offer you a kilo of gold for 10baht - who is REALLY at fault if you buy the painted lead that i am actually selling?

you got what you paid for - yes any promises they made may well stick in your throat - it appears you have not learnt from your mistake and will likely repeat it and similar

that is a shame

i will not labour that point anymore

reconsider the deal and your approach to it or you WILL get burnt

good luck

there is not just a single man at the head of this snake

the number of registered tuk tuks is of course less than the number using those tuk tuk registrations anyhow

in any event a good move for what it is worth

You haven't a clue how it works. You think that the tuk-tuk driver owns the license?

i have a lot more than a clue

re-read what i wrote and you will see you have misinterpreted me

You are right but a bit too soft on the lawyer.

It is to be expected that any professional lawyer will accept responsibility for any advice that he gives or document that he produces unless he makes it clear from the very first that the contrary will be the case. To seek to apply an exclusion clause (and a poorly worded one at that) ex post facto is utterly unprofessional. In UK (I do not know about Thailand) the retrospective attempt would fail anyway. This firm should be avoided like the plague (or the 'flu, as the case may be). Is there no professional disciplinary body in Thailand to take action over this kind of disgraceful behaviour?

I am not suggesting that a ceiling on the level of liability would be improper, but a 100% exclusion certainly is.

we of course were not privy to the initial conversations etc. between the OP and the legal firm (not clear they are lawyers? - if they are there is a professional standards board)

subject to that as i read it he has essentially bought a pro forma lease and the disclaimer would be perfectly proper in such

to think that for that fee the OP would get a 'watertight' contract fit for his/her purposes with the back up of professioinal liability is to kid him/herself

the op may well have been 'induced' by promises but then the OP should be very careful about all his/her dealings and I would counsel having those genuine government diamonds looked at again

my previous posts applies about the legal 'service' but the real issue is the property deal - the fallout with the legal firm now will be as nothing if the OP proceeds with the deal as it appears to stand / at all

"(not clear they are lawyers")? Is a legal firm without lawyers not equivalent to an omelette without eggs?

- fully agree, doesn't mean there are not lots of egg-less omelettes about

Further, even the exclusion clause is hopeless (clue: the document was not prepared by any "party" according to the OP)

- i know - i pointed it out - technically he could rely on it as not fulfilling a disclaimer - so he can win the school debate on that but in reality???

If as appears to be the case the document is unfit for ANY purpose then it was not worth 10 baht, let alone 1,000 times that sum. I think the OP should ask the chief honcho at this dodgy outfit if they are members of any professional body that has (and enforces) any rules or standards.

- have not seen the whole document, would imagine its very poorly drafted overall, doesn't mean it does not cover fundamentals though I would not want to rely on it - then again i wouldn't pay such a small amount for something (the OP feels) is so important

I agree that the OP's approach to his deal may well be misguided, but if so the lawyers should have been able to tell him so for a much more modest sum.

- As far as I can see the legal firm were not asked to provide an opinion on the deal. If they were that would dilute the already measly fee even more and to me would be nothing more than a boo / horay one way or the other

TBH its up to the OP to take a view on the whole thing - its his responsibility to protect his own money, no one else's. However I do fear for his time in Thailand (or anywhere) given his unreasonable expectations, total reliance on promises and apparent inability to see the bigger picture.

I do however wish him the best of luck and suggest he sits down, takes a deep breath and try and look at whats important rather than be distracted by this wild goose chase on a (relatively) minor issue.

there is not just a single man at the head of this snake

the number of registered tuk tuks is of course less than the number using those tuk tuk registrations anyhow

in any event a good move for what it is worth

how is reconciliation possible when he is also making stupid and dangerous comments about communism, hok tulaa anyone?

http://www.bangkokpost.com/breakingnews/14...ommunism-exists

i am not saying that

do it on the cheap then

your decision

**Note: Ralph Kruger's 'Devil's Discuss' (1964) English version was banned immediately on publication in Thailand, yet the Thai version was only banned a few years back, but according, only two Thai language version are known to exist. One belonging to the royal Siam Society. The English language version is possibly the most expensive rare book ever published in Thailand. Worth $1800-$3,000US. Book theorized the death of the last monarch.

Source: FACT (Freedom Against Censorship in Thailand)

discussion here http://rspas.anu.edu.au/rmap/newmandala/20...discus-in-thai/ seems to suggest that the Thai version was not banned initially because it was not known about

Thaiwanderer, i am usually very cautious about giveing money to strangers, i try to look for possibles bad experiences from others around but i couldn't find any, when i try myself to make one i saw it mysteriously disappear, the best i could do is have a conversation in person with these people and they wanted the money BEFORE they would do anything, what precautions should i have taken? it was either a take it or leave it and only now i understand why they wanted the money before..... The reason to pay for a lawyer is meant to be exactly for avoiding that "elephant trap" you are talking about, if that was not clear already....

I will try not to be blunt, regardless of what they told you the fee you paid was never in a million years going to protect you from anything.

If you are set on proceeding with this deal and do not trust my assessment of it as it currently appears so be it. In any event I would suggest you engage a decent law firm to advise you on the deal, take your instructions / answer any of yor questions and then IF you still want to proceed have them draft the appropriate documents and act for you on the registration.

However with all due respect given your sticker shock on the (lets be plain) measly fee for a bog standard pro forma contract you are unlikely to want to do that. By all means do it on the cheap but you WILL most likely lose ALL your outlay sooner than you were expecting.

To put it plainly the deal stinks at the moment.

I am not having a go at you at all but it seems you are avoiding fact of the real issue without protecting yourself from its danger. Now is not the time for the head in sand approach I am afraid.

but if the animosity is resolved why the need for an election before the term is up?

having another early election does not legitimise the resultant government instead it further erodes legitimacy of any election results

hindsight etc.

anyhow, OP how did the attempt at negotiation go?

Just met with the landlord and no negotiations were necessary he was very reasonable and said the contract was an honest mistake and there was no problem with us moving. He's letting us stay rent free for this month and the other half of the deposit will be used to pay bills and anything left over will be returned to us.

So I'm very happy with this outcome

good for you

often farangs assume they are not going to get anywhere / all Thais are looking to rip them off - whilst a good assumption to generally keep you safe its not ALWAYS the case

i am sorry, if you can truly look yourself in the mirror and honestly declare that you expected that fee to give you a good lease with professional liability back up the i will merely have to accept the scale of your indignation

as to the deal itself:

you still going ahead?

what fee are you looking at paying for a good lease without such a disclaimer?

registering it?

how long?

That's what they have been offering for that price, feel free to contact them if this upset you so much, what can i say to you? i have been honest so i expect others to be the same, is this so bad for you? ......is your name Greg by any chances ?

My name is not Greg and if you re-read my posts you will see that I am not defending the legal firm at all. I am suggesting that your expectations are way off. Please don't take that personally.

Given the shoddy service you feel you received and the apparent incorrect legal advice (3+3+3+1 years) any further dealings with them should merely be about your hopes for a refund. However surely that must be a minor issue for now.

You seem determined to continue with this deal despite the obvious problems with it. That is of course entirely your decision. However if I were you I would learn from this and consider what else I may have been misled about (either by wishful thinking or the promises of others). You do have a responsibility to look after yourself and bemoaning the 'principal' of the issue with the legal firm is IMHO distracting you from the real and much bigger elephant trap you are walking into currently.

good luck

Why do you harbor such disdain for a man you haven't met, accused of a petty crime?

his actions and attitude (as reported) - have you never felt disdain or admiration for anyone on the basis of reading (me included )?

Hi 'thaiwanderer' - excellent explorative post to which I will always respond. I am sorry, but Farangs have no choice but to be fluid cash buyers. It is Thai Law. IMO The NYT article WAS wildly off the mark for US based Farangs, thinking about Thailand.

For me phuket is a small seaside town. Yes I have been to a resort called

http://www.thavornbeachvillage.com/

I think my brain would dribble out of my ears if forced to live there. I am a mega city type guy. But yes as an asside fun for a few (could I emphisise a few) weeks to unwind.

Who knows, not my type of place (quite obviously), we only know what happens when someone tests the market.

thanks - still disagree on fluid cash though - farangs may bring cash into the country - doesn't mean they aren't juggling credit on that outside the country

(as to thavorn agree with you there - see from their website they have managed a shot of the bay with only a traditional junk sailing - photoshop perhaps?????? - its not unknown)

(agree on the dead V fire sales, .......for the moment)

i am sorry, if you can truly look yourself in the mirror and honestly declare that you expected that fee to give you a good lease with professional liability back up the i will merely have to accept the scale of your indignation

as to the deal itself:

you still going ahead?

what fee are you looking at paying for a good lease without such a disclaimer?

registering it?

how long?

obviously the police don't believe that (they may not even believe he's a drug dealer at all ) - they are doing their job and talking it up like every other police force in the world

maybe he could do a Peter Scharmach or likely he hasn't got the funds?

You are right but a bit too soft on the lawyer.

It is to be expected that any professional lawyer will accept responsibility for any advice that he gives or document that he produces unless he makes it clear from the very first that the contrary will be the case. To seek to apply an exclusion clause (and a poorly worded one at that) ex post facto is utterly unprofessional. In UK (I do not know about Thailand) the retrospective attempt would fail anyway. This firm should be avoided like the plague (or the 'flu, as the case may be). Is there no professional disciplinary body in Thailand to take action over this kind of disgraceful behaviour?

I am not suggesting that a ceiling on the level of liability would be improper, but a 100% exclusion certainly is.

we of course were not privy to the initial conversations etc. between the OP and the legal firm (not clear they are lawyers? - if they are there is a professional standards board)

subject to that as i read it he has essentially bought a pro forma lease and the disclaimer would be perfectly proper in such

to think that for that fee the OP would get a 'watertight' contract fit for his/her purposes with the back up of professioinal liability is to kid him/herself

the op may well have been 'induced' by promises but then the OP should be very careful about all his/her dealings and I would counsel having those genuine government diamonds looked at again

my previous posts applies about the legal 'service' but the real issue is the property deal - the fallout with the legal firm now will be as nothing if the OP proceeds with the deal as it appears to stand / at all

well 'i' don't need such mortgages and if phuket's property 'professionals' are to be belived as they always remind us (incorrectly and dishonestly) farang buyers are always fluid cash buyers anyway

to be fair any article on phuket / thailand etc. by a publication such as NYT is perhaps not going to have its finger directly on the pulse just as any story by Phuketwan about matters other than what phuket's property 'professionals' or whatever have told them is perhaps not going to be entirely objective - but they can perhaps be forgiven for minor slips

my counter on the mortgage issue was more to do with defending the NYT article against the view that in all it says it must be wildly off the mark as you seem to be suggesting

as posted earlier phuketwan's 'rebuttal' was half hearted to say the least and for me would have carried more weight if they had just referenced the article and then said 'we disagree' - instead they reference Bill Barnett and colliers' figures on number of units for sale - damned by a weak defence

would you disagree with the main thrust of the article that the market in phuket is currently dead?

I will try not to be too blunt, but please read my comments below and re-read what I have previously written then consider whether this deal is for you. And then do it again.

1) If any business provide me with a product/service that is just useless to me or could create damages to me because the business in question simply want to discharge all his responsability to me, maybe hoping i would not notice or read what they wrote, then i would ask for a refund, easy as that

- If you were considering buying a motorbike would you expect Somchai the tin shed bike repair man to take a look at it for you, give an opinion and then stand by your decision to buy the bike and make massive improvements to it? Your expectations are simply way off. The fee you have paid is very very small and your expectations for it very very large. Ask for a refund by all means (good luck) but you are never going to get a legal firm to match your expectations for that fee. Even if they did remove the disclaimer what then? The landlord kicks you out / breaches the contract and you then sue the landlord and the legal firm - you are then in a contract dispute with the legal firm. Good luck getting an order they are liable and even more good luck successfully enforcing it. To be honest for the fee I would EXPECT that the lease does not protect you against the landlord. Why go into it knowing YOU have not taken reasonable precautions to protect yourself because you are not willing to pay the going rate for what YOU want?

2) Nobody stated that this lease would not be registered at the Land Office

- Then why talk of 3 + 3 + 3 + 1 year? I am very confused. Why not register a 10 year lease (or longer) at the outset? Can I ask are you paying a lawyer (would suggest if you are then not the one you have a bad experience with already) to act for you on the registration? And how cheaply are you hoping to do that for? Remember its about protecting yourself, you can rely on professionals to a certain degree but there comes a point where you have to take your own view on the risks you are incurring. Your frustration at the current loss of the very small lawyer fee would pale into insignificance when you lose your lease fee and improvement costs.

3) The communication has been very intense and detailed, the staff of this company is so dedicated that they could not even do a "copy & paste" , just to give you an idea, missing some vital part of it and ironically replying to me using the e-mail from which they should have copied from

- You have received a shoddy service, get over it. Try to get your money back but am sure you have spent the fee already in your own time (I probably have aswell ). Your priority now should be protecting your position and to be honest from what you have said that would probably entail walking away from the deal entirely now.

4) The reason to take an "unfinished" building is simply because i can choose my own furniture/decorations, etc, in the long term it can be cheaper then just to pay for a finished building of the same size, plus once i leave i can just take everything away with me.

- And presumably this is adequately covered in the lease that has been prepared on the extreme cheap by a legal firm that do not sound the best?

5) I don't really want to pay those 20/30 millions for a building i am not sure i want to stay more than those 10 years, also considering that to sell it back it might take just as long.....

- Well presumably you are definitely entering a 10 year registered lease then (as question above) and the lease price is significantly less than for 30 years? If my understanding is correct you are paying 1million THB for 10 years and paying 1-2 million THB for improvements - is so I would want to make sure the lease gave me adequate protection and then I would want to consider again is it really worth spending that on improvements for a place of that standard (whether I can take those improvements with me or not).

- Please also see my previous post about your other options about renting, long registered leasing or buying a place that that does not need the improvements already - at least then for the same cost you can get the same standard of property (and for the latter two) with some value left in it after 10 years - whats the hassle of renting an already improved property or having an asset to dispose of after 10 years compared to doing the improvements yourself, not having anything after 10 years and maybe not even having anything after you have carried out the improvements. As I said earlier unless you absolutely must have this particular property I would walk away from this deal FAST.

6) I don't think that communication in this case was the issue, it's seems to be just a way to do some easy cash and they couldn't bother less about fairness....

-Well you wanted a lot for a little. IMHO you got the lease contract commensurate with the fee you paid. Use it at your own risk. And I will say again reconsider the deal as a whole again.

is the debt from the last financial crisis (repayments of which have hardly been made) included in the 'public debt'?

i can empahise (but not sympathise) with someone in a foreign land being treated a little poorly, getting angry and making a mistake

having then found himself in such a situation he bleats about his predicament (but not his part in making it) and fixes on that rather than finding a solution

i hope (but doubt) it will be the last we hear of mr burrowes - from what has been reported about him so far it appears he is his own worse enemy

as i mentioned in the irish drug dealer thread the 'negligence' some allege for british consular officials in SB's case could have been worse

Alan John Davies was originally sentenced to death in Thailand - and it is alleged 'an official at the British Embassy had provided secret evidence to the court, in the form of false statements on Embassy letterhead, including an incorrect statement that he was wanted by British officials on drugs offences' http://www.grahamwatsonmep.org/news/000375...ign_office.html

http://www.fairtrials.net/index.php/news/a...tice_continues/

the 'worst prison in thailand' is always the one the author of the particular airport book you are reading stayed in briefly

I still disagree that your legal advisor has done anything wrong as such - perhaps poor communication at the outset (and subsequently) but you cannot possibly expect a decent lease for that fee or for them to stand by it. You can of course make any complaint you wish but that is not likely to make them become liable for any losses arising from the use of the contract.

Separately and more importantly you are considering (even for one moment) paying 1-2 million THB on improvements to a rental property without a lease registered at the land office? You may as well just give the landlord that money now and walk away.

A lease needs to be registered at the land office otherwise its only (theoretically) valid for 3 years. If the landlord kicks you out during those 3 years or otherwise breaches the lease you are then in a contract dispute (given your horror at the cost and difficulty of dealing with your current 'legal advisors' i would counsel against your enjoying that experience or being successful).

The maximum length of lease that can be registered is 30 years (for residential property, 50 years for commercial).

You talk of hoping to renew after 10 years (asuming even get that far).

Given your proposed outlay for improvements is there any reason why you are not just going for a 30 year registered lease?

As to renewals (however long the registered lease is for) you will find lots of threads on this subject. Essentially (although not exclusively) there are no guarantees on renewals.

Its difficult to see on the basis of the information provided but unless you absolutely must have this particular property why not rent, long (registered) lease or buy another and perhaps one that doesn't need the improvements?

Please forgive the questions but I am a little confused at why you would be doing this.