Topprofile

Thanks for the reply.

We actually asked the police if a written statement from the clients would be enough instead of having them come to the station, which was according to the current police staff, not enough, they have to come to the station...

All clients know who collected the money but I doubt they want to get involved and go to the police...

I understand that we can't do anything without proper statements that money has been paid to the staff, but why would WE need to get the clients to the police station (unless it's because the police wants to make it difficult for us and so offering them a "gift" to speed things up..?)

We have actually been to the police station twice and both times the staff in question has failed to show up saying his lawyer told him not to come. Twice, the police has not written any reports of the incident.

I don't see why we would need a lawyer when we're dealing with theft, shouldn't the police do their job and pick the guy up for questioning or similar?

If someone steals something in the supermarket, you don't call a lawyer, you call the police, right? So what is the difference?

I don't know procedures of thai law but if someone steals money one would presume the police would investigate?

Thanks

We recently had a member of staff collect money from several of our clients and then ran away with it before turning over the money to the company.

At the police station we are informed that we need to get all the clients to come down to the police station to file report for the police to be able to proceed to catch the guy.

Meaning that if the clients (who feels they have paid already) don't want to go to the police station there is nothing we can do according to the police.

As the client still owes the company money, as we never received it and any receipt would be a fake made up by the member of staff, who did he steal from? The client or us? I guess it would be stealing from the company as the company surely is responsible for the staff, but is it reasonable for the police to ask us to make sure all the clients to come down to file a report? Wouldn't it be the police job to investigate and contact all the parties involved?

My feeling is that the police just want to make sure they get a piece of the cake before doing anything....

Any ideas?

Guess it's up to you. If you have transferred the money to Thailand already, you can sign the contract today and go to the landoffice tomorrow (as long as the juristic office can provide quota info and make sure the previous owner is not in debt).

You need to show FULL purchase amount at time of transfer. You can get the Foreign Exchange form for amounts over $20.000.

If you made transferes direct to devevloper they should have these documents. If you transferred to your own bank account in Thailand first, you should have them.

3 years and counting and we still haven't received our VAT back from the government even though we have all papers in order.

There is always a new excuse when you call them.

Better just att 7% on the price to customer and forget about trying to get the money back.

Sad but true... but the government will keep as much money as it can...

The latest condo act has all of the information, and I'm surprised that - apparently - neither your condo board not juristic person knows the answer.

Great help!

Met a guy a couple of years ago who did exactly as in the original post. He tried to get me into calling clients. Apaprently they got hold of lists of people owning share of a particular stock and told them there would be a split or similar and they have to pay up some money in order to get them...

Another couple of companies have been selling stuff via phone to other countries and then never paid the sales staff..

Today in the same building as our office there is one unit fully occupied with phillipinos. They are very careful not to exit or enter when anyone else is passing their door.. Not sure what they are doing..

A lot of the agents in Pattaya are asking 5%, I have only found a couple of farang agents who still only charge 3%. There are a few local Thai agents who are still happy to accept 3% though.

A few of the farang agents, including some of the REBA agents, also asking for there sales commision/fees when the buyer pays the deposit & signs contracts.

Heard the Russian agents are charging 7%?

As of 27th Sept 2009, i have my house listed with 13 local agents, almost all have my house on there web site, although only 3 have even advertised my place in the local press etc

http://classifieds.thaivisa.com/real-estat...sale-28866.html

A number of the local Pattaya developers are offering the agents higher commision to market there properties/developments, so goes without saying the agents are pushing those projects more.

The Russians are bloody useless and follow the Thai business model of - if no customers, just put the rates up.

As to agents in Pattaya only having put 3 in the local press, on Phuket none of them do (except for those selling complete developments) and when I enquired of one very high profile British agent here as to why they didn't, pointing out that this was standard practice for agents in the UK, (not everyone uses the web, after all) I was told in no uncertain terms that if I wanted it in the local press I could bloody well pay for it myself and would I like to be removed from their books?!

Maybe they didn't think your condo was worth the money or easy to sell so why waste money with an ad in the newspaper? Also as you probably have the condos listed with 13 other agents who might sell it tomorrow, why risk the advertising money on it unless they know that they are the only agency advertising your condo..

It seems most agents in Pattaya are going the Thai way.. No money is coming in so we raise the commissions from 3 to 5%. It's like raising the rental price of your property because it has been vacant for 6 months and you lost money.. so no you need to recoup what you "lost"..

We have 4 houses in Pattaya and never have we met a decent agent in Pattaya, no matter the company and how visible they are in the local press.. We have been asked for "extra money" just for bringing a client to our house for viewing. The explanation was that her salary was not enough... What is that? We have farang agents who can't even call the owners themselves to make appointment, but use their thai staff to make arrangement just to have it go wrong in translation..

One agent seemed to get upset when we refused to pay 5% sales commission when most other agents accepted 3% by , quote:

"There are over 200 property agencies you can choose from in Pattaya. Some might even work for Baht 10,000/= commission. But we are not one of them

The question is who is the right one who can sell your property. We have good quality clients and we offer a high quality service. The choice is yours."

Well we didn't take them up on their nice offer of 5%..

I normally pay 50thb from Pratamnak soi 5 to Pattaya Tai for a motorbike...

You are surely using the same line as everyone else in the building and so when everyone is home, ie evenings, you will all share the bandwidth. If someone is downloading a movie or other heavy use, you will surely suffer.

You should ask the landlord if you have a private line or shared line. If shared, better get your own private line. ToT and True has options as cheap as 590thb/month.

Anytime you share password with someone else you are not secure.

Further if the Wifi is set up with WEP encryption I could crack it in 2 minutes and gain access to your network and potentially your computer.

WPA is the minimum encryption you would use for a Wifi network.

If 10MM mean 10 Million then I would be happy to pay someone 1 million to get 10 million... better than nothing..

No one else having these problems??

Just saw the thai news..

Some english guy was relieved of 25.000thb on the airport for having to many cigarettes. A cigarette that was lit outside the airport and was given to him by his friend..

He had scratch marks and bruises on him after the encounter..

Maybe someone has more info on this?

Are there any regulations regarding carrying out GOLD?

Or would I be able to go to the bank to buy a check in USD or EUR? or where would I go to change THB into USD without being questioned for the reason..?

How easy is it to send money out of the country, I thought there were certain restrictions and a lot of paperwork required to do it??

In my experience, pretty easy to do and 1 form...

Hm, I spent 2 hours at Siam Commercial Bank yesterday trying to wire 900.000thb out of Thailand.. I had been informed by the bank earlier that amounts under US 20.000 would be "no problem" but this was not so..

After several phone calls to head office I was allowed to transfer out 350.000thb and that would cover my "quota" for this year based on transfering out a certain percentage of my salary and looking at my accounts to see what I had transferred into Thailand this year..

I asked why they stated that there should be "no problem" with transferring out maximum of US 20.000 when in fact I couldn't. The reply was that it was on a case to case basis.. what a joke...

Does anyone know of a company or person who can help with getting a VAT refund from the government.

We have been given the run around for 3 years citing that papers are missing or the person in charge has not been in office etc...

Still we have to keep on paying our VAT each month even though the government owe us about 200.000thb..

Of course it's just BS as they don't want to pay up, but surely they can't keep it up.

From asking around I hear that we are not the only ones with this problem when it comes to VAT... is this a scam sponsored by the government?

Any ideas?

I had made an interview with a lady and she was supposed to start work about 3 weeks later on a Monday.

I called her on Friday to make sure she would come the next Monday (3 days later) and she said she would be there.

Monday comes and she doesn't show up.. no phone call, no nothing.. I knew I would be wasting my time calling so i didn't bother..

Remember the agent is only interested in him or herself.

While the agent surely works on commission it is also a referral business and free of charge for the buyer/renter. If the agent only thinks about himself they won't get any referrals..

Your comment is a grave generalization and is not what I have found.

Foreigners cannot use money earned locally and deposited in their local bank account to acquire a condo, even if they have the total amount for the transaction. Thus, locally borrowed money will be similarly rejected.

You are totally wrong!

If you haven't cleaned it lately, the site should be in your web browsing history.

it was 6 months and one laptop ago that I was using the site...I am sure i found it from this forum, but I have searched and cannot find the right topic with the link.

There are probably as many Real Estate agents as there are 7/11s...

I suspect that the original selling prices were inflated, so any discount is not realistic. Have you ever met anyone who puts a realistic sale value on their pride and joy.

The reduced prices are still way over priced IMHO.

How would you know... you don't even know what the property was..

We had an incident with FairProperties when we wanted to rent our house on Pratamnak. We had the house listed with them and they used to call before they had clients that they wanted to show the property to. One day, one of the agents from Fairproperties called and asked my wife what she could get for showing the property to the client.. What this agent meant was that she wanted extra money in her pocket on top of the commission that the agency charges you for finding a tenant.. My wife ignored the question and just said they could come anytime. Later she told me what they had asked for.

I got so upset I went down to Fairproperties office (the one on the corner on Thappraya road) and I went in asking for the manager. To my suprise no one in the office seemed to speak english or understand what I said.. someone mumbled something about another office further down the street.. I managed to find their second office in one of the View Talay buildings and went in and in a friendly and polite way asked for the manager.

The girls in the office looked upset and one asked why I wanted to talk to the manager and I didn't reply but just asked again and again they asked why I wanted to talk to the manager (seemed like she was nervous..). Eventually they pointed me back to the first office that I just came from and I went back.

At the first office I again asked for the manager, this time a little bit upset and this time one lady seemed to understand (I don't speak cockney, I'm from Scandinavia) but said they didn't have a manager. So.. I asked for the owner, but she said the owner had not been at the office for several years..

No manager and no owner at this company???

Well I went home and whenever Fairproperties called again we said the house was rented already (which is was about 4 weeks later).

Won't be using them again, that's for sure.

Try an estate agent - when I started looking in Bangkok I found

http://www.hamptons.co.th/

They are actually quite good

I heard the new owner kicked all staff and didn´t pay out salaries and commissions and are now facing court.....

Pretty reliable source I heard it from...

I think this is the part in the policy, if someone can read thai and let me know what it says and their oppinion.

I have got the thai version read to me by a friend and not sure about how accurate his translation is, but according to him the thai and english version does not say the same things. The thai version states that pipes in the foundation is not covered but doesn't specify the wall... I will need someone else to confirm this.

Anyway, I called them again and said that the english translation is not the same as the thai version, however the only reply was that they will not pay and they will send me an official letter about this on Monday (which I will give to a lawyer to have look at).

I asked why they would pay for damages to the furniture (wardrobe) if they didn't cover for fixing the piping and the response was that "they cover damage to furniture but they will not pay to fix the leak inside the wall. They don't pay for the pipe". So why would they pay for 1 part but not the not to fix the leak? It just doesn't make sense. If I didn't fix the leak there would be more damage and they would have to pay more.

Further the policy says under "replacement value" - "in the case of partial loss or damage, the Company shall repair or restore the damaged property to its normal condition but not better or more extensive than its condition when new"

The thing is not the money, as it really is not that much money, but rather the principle that they are trying to hide behind confusing paragraphs..