ianguygil

Ok. I will note something here while the official communications are coming out.

This was a false positive. The AV vendor has acknowledged that and is making a fix. We rebuilt our App and resubmitted it just in case. But the actual root cause was the AV. It is always better to get a False Positive than a False Negative. ANDROID is open source, so it is the complete opposite of the Walled Garden approach of APPLE and iOS. 

So please don't be concerned, we are not giving you malware. But I congratulate all of you in sharing and notifying just in case. 

Thank you again for all your business and your interest in Bangkok Bank

That is absolutely not correct. Please contact me via PM and I will get someone to help you. We are of course accepting new business. PM, then I will give you my Bank email and believe me someone will help you

25 minutes ago, MarkyM3 said:

You are wrong about entry requirements to the US. It only reopened to non-US citizens at the beginning of the week and the requirements for entry are clearly laid out - ESTA, C19 test within 72 hours of travel and agreement to do one 3-5 days after arrival for contact tracing. I am travelling there next month from the UK btw....

 

Your comments about entry to the UK are not correct either. There is no longer a red list and associated quarantine hotels. You have to complete a passenger locator form prior to entering the UK and register a lateral flow test on it, which is submitted on day 2. If you fail that, you are asked to self isolate for 10 days. No enforced stay in a quarantine hotel. 

 

As for your comments about death rates, if you seriously believe the Thai figures are comparable with those taken in the UK and USA, you must be joking right?

 

Keep wearing the tin foil hat and let people get on with their lives. Vaccines were developed to prevent serious illness and death and have done a terrific job in that respect. I'm sure you'd have us walking around in masks ad infinitum in a perpetual state of fear. 

Nor am I wrong about the UK. I arrived on August 29. I left on October 1. I did not talk about the rules today. I talk about when I travelled. 

As for your fantasies about the Thai authorities being dishonest and the Western ones being so clean and correct, it is the type of racism that always makes me wonder why foreigners are members of a Thai forum if they dislike Thailand so much. The numbers or people dying are comparable. If you look at the Excess Deaths in the UK, in the USA and Thailand, it seems that the UK and USA are way under counting. Russia is the worst, but the UK is no role model at all. 

I very rarely write anything personal on this forum, but i have more experience with this than most given that I have been out of Thailand and back in twice since May. First to the USA then to the UK when  my son started at UCL. So here goes

I would say that everybody needs to understand that the period between the actual test, and boarding the flights, is when it seems most people are infected, and this can be up to 72 hours (3 days). The flights I took all required that we wear masks all the time, even in toilets (which I don't know how they check) and I was right up front so nobody except my wife and son were sitting close to me. 

Entering the USA is actually frightening because there is no mention of COVID really apart from the need for a test prior to boarding the flights, So while the whole rest of the world seems to have all kinds of rules on arrival, there were none in the US. I have dual citizenship, but my wife is Japanese. She had no requirement to do a test or to report to anything..

Flights to the UK have the same PCR test requirement 72 hours or less before the actual takeoff. On arrival in the UK as a citizen I had to fill in a form prior to departure and prepay for a COVID test to be pre-delivered to my accommodation and I had to return this via registered first class mail within 2 days of arrival. All went smoothly and the PCR test result came in fine. Should I have tested positive I would have had to go into a special hotel and quarantine is my understanding, so much as in Thailand except that the hotels are <deleted>. And expensive. And small. 

When my wife arrived in the UK she came through Spain for a few days. She was contacted a few days later to say that somebody on the flight from Barcelona had subsequently tested positive for COVID. So she was required to do a PCR test which was negative and she was free to go around. Again, should she have tested positive she would have been required to pay for and to stay in a hotel because we have no residence in the UK

On my first ASQ in Thailand on return from the USA I paid for a Service Flat and I did the full 15 nights in quarantine with 3 PCR test.

On my return to Thailand from the UK I did the Phuket Sandbox. I PCR test on arrival and 1 a few days later. Fantastic. Stayed at the Kata Thani and the accommodation was half of the cost of a <deleted> hotel in the UK should I have needed to quarantine for a beach front room.

I would make the following observations

1: in Thailand many more people wear masks than in the UK. London was ridiculous and Cornwall not much better. It is no wonder they get 40K cases a day

2: In the US masks depend on which state. I have a home in California (SF) and almost everyone had a mask on. I have a place in Lake Tahoe (Nevada) and almost nobody has a mask on. Idiots. 

3: Thailand is very clear and well organized for the entry and the quarantine. I really don't get what people are complaining about. I did my COE process twice, no problem, no confusion, polite and efficient

On the whole insurance thing, it depends what kind of insurance you buy. You have to have insurance to cover getting sick. If you buy cheap insurance it may not cover you for quarantine even if asymptomatic. You get what you pay for. 

The people complaining about Thailand being the "COVID center" are just plain wrong. The thing is to "look at the deaths". The UK has 260 something today. Thailand has 60 (approx). This is a lagging indicator by about 2 weeks, but Thailand is clearly safer and people are less stupid that in the UK and in the USA. Except for the expats I see in the bars around where i live in the center of Bangkok, Thai people seem to sit outside and congregate in small groups. Exactly what people think they are doing in an enclosed bar cheek to cheek with other people during a pandemic is a question for every nation to ask.

3 hours ago, theoldgit said:

Members will be aware that with the help of our member @ianguygil we reached out to Bangok Bank, senior managers promised to look at the issue, and I received this response earlier today.

 

Thanks very much @ianguygil

 

Thank you for informing us about the problem of customers who have sent international funds transfers from Wise to their account maintained with Bangkok Bank in Thailand and do not have the  FTT code, referring to an international funds transfer transaction, in the bank statement. As you explain, Immigration may need to see proof that the funds have been received from overseas, when they renew their visa.  

Bangkok Bank would like to clarify the process we follow when we receive payment instructions from Wise to credit the account of a beneficiary in Thailand.

1. When the payment instructions are for a  beneficiary that has an account with Bangkok Bank, the bank will credit the funds to the beneficiary account and the code for the account credited will be FTT code. 
2. When the payment instructions are for a beneficiary that has an account with another local bank in Thailand, we will transfer funds to the beneficiary bank via the SMART system. Since it  will be a domestic payment in Thailand, the code for the transfer to the beneficiary bank will be the domestic code.

To solve this problem, the customer can contact Bangkok Bank to ask for a Confirmation Letter of International Funds Transfer which they can submit to Immigration, together with the bank statement and the Confirmation Letter of the Balance in the Account. This can be used to prove the international source of funds. We are attaching the guideline for obtaining a Confirmation Letter of International Funds for your reference.

If the customer has an account with Bangkok Bank but the payment instruction from Wise was sent to another local bank in Thailand, that local bank will send funds via the SMART system to Bangkok Bank. In this case the customer must contact that bank to ask them to issue a Confirmation Letter of International Funds Transfer. The person remitting the funds can see the name of  Wise’s banking partner in Thailand in the receipt for international funds transfer issued by Wise.

We hope this is helpful and would appreciate it if you could also share this information with your members.

Guideline for obtaining a Confirmation Letter of Int. Funds Transfer (1).docx 25.59 kB · 10 downloads

My pleasure to at least help to clarify things when I can. This is pretty self explanatory, it is WISE who has made a change and the local correspondent (the Bank they send it to) effectively strips off the information which tells us it is for your visa process. I have asked the Bank to talk to WISE and find out why these are not coming directly. But as I said when first involved in this, we are not involved in the routing of the payment to us. WISE effectively matches/nets transactions paying from their accounts with banks in many countries. A bit like FX Netting but for payments. So they must have more in THB with one bank one day, so they route the Thai payments through them, then another bank another day, thereby managing their positions.

Again to note, I have not read through all these posts. But it seems the right message has been received.

I am happy to help when I have time. Please send me a PM if you need to get my attention because I do not spend much time on this forum, even though I enjoy it when I do.

FYI, I am a direct report to the CEO so I can easily ask other parts of the Bank to respond if customers need support.

We appreciate your business. 

I will have something definitive for you from the product teams in a couple of days

The routing of the transaction (i.e. which correspondent bank they use etc) is up to WISE not to the Thai banks. They have all kinds of algorithms I assume and "netting" of transactions to save money before they generate the local clearing transactions to move the money to the beneficiary (i.e. you). 

I will get some more info on what is happening on our end, but you should really understand this point that with a 3rd party the "transaction routing" is actually done via the sender's bank or some of their intermediaries. There are so many of these 3rd party payment providers now that it is hard to keep up with all of their practices and some of that is their proprietary data (how they net, route etc.)

I understand that this is frustrating and we will provide clarity on our side as soon as we can. But we do not control it end to end, you should probably ask WISE too. 

Please note I am not reading all the messages in this thread. If you have a specific question please PM me. Otherwise almost definitely I won't see your question

Actually not radio silence at all. I'm just busy and as I always say I help out here in my spare time, while waiting for meetings to start, not as an official and supported service of the Bank

I have people looking into this and into the potential support of foreign phone numbers. Actually, SMS, which gives us the "what you have" of strong authentication is something we are trying to get away from. But as expats cannot use NDID, I think it is something that we will need to keep supporting for a while for them. I will not in any way announce anything here, but we are looking at the issue mentioned with WISE and we are looking into the whole issue of people who spend much of their time offshore. I normally travel a whole lot and I always have my Thai phone connected, but that is not a reasonable option for those on a limited budget on a retirement visa I understand.

So please give us some time to look into this. It is something getting attention. I did hear directly from one of the members here who has my Bank email and he knows what I am saying is valid. 

Please never assume any kind of service level on this forum. We have no official presence here. And as usual I will completely ignore people who make snide remarks or questions my intentions for helping out here. Some people really need to get a life

Thanks again to all who trust us with your business. It is appreciated

Ian