Top 10 scams in Thailand

[rooster59]

Top 10 scams in Thailand

By Tim Newton, a seven-year expat and victim of many of these scams…

 

PHOTO: Thai Travel News

 

Firstly, I should say that just about any hot tourist spot around the world is going to attract people, sometimes greedy locals, who will be specialists at extracting dollars from your pockets. In Thailand the main difference is that they will usually do it with a smile. There are scams awaiting tourists who come to Phuket and you are best served by spending a few minutes reading articles like this and saving yourself a lot of financial pain, inconvenience or even a trip to hospital. Or jail.

 

This is by no means a definitive list but these are, at least, a list of ten popular scams that you will have to negotiate if you move about the island or around Thailand. They’re real, they happen every day and you’ll have a much better time during your trip if you know about them first.

 

In all cases, a bit of homework beforehand will save you being tricked during your holiday. Here are our Top 10 Scams in Thailand.

 

Full story: https://thethaiger.com/thai-life/top-10-scams-phuket-thailand

 

 

 

-- © Copyright The Thaiger 2019-01-06

 

[grollies]

Come on guys, own up........

[Thaiwrath]

The police are there for your protection, and not to extort money from you scam, surely should have got a mention ?

[darksidedog]

None of that was news for anyone who has been here for a while, though first time tourists no doubt make an easy mark for the rip off merchants out there. Same as anywhere though really. Have your wits about you and don't believe everything you get told by locals, especially where it involves money.

[ezzra]

Not sure if this was a scam per se, but recently we have visited Khao Sok national park and negotiated much better price for a day's tour than the foreign couple who bought the same tour, and the same was for the rest of our trip, maybe the fact that we spoke Thai and didn't appear to be a clueless tourists while negotiating helpd...

[HighPriority]

What about the “Click this link for the story” but then there’s another link to “click to get the story” scam ?

????????

[Borzandy]

1 hour ago, Thaiwrath said:

The police are there for your protection, and not to extort money from you scam, surely should have got a mention ?

"The police are there for your protection" only stupid farang could think this. Once I ask a cop why he stop me twice a day on my way home, he just said: I have to eat every day.

[bluesofa]

31 minutes ago, Borzandy said:

"The police are there for your protection" only stupid farang could think this. Once I ask a cop why he stop me twice a day on my way home, he just said: I have to eat every day.

There's an awful lot of those bar stewards that are overweight. They should be eating every other day, to make it cheaper for the driving public.

[tukkytuktuk]

The "Good Samaritan" scam in Thailand.

 

 

[Enoon]

2010: Got taken on the "special" Thai holiday/Palace closed/30baht temple tour/visit to government "discount" store ride from Phanfa Pier, after a guide (scammer 1) told me about it.

 

I was then approached by a fellow "tourist" (Malaysian, scammer 2) in one of the temples, who sought to engage me in conversation about football (a subject of absolutely no interest to me whatsoever) and then informed me of the excellent profits he had obtained from buying jewellery (another subject in which I have absolutely no interest whatsoever) and selling it in Malaysia and also what I knew (ex London M/c Courier) to be an expensive jewellers in Mayfair.

 

He also tried to feed me some absolute b******* about where he had lived and worked in London as part of the patter.

 

I left him feeling something was a bit odd as he was really hammering on about the f****** jewellery.

 

It all fell into place, as I vaguely remembered "something about this", when we got to the jewellery wholesalers.

 

I looked at the samlor driver (scammer 3, who I had not paid) smiled, turned 180 degrees and marched away.

 

He cruised past me a few minutes later looking very unhappy.

 

Too late to visit the Palace so I went and had a look at Mahakan fort.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 6, 2019 by Enoon

[Justgrazing]

Missed out the Hospital's wringing more dosh out of you by saying you need to re-attend the following day , then the following day , then the .. You get the picture .. As happened to me when I got an infection in my leg a few yrs ago .. Day one diagnosis , blood test's , etc up to private room fitted up with a drip for Anti biotics end of session , Doc' comes to see me " You come back tomollow for more A B " which I did as I my leg was still inflamed .. Day 2 same M O with upto the room for the 2 hour A B mainlining .. Doc' comes see me saying same thing " " Come back tomollow " by this time my leg was improving so I'm thinking they must be right with the calling me back .. After 5 days of this and with my leg vastly improved I'm getting a tad suspicious that this is now becoming an exercise in dosh extraction .. Knowing the name of the A B they were administering I went to Fassino medical suppliers where the same A B was available in capsule form and at less than a 1000 bt for a box which was sufficient to finish off the infection .. The standard of treatment in the hspl I have no problem with apart from a hashed attempt to put the cannula in the back of the hand by one girl but the insistence on coming back for an intravenous introduction of A B when the same drug was available in capsule form leads one to think it became an exercise in squeezing me for as much as they could .. 19000 bts approx was the final tally and as I can't get health insurance any where near a reasonable cost because of pre-existing conditions ( the same leg that got the infection being one as it was shattered in a road crash yrs ago ) I always have to pay if I need medical help when over here .. And whilst this may not be as common as some of the others mentioned I couldn't help but arrive at the conclusion that I was seen as a bit of a cash cow in calling me back for 5 days .. Beware anyone who finds thereselves in a similar predicament .. 

Edited January 6, 2019 by Justgrazing
Sp

[Benmart]

The Hub of Scams.

[gamini]

4 hours ago, darksidedog said:

None of that was news for anyone who has been here for a while, though first time tourists no doubt make an easy mark for the rip off merchants out there. Same as anywhere though really. Have your wits about you and don't believe everything you get told by locals, especially where it involves money.

Quite true. This is an expat forum so the article is pretty irrelevant. However it might be good advice to tourists, but then the same things happen everywhere. I would say the worst country for scams is Spain. Every time I tried to change money they shortchanged me.

[GreasyFingers]

Went on one of the "Time Share" tours about the third time here on holiday. Two English lads and I was most impressed with the way they went about it. But as I knew all about the pitfalls of time share in Oz and had previously had my own real estate business and trained salesmen, it was a pleasant afternoon tour of Samui and a luxury resort. If I still wanted a salesman back home they would have been ideal.

[bluesofa]

11 minutes ago, GreasyFingers said:

Went on one of the "Time Share" tours about the third time here on holiday. Two English lads and I was most impressed with the way they went about it. But as I knew all about the pitfalls of time share in Oz and had previously had my own real estate business and trained salesmen, it was a pleasant afternoon tour of Samui and a luxury resort. If I still wanted a salesman back home they would have been ideal.

That's jogged my memory!

Nearly twenty years ago in Pattaya, I had nothing particular to do and one morning was approached by someone doing a 'market survey'.

Turned out they were trying to collar people to go to a time share presentation. With nothing better to do, I agreed, knowing full well I wasn't going to buy anything. I went more to see how a hard sell worked.

 

Was taken to an office suite in Jomtien. There, the gullible prospects were given a one-to-one selling patter that went on for over an hour.

I was given the hard-sell by a katoey. After about thirty minutes I told him I wasn't going to buy anything, but came because I was bored.

The reaction was great, he said not to worry and he was just doing his job (while ferang supervisors wandered about, keeping an eye on things).

He said to let him get to the end of the sales pitch and I could still have my 'free gift' I'd been promised.

Did that, and at the end I chose from the list a bottle of Mekhong. They were out of stock. He took me to a 7 Eleven and bought one there and gave it to me.

Said goodbye and I walked away, a bottle of Thai whisky better off.

 

[roo860]

That's jogged my memory!

Nearly twenty years ago in Pattaya, I had nothing particular to do and one morning was approached by someone doing a 'market survey'.

Turned out they were trying to collar people to go to a time share presentation. With nothing better to do, I agreed, knowing full well I wasn't going to buy anything. I went more to see how a hard sell worked.

 

Was taken to an office suite in Jomtien. There, the gullible prospects were given a one-to-one selling patter that went on for over an hour.

I was given the hard-sell by a katoey. After about thirty minutes I told him I wasn't going to buy anything, but came because I was bored.

The reaction was great, he said not to worry and he was just doing his job (while ferang supervisors wandered about, keeping an eye on things).

He said to let him get to the end of the sales pitch and I could still have my 'free gift' I'd been promised.

Did that, and at the end I chose from the list a bottle of Mekhong. They were out of stock. He took me to a 7 Eleven and bought one there and gave it to me.

Said goodbye and I walked away, a bottle of Thai whisky better off.

 

When you mentioned 'hard sell,' katoey, free gift, I was getting concerned! Anyway it had a happy ending!

 

Sent from my SM-G920F using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

 

 

 

[atyclb]

can the refusal to grant visa/ visa extension despite paperwork being in order thus necessitating using an agent be considered a scam?

[xtrnuno41]

well i missed the 7/11 scam in it. Pay with thousand, broken register and get less back.

Once lived it in Phuket (they failed), but there are more off those stories. 

Also not the ATM scam with false readers and cams.