Hats Off to Chiang Mai Immigration!

[FolkGuitar]

Left the house at 9am, arrived at Immigration, got a queue number to change Visas into new passports for both me and my wife. Arrived back home at 10:15am with all work completed.  THAT is what I call an efficient system!

 

Although plenty of people, there were still many empty chairs. It didn't have that jammed up feeling that we got in Prom, and there must have been 15 or more desks in operation by Immigration officers and staff, rather than the old 4-5 desks.

Hell, we even got a parking space, several to choose from, in fact, inside the gate!

Hats off to Chiang Mai Immigration. They certainly have gotten their act together at last!

[BobBKK]

Goodie for you we don't all have that experience 

[Mahseer]

1 hour ago, BobBKK said:

Goodie for you we don't all have that experience 

We didn't have decent experience here in Chiang Mai either for many a year which is why people are posting positive comments.

 

Hopefully you'll turn will come.

[eyecatcher]

Well thats one hurdle out of the way....

we still all have the stress of "what the kcuf are they going to change and ask for today"

[sfokevin]

Yes they do seem to be putting their best foot forward lately... Hopefully it not just a big joke... 

 

 

Edited February 7, 2019 by sfokevin

[eyecatcher]

2 hours ago, sfokevin said:

Yes they do seem to be putting their best foot forward lately... Hopefully it not just a big joke... 

 

 

Anyone else with me here that #2 is the best IO, the 90day lady

Seargeant Bilko behind used to be her assistant, and the one at the back works in family section, she is quite stylish, a safe bet for you singletons i guess. The ladyboys never miss a photo op do they?

Edited February 7, 2019 by eyecatcher

[Dante99]

The Immigration Officers are doing a fine job and deserve respect.  Treating them as fashionable or unfashionable meat is offensive and shows the absurd childish crap they have to deal with.

 

 

 

[legend49]

On 2/7/2019 at 10:47 AM, BobBKK said:

Goodie for you we don't all have that experience 

Agree I have just spent 2 afternoons in that place waiting for them to carry out a yearly retirement extension and multi entry permit. Allowing for basically no parking ( they have a nice flag pole with a tiny flag on it that takes up 6 cars space of the customer parking area) so long walks from the car, plus afternoon peak traffic: I have written off over a day on what used to take 15 minutes at Promenada IO.

[namatjira]

21 hours ago, eyecatcher said:

Anyone else with me here that #2 is the best IO, the 90day lady

Seargeant Bilko behind used to be her assistant, and the one at the back works in family section, she is quite stylish, a safe bet for you singletons i guess. The ladyboys never miss a photo op do they?

That’s why they hate farang and I do not blame them, what sort of mentality have you got ?

you are the type of fool they are trying to get rid of......small minded idiot 

Edited February 8, 2019 by namatjira

[sanemax]

16 minutes ago, legend49 said:

Agree I have just spent 2 afternoons in that place waiting for them to carry out a yearly retirement extension and multi entry permit. Allowing for basically no parking ( they have a nice flag pole with a tiny flag on it that takes up 6 cars space of the customer parking area) so long walks from the car, plus afternoon peak traffic: I have written off over a day on what used to take 15 minutes at Promenada IO.

Wow, how far away did you park your car , as it took you a whole day to walk from your car to the I.O and back again  , did you park your car in Chiang Rai ?

[worgeordie]

FolkGuitar, all you needed were the 2 passports,nothing else?,

need to do the same when my new passport arrives,its in 

Laksi mail centre at the moment.

regards worgeordie

[sanemax]

21 hours ago, eyecatcher said:

Anyone else with me here that #2 is the best IO,

Nope, seems like you are on your own in that judgmental respect 

[NCC1701A]

On 2/7/2019 at 10:41 AM, FolkGuitar said:

Hats off to Chiang Mai Immigration.

hats off to Big joke who kicked their a**.

 

 

[FolkGuitar]

35 minutes ago, worgeordie said:

FolkGuitar, all you needed were the 2 passports,nothing else?,

need to do the same when my new passport arrives,its in 

Laksi mail centre at the moment.

regards worgeordie

You need:

Old Passport

New Passport

Arrival cards and TM30 slip

Photocopies (signed) of every page with info from old passport; photo page plus all stamps. (You do NOT need to copy blank pages.)

Copies of Arrival cards, TM30 slips, etc.

Letter from your embassy/consulate (I don't think the IO looked at these, but she certainly looked carefully at everything else.

Simple application form (2 minutes to fill out) from Information Desk inside the front door. They will give you the application form and a queue number.

That's it. We sat in front of her for about 5 minutes for each of us, while she filled in the relevant entry info into the new stamps. Done in less than 10 minutes. Waiting time less than 10 minutes. 20+/- minutes entry to exit. Smiling, friendly IO. Didn't hurt a bit. Nice experience.

[FolkGuitar]

40 minutes ago, NCC1701A said:

hats off to Big joke who kicked their a**.

 

I think it was more than just kicking their butts. It seems that the number of staff working at one time has tripled, if not more. And most were looking less stressed than I was used to seeing. They almost looked happy at work. Almost.

[Golden Triangle]

Strange how last year when I did mine in Pattaya she told me it would take 4 days......... No wonder people get peed off with immigration !!

[jesimps]

20 hours ago, Dante99 said:

The Immigration Officers are doing a fine job and deserve respect.  Treating them as fashionable or unfashionable meat is offensive and shows the absurd childish crap they have to deal with.

 

 

 

Remove those rosie specs. They may cause you to be bitten in the arse one day.

[ramrod711]

A friend went in one day this week for retirement extension. I asked him to call me when it was done, just out of curiosity. He arrived at 05:00 lot's of parking available. The desk opened at 07:00, the woman asked what order people had arrived. My friend was given #1, his paperwork was in order and he was finished by 07:30. Service like that hasn't been seen in Chiang Mai since we used to report to the little house on the left side of the drive. Congratulations to Immigration, please continue the good work.

[jak2002003]

1 hour ago, legend49 said:

Agree I have just spent 2 afternoons in that place waiting for them to carry out a yearly retirement extension and multi entry permit. Allowing for basically no parking ( they have a nice flag pole with a tiny flag on it that takes up 6 cars space of the customer parking area) so long walks from the car, plus afternoon peak traffic: I have written off over a day on what used to take 15 minutes at Promenada IO.

Do you know about a thing called a 'taxi', or even a 'bus'?  

 

Just been there for my 90 report today... at 11.45, and it was all done in less than 3 minutes.  This is a record for me... the best every in 12 years of going there.  They really seem to have got their act together!

[jesimps]

In other words it's working as it should be in any civilised country.

[Formaleins]

1 hour ago, NCC1701A said:

hats off to Big joke who kicked their a**.

 

 

Indeed, did my extension this morning, they started working on tickets before 7AM - I had to get the spouse extension, maybe 15 in the queue before me, I was 2nd spouse ticket. We were in before 8 and out about 9am. Spent almost as long waiting for that "young lady" who takes the photos and hands back the passports as we did to complete the application. Had a bit of a mess around - They didn't want my application form that I had neatly typed out and printed, they pointed out it had to be completed in person. So I had the two copies to write out by hand. There were a couple of photocopies they were not happy with, but the girl copied two a4 pages on her deskjet for me but we had to go and get a copy of long marriage cert. done outside as it is on weird sized paper.

Then there was something amiss with a photocopy of my son's birth cert. - still don't really know what it was but again the girl copied it for me on her printer.

Other than that it was almost back like it used to be 15 years ago when you could just turn up and get it all done there and then on the spot.

Hope it stays like this, there certainly is no need to be sitting on plastic chairs in the car park from 1 AM to get a queue number, and looking at the ticket numbers when I left, they were only processing the 3rd spouse extension as we left. So as some posters had already pointed out ( that I totally disbelieved) It looks like you could stroll up at 9 AM and get sorted out.

Hats off to someone, certainly not the person that was running this debacle for the past 4 or 5 years that's for sure.

[CMNightRider]

28 minutes ago, ramrod711 said:

A friend went in one day this week for retirement extension. I asked him to call me when it was done, just out of curiosity. He arrived at 05:00 lot's of parking available. The desk opened at 07:00, the woman asked what order people had arrived. My friend was given #1, his paperwork was in order and he was finished by 07:30. Service like that hasn't been seen in Chiang Mai since we used to report to the little house on the left side of the drive. Congratulations to Immigration, please continue the good work.

Immigration is being able to process expats so quickly because so many expats have already left Thailand, and more are leaving every month. ????  

[cm17]

Hi all,

I'm not a cop lover (far from!), and I've been experiencing the CMImm mess for several years, whether at the airport some years ago or at the bloody Promenada, but I have to say that I had a real shock yesterday morning: went to the new airport office with my wife just around 7.45 am for the annual marriage visa extension, well prepared for a long wait and some new hassels. A parking place was waiting for me in front of the entrance (plus 1 or 2 more), and once inside the building, I could feel a change: quiet atmosphere (although many people), no more of these deafening loudspeakers, and ...smiling staff (still obviously painful for some of them: not used to yet!)...Got my queue number and was called about 1/2 hour later, IO very fast, allpaperwork OK (right order, b&w photocopies, blue ink), only some signatures not at the very right place (they have to find something, no?), all done in 20 minutes, 10 more for the mugshot and 5 for the 90 days report I luckily had to do at the same time, and at 9.30 am I had my breakfast in town: really, hats off!...

I still wonder if it is the beginning of a new era or just my lucky day: good experience anyway!...

[LawrenceN]

On 2/7/2019 at 12:42 PM, Mahseer said:

We didn't have decent experience here in Chiang Mai either for many a year which is why people are posting positive comments.

 

Hopefully you'll turn will come.

Agree. I posted my experience last month, the first to report on retirement extension based on monthly income. It ran to 16 pages of discussion. Lost in the discussion was the fact that I walked in after 9am and was out by 12:30, including a trip to the Bangkok Bank at Airport Mall due to my own misunderstanding. I believe (that time) I parked across the road and paid 20 baht. Pfft! Who cares? I have parked inside the gate several times for TM30 and re-entry permits since Jan 1. I didn't expect the new facility to work this well, and I'm sceptical about its capacity for the future, but so far, so good.

[eyecatcher]

2 hours ago, namatjira said:

That’s why they hate farang and I do not blame them, what sort of mentality have you got ?

you are the type of fool they are trying to get rid of......small minded idiot 

Wish I had known it was me all along ???

Its the small minded people that take offence to reading something you dont agree with.

Live with it, because you will come across 100opinions a day from everyone thinking they are right.

 

[sanemax]

1 minute ago, eyecatcher said:

Wish I had known it was me all along ???

Its the small minded people that take offence to reading something you dont agree with.

Live with it, because you will come across 100opinions a day from everyone thinking they are right.

 

You mean that open minded people agree with everything that they read ?

[eyecatcher]

9 minutes ago, sanemax said:

You mean that open minded people agree with everything that they read ?

No I dont mean that at all......and you should know me better(after all these years)

[AlfonsV]

23 hours ago, eyecatcher said:

Anyone else with me here that #2 is the best IO, the 90day lady

Yes, yes, yes ! and this since years, also in Prom

[AlfonsV]

1 hour ago, CMNightRider said:

Immigration is being able to process expats so quickly because so many expats have already left Thailand, and more are leaving every month. ????  

This may be only a certain part of the story. The main issues are a) more desks and staff specified to the different subjects, b) no lunch time, and c) easy 90 days online report. And all this became reality after Big Joke's visit and reorganization.

 

Edited February 8, 2019 by AlfonsV

[NoshowJones]

55 minutes ago, cm17 said:

Hi all,

I'm not a cop lover (far from!), and I've been experiencing the CMImm mess for several years, whether at the airport some years ago or at the bloody Promenada, but I have to say that I had a real shock yesterday morning: went to the new airport office with my wife just around 7.45 am for the annual marriage visa extension, well prepared for a long wait and some new hassels. A parking place was waiting for me in front of the entrance (plus 1 or 2 more), and once inside the building, I could feel a change: quiet atmosphere (although many people), no more of these deafening loudspeakers, and ...smiling staff (still obviously painful for some of them: not used to yet!)...Got my queue number and was called about 1/2 hour later, IO very fast, allpaperwork OK (right order, b&w photocopies, blue ink), only some signatures not at the very right place (they have to find something, no?), all done in 20 minutes, 10 more for the mugshot and 5 for the 90 days report I luckily had to do at the same time, and at 9.30 am I had my breakfast in town: really, hats off!...

I still wonder if it is the beginning of a new era or just my lucky day: good experience anyway!...

The only beginning of a new era will be when they stop the nonsensical 90 day reporting, but I won't hold my breath.