Changes at Chaeng Wattana IM Office

[longevity]

1. Probably reported here already, but 90 day reporting has moved out to Meuang Thong Thani.

 

They provide a map at CW office, but the motorcycle taxi guys at CW know where it is will take you there for 120 baht. It's about 10-15 minute ride.

 

Make sure you have cash with you (esp if you're going to have to pay a fine) as there's no ATMs anywhere around the new site. There are taxis and motorbikes lining up though. Plenty of car parking space if you're driving yourself.

Good news is service there is much quicker than the old "Counter A" room at CW, with many more officers doing the processing.

 

2. Went yesterday to CW to do my annual extension for "Thai Wife" reasons, the Counter L dance. Beware if you're needing a financial statement or update passbook service from SCB (aka "Thai Panid") bank as the branch in CW has closed down and moved to the Big C on Chaeng Wattana road.

 

The kicker is that branch doesn't open till 10.30 am, so you're kind of screwed if you need to do it on the same day and had hopes of getting in the queue at IM early. 

 

3. Again, this may have been reported here previously, but there is some new (to me, at least) system with QR codes on the Q tickets now so that (theoretically) you don't need to hang around in the office watching the numbers go by, but can go relax downstairs with a coffee and scan the QR code on your ticket to see the latest number. Lovely idea, but it didn't actually work while we were there, with every scan just returning a message about "there's an error, please go to the counter to check your queue number". My guess is it's not compatible with latest phones and browsers. Perhaps needs Internet Explorer 7 and Windows DOS 3.11 to work.

 

Our total time at CW from start to finish (including run around with the bank issue as noted in no.2) was a little over 7 hours. Waiting for the "Document checking" queue took most of that time, which for some reason had only one officer doing it the whole day, with one very pleasant, English speaking assistant to help. As everything has to go through this desk before you actually sit down for the "interview" part, it's a real bottleneck. Our ticket number was only 131 and we didn't leave till nearly 5pm. At least the interview part was quick and painless. Literally about 10 minutes total time talking to anyone at CW. The rest of the time just waiting.

 

YMMV, of course (I've been in and out before by 10am in previous years). Guess we hit a bad day and we were caught out by the SCB bank thing. 

Edited September 16, 2020 by longevity

[Jake72]

Quote

a little over 7 hours

That's a long time to spend at CW. I went there Monday this week, I didn't get there until around 2pm because of collecting papers and making copies in the morning. There were around 50 people in the queue before me when I got my number, it took around 1 hour waiting in the queue. From what I remember that wasn't any worse than last time I had to go to CW a couple of years ago in pre-covid times. I think we were done around 5.30 pm and that was for my first 1 year extension plus I needed to move my expired visa to a new passport, so quite a lot of papers and forms had to be signed and approved.