Thai immigration online 90 day reporting system

[rwilem]

On 5/29/2024 at 11:30 PM, Gaccha said:

They rejected my online application twice, and the second time even gave a reason:

 

 

This never used to be the case. I've come and gone many times over many years without having to make a physical journey to Chaengwattana.

The online system with its stops and stutters at least seemed not to have the above issue. Just wondering, would the elimination of the required TM 6 card upon arrival at airports a few years back have anything to do with Immigration offices tracking or logging of entry dates? 

 

The TM 6 was nixed, then there were a couple of modifications in the online form, including arrival card number and flight info not being requested. (And then there was an overhaul during which the system was down several days, who knows what they were trying to do.)

 

Immigration offices across the kingdom seem to have an issue about knowing or being updated on 'entry dates', and thus tracking when a fresh 90-day cycle should be coming into effect. Maybe enough of these piled up to a degree that now they want you to come in for your first 90-dayer after a trip abroad. Not a good development.

Edited June 5 by rwilem

[smedly]

4 hours ago, BaslerBebbi said:

It is crazy. If you move out even for a day from Thailand, the next time you like to report the 90 days online it will not be anymore possible. You need to go in person to the immigration office bringing along with you the passport and each one copy of the passport pages having a Thai information, like year visa, multiple entry, last entry in the country. 
Very nice this new request. Loosing almost half a day and expulsing gas from the car escape tube. Very friendly for the atmosphere. 
why we need to do this after being registered at the airport and registered latest after 2 days at your location. Seems not to be enough. 
 

also doing it in person at jomtien is no longer a simple 10min task, you have form filling - multiple photo copies of passport and a wait of 1hr after all that, talk about going backwards 

[Gaccha]

3 hours ago, rwilem said:

Immigration offices across the kingdom seem to have an issue about knowing or being updated on 'entry dates', and thus tracking when a fresh 90-day cycle should be coming into effect.

 

I think you are exactly right. Unless they are connected up to the airports, they could no longer track us. Obviously, the logical thing would be to get connected with the airport immigration system. But that would require time and effort on their side.

 

Much easier and cheaper for them is to place the workload onto all of us. But ultimately they also lose in that regard, because there is now a huge increase in the number of people at the A1 counter at Bangkok Immigration.

 

I can recall going and finding only 10 or 15 people ahead of me in the lines before COVID. When I went this week there were over 350 people in front of me (and I tried to time my trip to avoid the crowds).

 

By 7 pm you could see the staff snapping. They made everyone remaining stand up in a line to try and rush through the process. There were two staff on the lines simply badgering each "customer" to put down a name for their apartment (they seemed obsessed with this issue).

 

Forcing us to stand up in a long line reminded me of the dark days during the floods of 2011 when we got to experience the immigration offices where the "Three Nationalities" (Burmese/ Lao/ Cambodian) are made to go; they are treated like cattle made to stand in long lines for hours on end. The Thai Immigration staff treat them with contempt. 

[tonycarlisle46]

The database system in Chaengwattana seems not to be updated whenever I renew/extend my 12 month retirement visa, so that the first 90-day report does not trigger an automated reminder sent to my email 14 days before the report is due. So I have to ensure that I make the application before 6 days prior to the report date or else it will be rejected. Also when I renewed my passport, the first 90-day report was rejected and I had to make a personal visit to the office. 

 

Goodness knows how the system will cope when the Revenue department has to make enquiries concerning tax residents and the 180 day resident status. 

[NE1]

5 minutes ago, tonycarlisle46 said:

Goodness knows how the system will cope when the Revenue department has to make enquiries concerning tax residents and the 180 day resident status. 

They will have that sorted , as it is financially beneficial to Thailand.

Where as the 90 day report does not reward them in any way , so they really couldn't care if it works or not 

[ricklev]

3 hours ago, NE1 said:

They will have that sorted , as it is financially beneficial to Thailand.

Where as the 90 day report does not reward them in any way , so they really couldn't care if it works or not 

I think they benefit from a dysfunctional system by collecting many 2000 baht fines. 

[rwilem]

4 hours ago, tonycarlisle46 said:

The database system in Chaengwattana seems not to be updated whenever I renew/extend my 12 month retirement visa, so that the first 90-day report does not trigger an automated reminder sent to my email 14 days before the report is due. So I have to ensure that I make the application before 6 days prior to the report date or else it will be rejected. Also when I renewed my passport, the first 90-day report was rejected and I had to make a personal visit to the office. 

Yep, one might/might not receive the '90-day due date approaching' email. Mostly they come in, but really a roll of the dice, and don't forget to check the spam folder.

 

On the six days prior to the report deadline date, that was changed at least more than a year ago I believe to allow online submissions of the report up to the due date itself.

 

BUT, with the length of time frames from the submission to the notice of approval from the CW office, I've found it best not to delay much. Yes, they seem to have corrected, or improved on the longer turnarounds, in recent months. Still, I submit it online 14 days prior to the due date. (Yep, turning it into an almost 75-day report, ha!) Gives enough time for a second, even a third time to submit online, as my experience is that rejections get back to you quicker than approvals. Some folks are reporting lately very short turnarounds from CW, which is good to hear. Still, my most recent approvals were 5-6 days. Lessons: Don't depend on the email, and earlier is better for submitting online at CW. 

 

 

Edited June 8 by rwilem

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Couple points on comments above:

 

1. I've been getting my regular reminder emails from BKK CW about my upcoming 90-day reports without fail for the past several cycles at least, including one that arrived on-time just this weekend.

 

2. Turnaround time for online filings to BKK CW from submission to approval, for me, has been running 3-5 days for recent submissions.

 

3. It's been standard practice at BKK CW for some long time now to require an IN PERSON 90-day report filing any time the filer has a new passport, just for the first 90-day report trying to use the new passport, and then OK to resume with online reports after that.

 

Question - did I read correctly above, and in fact are people now encountering this at BKK CW, that they've now changed their policy to also require IN PERSON 90-day reports after a person returns from international travel?

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Well, I spoke too soon...

 

Today, I went to try to do my online 90-day report to BKK CW, and despite trying every browser I have on my PC (FF, Chrome and Edge), could not get the "captcha" field to populate on the Immigration website log-in page.

 

No "captcha" code to enter, no ability to log-in. Tried with local internet, VPN internet, reloaded multiple times in each browser, both the webpage itself and the captcha field only, made sure ad-blocking extensions disabled for the site, everything I could think of, and nothing worked...

 

Saw a prior suggestion last year from this thread to try clearing browser cache and cookies... Did that, no change.

 

Update - clearing the cache and cookies in Firefox did no good, same blank "captcha" field box. Then tried doing the same in Chome, reloading the page, and then finally got a "captcha" code that allowed me to log-in...

 

Whew!!!!

 

Getting this:

 

 

 

Edited June 10 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[NE1]

My username , password and captcha are all loading as normal.

 

Chrome is up to date

Version 125.0.6422.142 (Official Build) (x86_64)

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Seems like I'm noticing another change of late....

 

In the past, for entry fields like nationality and province, you could start typing in the entry field and that would produce a pull down menu with different choices to select.

 

Now when I try that today, I don't get any pull down menu boxes in any of those fields. Instead, I had to type the full name of the correct info for the field, like Bangkok for the province, and then the system would in a second or two replace my typed name with one generated by their system.

 

Originally, I kept waiting for the pull down menus to keep popping up, and they seem to be gone. They seem to have changed the technology background running the web-portal system.

 

Edited June 10 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[treetops]

5 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

In the past, for entry fields like nationality and province, you could start typing in the entry field and that would produce a pull down menu with different choices to select.

 

Any reason you don't use the pre-fill function?

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

32 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

Update - clearing the cache and cookies in Firefox did no good, same blank "captcha" field box. Then tried doing the same in Chome, reloading the page, and then finally got a "captcha" code that allowed me to log-in...

 

This is strange... Once I submitted and finished my 90-day report after clearing the cache and cookies in Chrome, then I logged out. Fine..

 

Now, a few minutes later, I wanted to go back, log-in again to check something. Made the attempt in Chrome, and once again, can't get the "captcha" box to populate anything....

 

Their system also seems very slow to load the log-in page, even though I'm using a 1 GB local fiber internet connection. I'm thinking something is wrong, or else, they're just overloaded on a Monday...

 

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

6 minutes ago, treetops said:

 

Any reason you don't use the pre-fill function?

 

You mean saving the field info within the browser's memory?

 

Plus, that's not gonna help with getting or populating a captcha code.

 

[Gaccha]

19 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

Question - did I read correctly above, and in fact are people now encountering this at BKK CW, that they've now changed their policy to also require IN PERSON 90-day reports after a person returns from international travel?

 

Correct. It is an astonishing and absolutely exasperating change. A real setback, reminding me of the pre-online days. 

 

The people hit the hardest will be those leaving Thailand around 2 to 4 times a year. 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Stupidity is as stupidity does!!!  ☹️

[treetops]

24 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

You mean saving the field info within the browser's memory?

 

Plus, that's not gonna help with getting or populating a captcha code.

 

No, I mean after you logged in you mentioned changes to the way the pull down boxes for province etc were behaving.  I haven't touched mine since my first report on this system as I use the pre-fill button (magnifying glass) after entering my passport number and nationality (or whatever the first two fields are).  The system then pulls all the data from my last report and populates all the fields.  I adjust any dates if required and submit.

 

I was going to show a screenshot here but I'm getting the same nonsense on the log in page as you posted above with no Captcha.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

15 minutes ago, treetops said:

 

I was going to show a screenshot here but I'm getting the same nonsense on the log in page as you posted above with no Captcha.

 

Thanks for that re the pre-filling method.

 

And also for confirming, that I'm not the only one experiencing "captcha" failure!  🙂

 

As I mentioned above, at least the first time around in Chrome, clearing all the cache and cookies settings in the browser solved the "captcha" problem... I didn't try repeating the process again when I got the second time round "captcha" fail.  Enough of them for one day!

 

Edited June 10 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[Pib]

1 minute ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

Thanks for that re the pre-filling method.

 

And also for confirming, that I'm not the only one experiencing "captcha" failure!  🙂

 

TG, I/m seeing the same thing.  The problem is on their end.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Just now, Pib said:

TG, I/m seeing the same thing.  The problem is on their end.

 

Which browser you getting that in, Pib?

[Pib]

4 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

Which browser you getting that in, Pib?

Chrome and Edge.

 

Additionally the TM30 website is super slow to open....takes approx 30 seconds to open....normally it opens within a second or two....but it give a captcha.   

 

I expect Immigration is having server issues on more than one of their systems.

 

Edited June 10 by Pib

[Pib]

 

90 day site working again...with captcha....I logged in twice...guess they got it fixed.

 

Edited June 10 by Pib

[kekalot]

I'm curious if anyone knows what this is about, I have had the same address for several years, once in a while they will reject my application sometimes twice in a row but then usually works.

 

I get rejected twice this time I'll probably try again cause I only got time to go see them on Tuesday but this "error" is worrying.

 

 

what does that even mean?

 

I had a look and the last time I got rejected (in March) it was the same error then i resubmitted and they accepted.

 

for those not aware, you only have to put your passport number and country and click on the magnifying glass and it would pull all your info from last submission so I am not typing or editing anything just submitting (like I always did).

[treetops]

I'd been one of the smug ones on here that had always succeeded even after re-entering the country but my time has now come.  Rejection message was:

 

For first-time requests of a 90-day notification in each country visit, in-person presentation at the immigration office is required.

 

Jomtien immigration.

[Mike Teavee]

42 minutes ago, treetops said:

I'd been one of the smug ones on here that had always succeeded even after re-entering the country but my time has now come.  Rejection message was:

 

For first-time requests of a 90-day notification in each country visit, in-person presentation at the immigration office is required.

 

Jomtien immigration.

Wow that's a major change, have you tried re-submitting the application (Logically it makes no sense but people do report filing the same online report 2 times & it being approved on the 3rd Try). 

 

I'm holding off getting my new UK Passport (Need to get it before my extension (September) as it expires in June 2025 & would only get 9 months) so I can file 1 last online report but if I have to do it in person via an agent (200 THB) then I might as well sort my passport renewal out now. 

 

 

[treetops]

2 minutes ago, Mike Teavee said:

Wow that's a major change, have you tried re-submitting the application (Logically it makes no sense but people do report filing the same online report 2 times & it being approved on the 3rd Try).

 

I did resubmit but no change after a few hours so I went down and gave Maneerat 100 baht and they're doing it for me.  I then went home and cancelled the second application.

 

With it being almost the weekend and me needing the passport for (internal) travel early the following week I thought it best just to get it moving.

[bamnutsak]

2 hours ago, kekalot said:

what does that even mean?

 

I would guess that Immigration's records show you leaving the country, and as such you don't need to file.

 

Assuming you haven't then it's some sort of glitch which may be best addressed in person.

 

What is your reporting office?

 

 

[mokwit]

On 6/4/2024 at 5:35 PM, Gaccha said:

Big News

 

The policy at Bangkok Immigration has changed. I checked with the Immigration Officer today.

 

Every fresh entry to the country requires an in-person visit. Online has now become impossible. To anybody who travels 2 or 3 times a year using a re-entry permit, this is a major inconvenience. It is unprecedented. The Officer said they were receiving complaints about this new policy every day.

All of this is directed at people on one year extensions who likely have stable addresses, meanwhile people fly in and stay in an unregistered AirBnB and no one knows where they are. A senior IO said that the reason for TM30/90 day is because it is embarrassing for them if other country's police forces ask them to locate one of their citizens or if someone hasn't posted on Facebook for 48 hours and the family back home assumes the worst and they can't locate them, yet they do nothing about non filing of TM30 by ST let landlords renting to tourists and those fleeing arrest back home..

 

I got this when I tried to file a couple of weeks back.

 

Your application for "STAYING LONGER THAN 90 DAYS" has been rejected.

 

Your visa category does not comply with the 90-days notification conditions (tourist).

 

I am on Non O 1yr extension. Tried several times and the same every time - took me too far pat the postal dates so i used an [expensive in BKK] agent rather than Que for four hours like last time I couldn't do online. They really don't care about inconveniencing people who are granted extensions ONLY BECAUSE THAILAND PERCEIVES DIRECT FINANCIAL BENEFIT. I see myself as a paying customer, but we are treated like criminals on probation.

 

They are getting more an more @n@l about this for long stayers meanwhile they open up to hordes of short term stayers, some of whom go underground. My condo is full of Indian sub continent people/workers sleeping 4 to a room in sub let apartments so likely no TM30 being filed.

Edited June 14 by mokwit

[kekalot]

9 hours ago, bamnutsak said:

 

I would guess that Immigration's records show you leaving the country, and as such you don't need to file.

 

Assuming you haven't then it's some sort of glitch which may be best addressed in person.

 

What is your reporting office?

 

 

Phetchaburi but the 3rd submit was the charm. rejected, rejected, approved! haven't changed a single thing.

[KanchanaburiGuy]

Last 90-day check-in was in March, using my old passport. Got new passport in late March, right before renewing my 1-year, non-O [marriage] extension. Did passport changeover and 1-year extension at the same time. All smooth, no problems, easy-peasy. Have NEVER had a problem bigger than needing copies, which they'll now do in the office themselves for just a couple of baht. (You'll note I'm not saying which office this is where for years I've had zero problems........ but my screen name kinda gives that away! 😂)

 

June 2024 -- Time to do 90-day online. Hmm...... Do I want to use the new passport number (the right thing, but possibly rejected)...... or do I want to submit using the OLD ONE, which might just slip by unnoticed? Hmm! Lol

 

Pulled up the pre-filled form using the old passport number. Was a little surprised it came up. (Thought they might have changed it back in April.) Erased the old number, typed in the new number in its place. Submit.

 

Got what I expected: Rejected -- must do FIRST TIME in-person. (Still wonder, though: Had just used the old number instead........if it would have sailed through, like always? LOL I'll never know.......!)

 

Online appointment: 1:15. Arrived a little late, 1:20. Took a number. Five people waiting. This gave me time to fill out the TM47 (two minutes, finding and filling). I was number 169. Five minutes, 167 *ding* Five more minutes, 168 *ding* Three more minutes, 169 *ding* Window 3.

 

I guess it was about three minutes at the window. He checks out the new passport, verifying entries. Looks at my old passport TM47 from March, now paper-clipped into the new. Keys in the computer for a bit. Signs bottom of form, tears off the bottom half and folds. Shows me the next one is in September. "Thank you, bye bye."

 

Presumably, I'll be able to do the next ones online, like I have---with no problems, whatsoever---for the last 8 times, now that this FIRST TIME check-in for the new passport is done. We'll see in September.

 

I know that ~~everything was fine, quick, easy~~ stories are a lot less fun. But I've been going to the Kanchanaburi Office for thirteen years, for a couple of hours once a year (extensions), and had almost no problems. (Had to return to the bank once, for example, because the balance on the paper and the balance in the book didn't match. Of course, had I noticed this MYSELF while at the bank in the first place........! Lol Same thing happened this year, but I knew to look for it, so fixed it before going to Immigration!)

 

This time, for my 90-day Report, I was in and out of the office in 20 minutes, or so. For the 8 times before this, the Online system worked perfectly. Before I go to the office, I always use the online appointment system. I don't think this helps them get to ME any quicker, but I think it DOES help them anticipate expected volume better and schedule their manpower accordingly. (One can hope, anyway! LOL)

 

* * * * *

 

Sorry, I wish I had a worse story to tell y'all! That'd be more fun! But the fact is, Thai Immigration in Kanchanaburi has done a great job for me for 13 years, now: Quick, easy, consistent, and efficient!

 

I say: So I have to give up a couple of hours once a year to do my extension. So what? That gives me 364 days of trouble-free existence (minus one 30-minute in-home visit)...... with the only burden being that I have to spend 90-seconds doing an online TM47...... on a form that fills in its own blanks, for the most part!....... four times a year. SUCH HORRORS!

 

CHEERS!

 

 

Edited June 15 by KanchanaburiGuy