Elite Card Resale?

[scalper]

I am under 50

not married to a thai

whealthy enough to live here without working

I have invested about 18mios baths in real estate

Have 2 kids 2 and 4 at school ( Phuket)

I am on a non immigrant B finishing end of july .

I am gonna try to get ED for my kids and non 0 for me and my wife ( one kid on each parent) when in france in july/august

Dont see other possibilities?

Elite card but 1 mios bath is expensive if i stay only 2/3 more years

On elite site ( on sunbelt as well) it is written that the elite card is transferable for a 100K fees.

Does that mean i can by a second hand one and get the 5 years visa?

If yes any idea where i can find one and what is the "actual value" of this card in baths?

[astral]

Interesting thought.

A second hand market in Elite cards............

[torrenova]

I think you'll find that very few were actually sold and most were given away. That is what a friend of mine in the diplomatic sector told me years ago.

I was aware of the transfer but have never heard anyone doing it. I suppose if you got it for free then why sell it and if you bought it, you might not want to tell anyone you had !

[sriracha john]

I would imagine there's quite a hot market for the second-hand, previously-used ones. With the price expected to go up to 3 million baht, the resellers must be having a great time trying to meet the intensified demand.

Not sure if a used card means having to put up with degraded services like already wet towels at the spas or restricted to night-time playing on the golf courses.

Edited June 25, 2007 by sriracha john

[torrenova]

And weren't they talking about a more realistically priced Elite Card around the 60-100k mark ?

[sriracha john]

I think that was going to be the monthly fee.... but I'm not sure.

[Meerkat]

I think you'll find that very few were actually sold and most were given away. That is what a friend of mine in the diplomatic sector told me years ago.

The last official (post-coup) numbers released were IIRC 1750 sold and a total (including those given away) of around 2000 in circulation. There seems to be a longheld belief - at least here on TV - that more were given away than were sold.

And weren't they talking about a more realistically priced Elite Card around the 60-100k mark ?

It was (the usual?) bad reporting in the press. There was an article a few months ago that the price would be reduced to around 50k. What was actually said however was that they were considering introducing an annual fee of around that amount and someone got their wires crossed. Indeed there used to be an annual fee on the card but it was scrapped around 18 months ago I think.

The last news on the subject was that the price might go up, but so far nothing has been announced.

To the OP:

Post-coup, the government changed the visa regulations with the card. Beforehand, you could buy the card and the visa privilege would be extended to your spouse. I got an email from them in January to say that Immigration had changed the rules and were not doing that anymore, so you'd still have to get a different visa for your wife. They also stated that they hoped it was only a temporary situation, but haven't heard anything more on the issue from them since.