Brains Of A Rocking Horse

[pete66]

For once, I'm not talking about myself .....

I went to get a re-entry permit today @ BKK immigration (Caeng Wattana). My current Visa expires 24th April 2011, the last one expired 24th January 2011. On the re-entry permit form, I clearly stated my Visa expired 24th April 2011.

So I wait like 2 hrs for the processing, and eventually get my passport back, and delightedly head out .... but something stuck in my mind from these forums saying "always check re-entry permits" and so I did. What did I find? The ******* idiot immigration officer had stamped it "Valid until 24 Jan 2011".

In other words, he had taken my 1000B and given me a re-entry permit that had already expired. Amazing!

So obviously I went back, and fortunately dealt with an admin girl, not that rocking horse immigration official and she got the stamp corrected for me to say 24th April 2011 ....

So why did this happen? I think simply that the latest stamp in my passport was quite hard to find (again, immigration's doing, not mine), so even though I had clearly written my visa expired 24th April 2011 on the application form, AND 24th January 2011 has clearly expired (4 days ago), the immigration official found it simpler to stamp a date in history in my passport rather than a date I could actually use. He could have just asked me about it, but no, he didn't. Not a question.

Says to me - he clearly doesn't give a **** about the job he is doing ...

We have all had problems at immigration, some of our own doing, but when officials start putting already expired dates in your passport, you know something is horribly wrong with some of the people working there.

[sbk]

Or it could have been a simple oversight from someone who was quite busy. Amazingly enough, people do make mistakes without it necessarily being down to stupidity or laziness. Its called human error and yes, it happens without it being of malicious intent.

[pete66]

Or it could have been a simple oversight from someone who was quite busy. Amazingly enough, people do make mistakes without it necessarily being down to stupidity or laziness. Its called human error and yes, it happens without it being of malicious intent.

I can understand putting a wrong, miscalculated date in. But when that date is 4 days in the past already, and stamped in 2 places, I am pretty sure it smacks of "not caring" rather than "simple human error". And no of course he wasn't being malicious, just very very lazy. How can anyone stamp an expired date into a passport for a new service? Beggars belief ....

[mallyrd]

In 24 years I have never had a problem with either immigration or the labour department.

[rodentwarrior]

I think it's fair to say that anybody who doesn't check their passport after handing it to immigration have the brains of a rocking horse!

[spud1]

I had a problem recently when extending my second entry visa.At the border control they'd stamped cancelled instead of used on the visa which unfortunately I never checked and if I had I wouldn't have known the difference.Had some fun at the Thai immigration and although you call it human error,I had another name for it when what usually takes me less than a hour took me a full day.