City Cracks Down On Jet Ski Operators

[samjaidee]

Does anybody know how many tourists are scammed on jet skis each week/month/year? Please, no speculative replies.

I've always been curious as to how big it really is.

Thanks, to anyone who enlightens me on this issue.

[IAMSOBAD]

Anyone who ever witnessed the scam in progress knows that the operators and their gang are all high as a kite. They have weapons and outnumber the victims 30-1.

THIS IS A FACT...They ACTUALLY could win an OSCAR for their performance. As high as they are...they really act like the jet ski was just damaged. Maybe in their drugged mind they have become brainwashed to believe.

Its a sad sight to see this blatant scam in broad daylight.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Thaivisa Connect App

[wans]

Anyone who ever witnessed the scam in progress knows that the operators and their gang are all high as a kite. They have weapons and outnumber the victims 30-1.

THIS IS A FACT...They ACTUALLY could win an OSCAR for their performance. As high as they are...they really act like the jet ski was just damaged. Maybe in their drugged mind they have become brainwashed to believe.

Its a sad sight to see this blatant scam in broad daylight.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Thaivisa Connect App

this is the point, they drug test girls on the beach, they drug test nightclubs, if they drug test the jetski boys and girls that would finish it, they are all on yaba and they scam to pay for their drug habbits

[thailandist]

Sounds good but nothing is going to change. Too much money to be extracted from foreign tourists.

[julemanden]

I can't repeat it again and again: in Myanmar, stealing from tourists is punished with an obligatory minimum of 5 years heavy labour.

Take an example, Thailand!

Some of the Arab countries cut off the hands of thieves!. Scammers be warned!

OMG

[indyuk]

It will never happen, the POLICE are the Scam Operators. The Jet Ski Operators are just doing what they are told. And I wonder who the police are paying for the priviledge of operating the SCAM

Bingo! We agree this 'six of us from one of the Pattaya expat clubs' think the same. We think that local police are providing the funding to the individual operators. In a case this week 4 Arabs rented a jet ski between them. A small incident caused a tiny scratch to the Jet Ski while in their use. The operator demanded 85,000 Baht for the repair to the Jet Ski. An argument ensued and one of our number intervened offering to help. It turned out that the operator was in possession of the tourist's Passport(s) and had a hire contract that the tourists had signed, In this situation one cannot call the police because they will enforce the operator's contract for the full amount that the operator is demanding. So our man had to withdraw and let the tourists battle it out with the hostile operator. We agonized over it all yesterday (Thursday 30 August) afternoon. We still can't decide if it would help if we called the tourist police in. That should be the best approach. However we are still trying to decide if the Tourist Police are 'clean'. We really aren't sure.

[pacovl46]

It's pretty simple. Don't rent one. They're not that much fun anyway!

[drdoom6996]

It will never happen, the POLICE are the Scam Operators. The Jet Ski Operators are just doing what they are told. And I wonder who the police are paying for the priviledge of operating the SCAM

Bingo! We agree this 'six of us from one of the Pattaya expat clubs' think the same. We think that local police are providing the funding to the individual operators. In a case this week 4 Arabs rented a jet ski between them. A small incident caused a tiny scratch to the Jet Ski while in their use. The operator demanded 85,000 Baht for the repair to the Jet Ski. An argument ensued and one of our number intervened offering to help. It turned out that the operator was in possession of the tourist's Passport(s) and had a hire contract that the tourists had signed, In this situation one cannot call the police because they will enforce the operator's contract for the full amount that the operator is demanding. So our man had to withdraw and let the tourists battle it out with the hostile operator. We agonized over it all yesterday (Thursday 30 August) afternoon. We still can't decide if it would help if we called the tourist police in. That should be the best approach. However we are still trying to decide if the Tourist Police are 'clean'. We really aren't sure.

IMHO what I have seen of the tourist police, they are part of the problem.. Just gangsters from other countries. Have you seen the way they strut around and act like they are something they are not? Hooligans in drag.

[shaurene]

If they wanted to stop the problem it could be done in a week by banning the operators who extort. Extortion for fake damages = instant ban and confiscation of jet ski. Easy.

It seems they really don't want to stop the problem, maybe there is too much money involved for all parties to close it down?

Every 6 months some new hardline policies are trotted out but nothing changes.

The real losers of course are the tourists who come for a holiday and naively believe they might have some protection against being scammed in such a busy tourist spot

My wife and I came down from Khon Kaen with another couple few months ago and we rented 2 jet ski I went all around mine with my camera, the Thai guy said what you do I said look for damage he looked at me and nodded his head.

[toenail]

BS!!!!!!! We of the expat community that live here, know the police have their hands into making money off these scams. We also know the mayor is not as powerful as the police mafia. This is only lip service....in three months (or less) the scams will be back taking advantage of the tourist. Too much money involved.

[saroq]

I wish I wasn't so cynical about the motives for this or its chances of success but I am. I expect all of this is just window dressing to placate the foreign embassies who have begun to warm their citizens about this scam. I doubt much will change but I hope I am proven wrong.

[crazydrummerpauly]

It will never happen, the POLICE are the Scam Operators. The Jet Ski Operators are just doing what they are told. And I wonder who the police are paying for the priviledge of operating the SCAM

Bingo! We agree this 'six of us from one of the Pattaya expat clubs' think the same. We think that local police are providing the funding to the individual operators. In a case this week 4 Arabs rented a jet ski between them. A small incident caused a tiny scratch to the Jet Ski while in their use. The operator demanded 85,000 Baht for the repair to the Jet Ski. An argument ensued and one of our number intervened offering to help. It turned out that the operator was in possession of the tourist's Passport(s) and had a hire contract that the tourists had signed, In this situation one cannot call the police because they will enforce the operator's contract for the full amount that the operator is demanding. So our man had to withdraw and let the tourists battle it out with the hostile operator. We agonized over it all yesterday (Thursday 30 August) afternoon. We still can't decide if it would help if we called the tourist police in. That should be the best approach. However we are still trying to decide if the Tourist Police are 'clean'. We really aren't sure.

IMHO what I have seen of the tourist police, they are part of the problem.. Just gangsters from other countries. Have you seen the way they strut around and act like they are something they are not? Hooligans in drag.

The 'hooligans in drag' etc, are ex-pat Volunteers, not the Thai Tourist Police, who i've seen in action here, apparently doing a fairly solid job.

[crazydrummerpauly]

It will never happen, the POLICE are the Scam Operators. The Jet Ski Operators are just doing what they are told. And I wonder who the police are paying for the priviledge of operating the SCAM

Bingo! We agree this 'six of us from one of the Pattaya expat clubs' think the same. We think that local police are providing the funding to the individual operators. In a case this week 4 Arabs rented a jet ski between them. A small incident caused a tiny scratch to the Jet Ski while in their use. The operator demanded 85,000 Baht for the repair to the Jet Ski. An argument ensued and one of our number intervened offering to help. It turned out that the operator was in possession of the tourist's Passport(s) and had a hire contract that the tourists had signed, In this situation one cannot call the police because they will enforce the operator's contract for the full amount that the operator is demanding. So our man had to withdraw and let the tourists battle it out with the hostile operator. We agonized over it all yesterday (Thursday 30 August) afternoon. We still can't decide if it would help if we called the tourist police in. That should be the best approach. However we are still trying to decide if the Tourist Police are 'clean'. We really aren't sure.

First, i've seen the Tourist Police in action in this town, and they seemed a slightly different species to the usual BiB - with some apparent concern, decent English, copious note-taking etc...But that is all appearances of course.

Second - i don't know about you and the others in the club, but when would i hand my passport over to any non-official individual ? - bloody NEVER. Why did they do that ? Because jet-skis are irresistible or what ?

Third - generally in these scams, if the BiB are called, they do not enforce the full amount being demanded - they're cuter than that : they 'negotiate a discount' (haha) for the poor tourist, who still gets fleeced and pays for everyone's (including the BiB's) jollies that night and beyond.

[sydneyjed]

Does anybody know how many tourists are scammed on jet skis each week/month/year? Please, no speculative replies.

I've always been curious as to how big it really is.

Thanks, to anyone who enlightens me on this issue.

There is an English guy on another well known Pattaya forum who has a whole photo dossier diary going back years on these guys and even knows down to a 't' what is going down...nearly always Arabs,Indians and Russians who get caught..Surprisingly he has highlighted a turban wearing Sikh Indian as also in on the scam...It'll be all same same come the high season around xmas and everything will be forgotten!

[jacko45k]

Actually I read the news as the first really encouraging sign that something really could come out from it because now for the first time they have taken up the magic word: "insurance". That is the one thing that is key to solving the problem and that has been missing from all previous plans. Once the customers know that the jetskis do have insurance they are not so easily bullied to paying for damages out of pocket. All the previous plans could be seen from mile away as only meant to look tough but not actually work at all. Now all they need to implement these rules and there is one thing to look for whether there is going to be jetskis with known insurance available for rent or not. Unified pricing is not a good thing, but maybe necessary interim solution to weed out the no insurance scammers with lowball offers that leave no other possibility for the rental business to make profit than the scamming. The rates need to be higher to make it even theoretically possible to make money the honest way.

So the scam could be limited to the deductible, 5000 or maybe 10,000 baht, plus potential loss of earnings, 1000 baht/daylight hour for the 5 days it takes to repair the jetski.

I hope they have as much success as making all those on motorcycles wear helmets.

[KeyserSoze01]

Isn't this the third time this year they have announced a crackdown on these guys? As someone else noted, it's just lip service for the foreign envoys to gnash over.

[maidu]

The scammers will focus on other scams if the farang educates everyone and bypass them outright!

Right. Scammers won't change their modus operandi, and won't move back in with their rice paddy tending grandparents. They'll find other scams: motorbike or windsurfing or beach chair renting. I've rented motorbikes in a two dozen Thai towns. It was ONLY in Pattaya where a renter tried to rip me off. She wouldn't return my deposit ('no have money, solly). I restorted to slamming a liter bottle of water down on her desk - pow! - and then got my money back in 10 seconds.

It's pretty simple. Don't rent one. They're not that much fun anyway!

You and I know not to rent them. Unfortunately (literally), dozens of tourists come in to Pattaya and Phuket each day and don't know about the scam, until too late.

Edited September 1, 2012 by maidu

[steven100]

enough said ...

[kingbilly]

If they wanted to stop the problem it could be done in a week by banning the operators who extort. Extortion for fake damages = instant ban and confiscation of jet ski. Easy.

It seems they really don't want to stop the problem, maybe there is too much money involved for all parties to close it down?

Every 6 months some new hardline policies are trotted out but nothing changes.

The real losers of course are the tourists who come for a holiday and naively believe they might have some protection against being scammed in such a busy tourist spot

imv an above board honest jet ski operation would be a sure fire money earner, I and 000's of tourists would love to jump on a jet ski, i'd pay between 500-1,000 baht per half hour/hour, in any one year a fleet of 50 jet skis would generate a lot of baht, so why does not this happen?

the Mafia who run the scam must be doing even better from robbing the naive? with local police and local pattaya council officials getting their cut they dont want to kill the golden goose, as previous and other posters have said it would be easy to stop, sadly the use of corruption seems to be a way of life in Thailand

Whilst I totally agree with your idea, I think you would find the honest good value operation "sabotaged" very quickly and the operators life in danger rather quickly by the groups (mafia) who you would be diluting their lucrative business!

[maidu]

enough said ...

not enough said. There will be tourists extorted today and tomorrow and the next day. Ruined vacations galore. If it weren't for those of us bellyaching on Thaivisa (and a few letters to the two major newspapers), Thai authorities might even be more unwilling to do anything, than they ordinarily are (if that's humanly possible).

The latest news from authorities is too limp wristed and too late. The thing about insurance is a canard and won't amount to anything. Can you picture an insurance company paying tens of thousands of baht each day for repairs? I can't.

[steveyinasia]

If anyone believes that making these statement will change anything, then they really are living in Never Never Land, best thing to do is stop renting

[Rimmer]

A post has been removed that has an inappropriate member name, the quoted replies to it have also been removed

[ableguy]

Sting operations using foreign volunteers, undercover police and surveillance to ensure successful prosecutions of the known Jet Ski scammers.

Edit: Using External Police and not local Pattaya police.

Not a cat in hells chance.

[Fishface]

I walk the promenade daily . Its always Arabs or Indians that are renting and with difficulty with English. leaves them vulnerable.

But I don't like hypocritical Arabs in Pattaya any way so I don't care. You can never make laws to protect the stupid anyway.

If you take out a ski with damage on it without mentioning it or taking a photo well I dont think any law can help you.

What I do believe is many will damage a ski and try to claim ignorance of it and then say they dont speak English.

Laws laws more bloody laws.

[petercool]

Until a fixed registration number exists for each jet ski and a record kept of each piece of damage and when it happened - with pics - it is nigh impossible for anyone to track re-cycled damage and the problem will remain whereby claims are the operator's word against the renter. Who would prepare such records ?

[londoedan]

I walk the promenade daily . Its always Arabs or Indians that are renting and with difficulty with English. leaves them vulnerable.

But I don't like hypocritical Arabs in Pattaya any way so I don't care. You can never make laws to protect the stupid anyway.

If you take out a ski with damage on it without mentioning it or taking a photo well I dont think any law can help you.

What I do believe is many will damage a ski and try to claim ignorance of it and then say they dont speak English.

Laws laws more bloody laws.

[NoshowJones]

If they wanted to stop the problem it could be done in a week by banning the operators who extort. Extortion for fake damages = instant ban and confiscation of jet ski. Easy.

It seems they really don't want to stop the problem, maybe there is too much money involved for all parties to close it down?

Every 6 months some new hardline policies are trotted out but nothing changes.

The real losers of course are the tourists who come for a holiday and naively believe they might have some protection against being scammed in such a busy tourist spot

Anywhere in Thailand, whether it's jetskis or anything else, where people in authority are getting their pockets lined, things will never change.

[JulesMad]

Just do like Krabi - ban jet-skis - period

I didn't know that about Krabi. It's funny, I was down there vacationing, about 3 months ago, and now that you mention it, there weren't annoying loud and smoke-belching machines around on the waves, and there weren't daily extortions and ruined vacations there. Of course, the most reasonable policy for Pattaya and Phuket would be to ban all jetskis, 100%. They should have busted the extortionists, but that's beyond the authority's abilities.

Shame on Pattaya officials for waiting years to pretend to do the right thing. In the meantime, hundreds of tourists have had their vacations ruined. If you want something done as slow as humanly possible, get Thai bureaucracy involved.

Ao Nang, Krabi (Phi Phi as well) are part of the Phi Phi Marine National Park, and therefore jet-ski's are not allowed. Still we have other (Thai) problems, as anywhere else

[Rafale]

Good luck Pattaya, and if it works apply the same rules to Phuket, and to our famous Tuk Tuk mafia too...

Nothing wrong with day-dreaming folks!

[Tanaka]

As long as the law requiring the operators of any Thai flagged vessel (regardless of size) to have a Thai captains license, jet-ski's operated by tourists will always be illegal.

That goes for most of the speed boats in Pattaya, Phuket etc too.