Eight Malaysian tourists charged Bt114,080 by karaoke bar in Chiang Mai

[IAMHERE]

Welcome to Thailand. What is the target for tourist in 2015??

I suspect the target is their wallets.

[ExPratt]

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It is the big ripoffs in the OP that don't happen in Western countries. I've never heard of it in the US, Canada, or anywhere in Europe.

Similar scams used to happen quite often in Soho in London - and maybe still do. Guys (generally tourists) would be invited into sex shows by touts and then charged anything from £50 (2500baht) up to a couple of hundred pounds and given very little option to pay by the security thugs. Difference is if people reported it (a lot don't out of embarrassment) then the police actually do something. Admittedly the amount of these scams pales into insignificance in comparison to what these guys got stung for.

50k for 8 persons sounds reasonable

Are you high? 50k sounds reasonable, here's an example of how hard it would be for them to hit that figure
- They drink beers at 150 a pop (very expensive) - 41 beers each
- They drink whisky by the bottle at 2000 (again much more than it would actually be) - 3 bottles each.

Some of these places you'll be paying 300 a pop, and then the ladies drink with their Remy Martin (Cold tea when you taste it) . And decent whisky in those places will be up around as you say 2000 a bottle. Then there's the ladies attendance money. Although its not a fair price its certainly par for the course in those places

[wowfactor10]

Maffia Police and Army in Chiang mai have no beach for their Jet ski service..Seems their karoke joints make up for it...

[Mickeem]

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It is the big ripoffs in the OP that don't happen in Western countries. I've never heard of it in the US, Canada, or anywhere in Europe.

Similar scams used to happen quite often in Soho in London - and maybe still do. Guys (generally tourists) would be invited into sex shows by touts and then charged anything from £50 (2500baht) up to a couple of hundred pounds and given very little option to pay by the security thugs. Difference is if people reported it (a lot don't out of embarrassment) then the police actually do something. Admittedly the amount of these scams pales into insignificance in comparison to what these guys got stung for.

50k for 8 persons sounds reasonable

Are you high? 50k sounds reasonable, here's an example of how hard it would be for them to hit that figure

- They drink beers at 150 a pop (very expensive) - 41 beers each

- They drink whisky by the bottle at 2000 (again much more than it would actually be) - 3 bottles each.

Some of these places you'll be paying 300 a pop, and then the ladies drink with their Remy Martin (Cold tea when you taste it) . And decent whisky in those places will be up around as you say 2000 a bottle. Then there's the ladies attendance money. Although its not a fair price its certainly par for the course in those places

I drink at Chiang Mai Kareokes most days of the week.. my bill is usually 60B for the 3 drinks and 20B tip .. some nights I will splash out and treat one of the ladies to a 20B drink or even a Coke at 40B

The prices have doubled in the last 10 years by the way..

[ExPratt]

for the course in those places

Are you high? 50k sounds reasonable, here's an example of how hard it would be for them to hit that figure
- They drink beers at 150 a pop (very expensive) - 41 beers each
- They drink whisky by the bottle at 2000 (again much more than it would actually be) - 3 bottles each.

I drink at Chiang Mai Kareokes most days of the week.. my bill is usually 60B for the 3 drinks and 20B tip .. some nights I will splash out and treat one of the ladies to a 20B drink or even a Coke at 40B

The prices have doubled in the last 10 years by the way..

Sounds Classy But the classic karaoke rip off's are out there , Taiwan, China, Singapore and I'm sure Thailand have a few going by the sounds of it

[kingalfred]

So how did they pay 114,000,cash or credit card. Unbelievable anyone would pay such an amount, unless they were threatened with violence if they didnt. Thats when the police would be called before any payment was made. Of course not in a third world lawless LoS!

Edited January 19, 2015 by kingalfred

[maidee]

i'm sure the BIB know about this, or are in the scam, or should i say, co - owners or at least, weekly collectors

so where is the good general, he finished all his cleanups after the beaches, that seem to get the normal flow of chairs back on the beach ?

[losworld]

my friend was in kinaree in pattaya for a few hours buying drinks etc. his bill came to 30000 baht we are all sure they padded the bill

If he rang the bell in there on a busy day that is cheap. Also ringing the bell, unless you agree before hand gives all the girls a LD at about 140 each.

No bell ringing.

[uptheos]

The scummy girls caked up like dolls sitting outside are the worst perpetrators.

They are 'the lure' and they know the customers will get scammed and hurt badly if they don't pay.

Why anyone would be interested or taken in by this garbage is beyond me.

[kingalfred]

The scummy girls caked up like dolls sitting outside are the worst perpetrators.

They are 'the lure' and they know the customers will get scammed and hurt badly if they don't pay.

Why anyone would be interested or taken in by this garbage is beyond me.

Scummy Caked-up girls. good one!

[slipperylobster]

For a hundred grand, I can take them to the best bar in brooklyn, get them all layed, and throw in a bridge.

Edited January 19, 2015 by slipperylobster

[Doc46]

The bar owner got arrested,,,,,and then What?????? Still collected 50 K What happen now????? Pay the cops and go home and do same thing???????? Put the rip of bastard in jail and leave him there.

[Thailand]

8 cokes and a bucket of ice

how can the authorities ignore this crap

Have you seen the price of ice recently?

[wolfmanjack]

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Some of these places you'll be paying 300 a pop, and then the ladies drink with their Remy Martin (Cold tea when you taste it) . And decent whisky in those places will be up around as you say 2000 a bottle. Then there's the ladies attendance money. Although its not a fair price its certainly par for the course in those places

I drink at Chiang Mai Kareokes most days of the week.. my bill is usually 60B for the 3 drinks and 20B tip .. some nights I will splash out and treat one of the ladies to a 20B drink or even a Coke at 40B

The prices have doubled in the last 10 years by the way..

i suspect you are talking about the small karaokes with the xmas lights and not the ones on changklan road.

[EyesWideOpen]

why doesn't Thaivisa publish what the actual cost broken down with the items they were charged for

My Wife saw it last night while reading the Thai news

I think she said that a water was 300+ but could not read the print on other items charges

My wife was just reading the breakdown. A little piece of candy

was 150 baht.. A drink was 450 baht. Apparently the girls would

just order their own drinks, no need to ask to ask the customer.

A small snack was 350 baht...

Edited January 19, 2015 by EyesWideOpen

[ExPratt]

It being a Karaoke bar I would hazard a guess that these were Chinese Malaysian, Indian Malaysian doubtful , Malay very , very doubtful

They tend to show off a bit when they have a drink , getting an expensive bottle of whisky on the table for what they thinks impresses the Girlies , they also tend to drink themselves into oblivion as quickly as possible , again a bit of showing off. So they have probably gone in their drinking like mad men and got stung. 8 people 50k is about what you would expect in one of those bars, They are not really that moody in Malaysia , so these guys probably wouldn't have known what was coming

[Jim walker]

and would still be cheap at twice the price

[Konini]

This case a big Som Nam Na for all the participants.

Really... the karaoke scams in Chiang Mai have been so well publicised that anyone who falls victim comes under the rubric of "clueless".

To those of us who live here, yes. Expats tend not to get caught out by these people any more than they are caught out by jetski or motorbike rental people. It's the people coming in - not just tourists, the Malaysians seem to have been here for business.

Young people live by the internet, older ones not so. I'm now so jaded I would check any place I was going to for scams, but before I came to live here I didn't check for such things. Even though we were relatively well travelled, I wouldn't have thought to look online for something that would probably have made my decision for choosing a particular place look a bit suspect. It really wouldn't have occurred to me - if it had, we wouldn't have been going there but somewhere else where I didn't have to think about being ripped off unless on my guard. Not so now, perhaps living here has taken the fun out of travelling for us - we hardly ever go anywhere now, mainly back to places we've been before and where we know the ropes. I know if my brother were ever to come here, he wouldn't look online so he knew all of the scams in advance. I think 90% of our cousins wouldn't either. We have to remember that we don't live back home with a nice holiday once a year or once every couple of years, and while everybody reading this (an expat forum, not just a tourist site) probably spends more time than they would openly admit to on the internet, my brother and most cousins go on once or twice a week. I have one cousin who doesn't even have an Internet connection. Zero interest. 45 years old, and she will tell you that she's not even remotely missing out on life by not staring into a screen for several hours every day.

It's easy to blame the victim and say they should know about this kind of thing or that they should find out about this kind of thing, but for my generation not everybody is out to rip you off. There are still nice people in the world, particularly in exotic places like Thailand where all the people smile at you so warmly that they would never want to do anything bad. If we start thinking that everybody is the same everywhere then what is the point of going on holiday? You might as well stay home where at least you know there is infrastructure - a lot of people who holiday in Europe 3 or 4 times a year ask me if they have shops in Thailand. Seriously - they mean big supermarkets such as Tesco and Big C, and have never thought about the existence of such things in 'The Far East' until they hear that I live here, and want to know how I go for aspirins and feminine hygiene products and hair spray. And they're serious - making conversation, maybe, but they really think that we have mum and dad shops selling everything known to man and can't get things that they take for granted. In Cambodia and Laos of course there is no Tesco or Big C, so when you remember that, their questions then don't seem so stupid.

The people who get ripped of in scams are here on a short holiday, perhaps a trip of a lifetime before going back to Spain or Portugal every year for the rest of their lives, and have no idea about things like this happening here. We even have a lot of Malaysian friends who think we are exaggerating because they haven't heard about double pricing, padded bills and 'damage' to anything hired. Because the Thai's are so nice and sweet and happy and lovely.

I've said before that if the governor of CM were serious about this being stamped out, he'd prepare a short, to the point warning that could be handed out to everyone arriving at the airport. Just as the governor of Phuket could hand a version out and the governor of Bangkok could hand a version out. I don't know if it's because they like to think we won't notice that these things are happening - after all, how many tourists read the local newspapers? Unless you are involved it's the only way you're going to find out. It makes me very sad - I love Thailand and the overwhelming majority of people here, but IF they know that this is so rife they aren't doing anything to try and get it stopped. Reaping and sowing, etc. Very, very destructive.

EDIT: Spelling

Edited January 19, 2015 by Konini

[Beetlejuice]

It is the big ripoffs in the OP that don't happen in Western countries. I've never heard of it in the US, Canada, or anywhere in Europe.

Similar scams used to happen quite often in Soho in London - and maybe still do. Guys (generally tourists) would be invited into sex shows by touts and then charged anything from £50 (2500baht) up to a couple of hundred pounds and given very little option to pay by the security thugs. Difference is if people reported it (a lot don't out of embarrassment) then the police actually do something. Admittedly the amount of these scams pales into insignificance in comparison to what these guys got stung for.

50k for 8 persons sounds reasonable

Are you high? 50k sounds reasonable, here's an example of how hard it would be for them to hit that figure

- They drink beers at 150 a pop (very expensive) - 41 beers each

- They drink whisky by the bottle at 2000 (again much more than it would actually be) - 3 bottles each.

This happened to my friend and I back in the early 1970s at the Treadmill Club. We actually got pulled by 4 men inside the premises and our wallets taken. We ended up leaving there cleaned out of all our money about £75 between us, a lot of money in those days.. Once outside we reported the incident to a policeman, the cop opened his mouth and took out a set of back dentures. He said; this is what happened to me the last time I went in there, the police were not interested.

It`s the same attitudes in Chiang Mai, these rip off joints have been well documented just like the jet ski scams. The police consider that those who are gullible enough to dare enter these places do so at their own risk. There is no pricing lists in those establishments, they can literally charge what they like or what is believed they can get away with. All the police can get them on is legal technicalities if possible, such as they have done in the case of the OP.

I have passed some of those clubs on my travels in the Chiang Mai Land area.with the pretty girls sitting outside like sirens trying to lure customers in. Had a look and common sense told me that these places are not going to be cheap, it`s going to be way outside my league, then done the sensible thing and moved on.

As regarding purging these establishments, the incentive has to come from the top, a determined clamp down. Until that happens the scams and rip offs will persist. The regular police do not have the powers to close them down unless it becomes policy.

Edited January 19, 2015 by Beetlejuice

[CMKiwi]

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Some of these places you'll be paying 300 a pop, and then the ladies drink with their Remy Martin (Cold tea when you taste it) . And decent whisky in those places will be up around as you say 2000 a bottle. Then there's the ladies attendance money. Although its not a fair price its certainly par for the course in those places

I drink at Chiang Mai Kareokes most days of the week.. my bill is usually 60B for the 3 drinks and 20B tip .. some nights I will splash out and treat one of the ladies to a 20B drink or even a Coke at 40B

The prices have doubled in the last 10 years by the way..

i suspect you are talking about the small karaokes with the xmas lights and not the ones on changklan road.

At those prices I`d be surprised if he gets xmas lights and the drinks sounds really nice at 60 baht for 3 Maybe its miracle water?

And prices have doubled in the last 10 years huh? Im amazed that you still frequent the joint, or are those just falang prices? Inflation can be a killer.....maybe time to change establishments methinks.

Or is this just a wind up? Bring on the Monty Python sketch....... ¨We use to get up half an hour before we went to bed...¨

[Yann55]

Absolutely ridiculous. These scams are well documented, but seems nothing ever gets done about it

S0 this guy was allowed to keep 50K from the bill in his illegal bar?

Or can we assume that 50K went straight into the pockets of the police and the bar owner got the more realistic 4080 baht?

The police are really not interested in Thailands tourist industry are they?

Yes they are. They are interested in tourists in the same way that a farmer is interested in his cows. Except for the fact that most farmers respect their cows and like them.

[kanook]

Easy answer...to stop the karaoke bars doing this? Just don't use them!

Unknowing, naive tourists coming from Malaysia/China/Korea? Most of them holiday through Travel agents and tour companies who know EXACTLY what goes on in those places, so they should be warned before they arrive! They also stay in hotels, where receptionists and concierge will happily tell them not to go there!

The tour guide took them to the Karaoke, and received a healthy commission. Not sure if I am allowed to mention the name, but just avoid every Chang Klan karaoke especially if you are a tourist.

[Beetlejuice]

Easy answer...to stop the karaoke bars doing this? Just don't use them!

Unknowing, naive tourists coming from Malaysia/China/Korea? Most of them holiday through Travel agents and tour companies who know EXACTLY what goes on in those places, so they should be warned before they arrive! They also stay in hotels, where receptionists and concierge will happily tell them not to go there!

The tour guide took them to the Karaoke, and received a healthy commission. Not sure if I am allowed to mention the name, but just avoid every Chang Klan karaoke especially if you are a tourist.

Everyone knows what`s involved behind the scenes of these seedy places. It makes no difference whether the customers are tourists or ex-pats, even Thais have been skimmed in those places.

These rackets have been going on worldwide for decades.

If you have an hour and a half of free time, go into Utube, search, and type in; Night and the City 1950, a movie based on the London Soho scene starring the great actors, Patrick Widmark and Herbert Lom. Although made in 1950 it still pertains today. It`s an eye opener and an education about how these establishments operate and what goes on behind the scenes. Once viewed you will have have a whole different perceptive of the adult entertainments scene.

[Lextsy1]

my friend was in kinaree in pattaya for a few hours buying drinks etc. his bill came to 30000 baht we are all sure they padded the bill

That is a big fat lie. Drinks are so cheap (80b a beer) , and LD are only 120 b, rooms are only 350b so there is no way this could happen. The owner is an american italian and he would never let this occur. I think your mate is telling you lies.

I have been there 100 times and even all day drinking sessions never go above 3000b

Question: Do you run a tab or pay for what you order each time?

When I first arrived in Bangkok, I knew nothing about the scams etc and I used to go into a Karaoke bar near the guest house.

I ordered food, beer, a drink for a girl and insisted on paying on the spot.

Never had a problem.

Kinaree is not a karaoke bar, its a gentlemens club and the 3 girls who run around getting drinks (3 chubby small girls) takle care of all the bins.. I would not step foot in a karaoke bar though especially in CM.

[DeaconJohn]

It is the big ripoffs in the OP that don't happen in Western countries. I've never heard of it in the US, Canada, or anywhere in Europe.

Similar scams used to happen quite often in Soho in London - and maybe still do. Guys (generally tourists) would be invited into sex shows by touts and then charged anything from £50 (2500baht) up to a couple of hundred pounds and given very little option to pay by the security thugs. Difference is if people reported it (a lot don't out of embarrassment) then the police actually do something. Admittedly the amount of these scams pales into insignificance in comparison to what these guys got stung for.

50k for 8 persons sounds reasonable

Are you high? 50k sounds reasonable, here's an example of how hard it would be for them to hit that figure

- They drink beers at 150 a pop (very expensive) - 41 beers each

- They drink whisky by the bottle at 2000 (again much more than it would actually be) - 3 bottles each.

This happened to my friend and I back in the early 1970s at the Treadmill Club. We actually got pulled by 4 men inside the premises and our wallets taken. We ended up leaving there cleaned out of all our money about £75 between us, a lot of money in those days.. Once outside we reported the incident to a policeman, the cop opened his mouth and took out a set of back dentures. He said; this is what happened to me the last time I went in there, the police were not interested.

It`s the same attitudes in Chiang Mai, these rip off joints have been well documented just like the jet ski scams. The police consider that those who are gullible enough to dare enter these places do so at their own risk. There is no pricing lists in those establishments, they can literally charge what they like or what is believed they can get away with. All the police can get them on is legal technicalities if possible, such as they have done in the case of the OP.

I have passed some of those clubs on my travels in the Chiang Mai Land area.with the pretty girls sitting outside like sirens trying to lure customers in. Had a look and common sense told me that these places are not going to be cheap, it`s going to be way outside my league, then done the sensible thing and moved on.

As regarding purging these establishments, the incentive has to come from the top, a determined clamp down. Until that happens the scams and rip offs will persist. The regular police do not have the powers to close them down unless it becomes policy.

You make some very good points... but omit to mention the real reason why these clipjoints are not closed down.

You say "The regular police do not have the powers to close them down unless it becomes policy." That is nonsense! The police do indeed have the power to shut them down. The reason they don't is because they are being paid off by the owners of these places.

What other explanation could there possibly be?

[WinnieTheKhwai]

^ .. especially after many, MANY reports of violence against customers.

The police ARE the problem.

Yet again.

[slipperylobster]

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Some of these places you'll be paying 300 a pop, and then the ladies drink with their Remy Martin (Cold tea when you taste it) . And decent whisky in those places will be up around as you say 2000 a bottle. Then there's the ladies attendance money. Although its not a fair price its certainly par for the course in those places

I drink at Chiang Mai Kareokes most days of the week.. my bill is usually 60B for the 3 drinks and 20B tip .. some nights I will splash out and treat one of the ladies to a 20B drink or even a Coke at 40B

The prices have doubled in the last 10 years by the way..

i suspect you are talking about the small karaokes with the xmas lights and not the ones on changklan road.

20 baht for drinks...please tell me where. 20 baht same for ladies drinks.........wow.

[Sparkles]

8 cokes and a bucket of ice

how can the authorities ignore this crap

Maybe because they own them

[Mickeem]

The BIB out in force tonight closing down the suspect kareokes in the city

Saw the one on Sridonchai rd closed down after a visit by 2 trucks putting on a show with their flashing red lights

Ordered by the CM Governor I was told

Locals told me it was to do with the Malaysian tourists being ripped off.. when advised that this had been going on for years with tourists being beaten and marched to ATM's it was the first they had heard of it

[robertmueller]

One information would be funny to know.

If they were muslims this would give an interesting combination of muslims, karaoke bars, ladies and alcohol.

Simply not to beat by a hostess being a ladyboy!

Have fun!