Scam artists destroying image of Thai tourism

[konying]

For those members who feel they have suggestions for the minister, here are contact details from the website.

I am sure they will appreciate farang suggestions, as they always do.

Office of the Minister

โทรศัพท์สายตรง : 0-2356-0703

โทรศัพท์ภายใน : 1550

E - Mail : [email protected]

For some crazy reason i am willing to bet no one there speaks English

[jaywalker]

My first ever visit to the USA Consular office was in in 1999.

They had GREAT BIG NOTICES plastered on the bulletin board.

"BEWARE OF SCAMS".

16 years later it has been admitted.

[Friendly Stranger]

The whole country has become a scam IMO.

Rip offs everywhere, guards beating farangs due to a "misunderstanding"

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/793319-pattaya-guard-beats-foreign-tourist-unconscious-out-of-misunderstanding/?utm_source=newsletter-20150120-1435&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news

Shakedowns along Sukhumvit, crap..the list goes on & depresses me.

Thainess in it's ugliest form...I hope the PM is happy.

PM's don't have anything to do with it as it's all about entitlement. It'll never change unless ppl with money start to complain, which is why this is in the spotlight.

[Squeegee]

I suspect mentioning the coal fired power plant that most expats have never heard of, nevermind the tourists, is merely yet another red herring of 'Thainess': in this case diversion tactics to recast blame or avoid the uncomfortable truth.

Anyway, the Thais deserve their tourist industry to die and they need a good dose of face loss. Anything less will not pop the stupid childish bubble they live in.

[Alwyn]

They're building a coal fired power plant in the south? That'll be it then, that's why those pesky tourists are going somewhere else. 15 years and I didn't know about it, how will tourists? Do they do a google search for "tourist places that have plans to build a coal fired power plant"? Whether or not it's environmentally friendly etc is another debate but do tourists care? I can see why they would care about martial law and if their memories are good enough, the murder of the two kids on Koh Tao, police shake-downs, autocrasy governments and so on but.. plans for a power plant...

I have been here 31 years and neither have I, my wife or anyone else we know heard about this proposed coal fired power plant in the south nor are we the least bit interested.

One of my neighbors has built a large shed where he and his family peal and process garlic, sometimes the smell can become pungent. Perhaps he is to blame for the decline in Thailand`s tourism?

That must be it!

[Travelman868]

I do have a certain sympathy with the cab drivers. The traffic jams in BBK can add hours to a journey and the meters do not seem to take this into consideration.

700 baht cost into BBK does not seem unreasonable, in the same way 1200 baht fare to Pattaya is OK. Rather than use meters why can't they charge a set amount to various destinations. In the case of BBK this could vary according to the the time of travel.

Karaoke costs :- Chang Mai 4 people 140,000 baht, "pay up or we beat you" This scam happens all over the world, if there is no price list leave.

HOWEVER what happens in Thailand is you end up being charged for ALL the girls or boys working there. It's important that you make it clear who is in your party.

Better still if not sure walk away.

I know people go on about the BIB but very few tourists have a bad experience with the police. If you break the "road laws" you may be fined but

2 to 400 baht is small change AND there are no points to worry about.

[45slap]

Wow! They brought the karaoke bill down to 40k baht. Must have been half of Malaysia singing.

[slapout]

if you want to accept those groups you defend, ok, but dont try to blow the same smoke up those that know better. you forgot the litter police in bkk, the touts pushing tours thru out thailand, the fake product vendors, the pickpockets, the purse snatchers, etc by your account, guess they are all good or have no affect on tourism.

[konying]

I do have a certain sympathy with the cab drivers. The traffic jams in BBK can add hours to a journey and the meters do not seem to take this into consideration.

700 baht cost into BBK does not seem unreasonable, in the same way 1200 baht fare to Pattaya is OK. Rather than use meters why can't they charge a set amount to various destinations. In the case of BBK this could vary according to the the time of travel.

Karaoke costs :- Chang Mai 4 people 140,000 baht, "pay up or we beat you" This scam happens all over the world, if there is no price list leave.

HOWEVER what happens in Thailand is you end up being charged for ALL the girls or boys working there. It's important that you make it clear who is in your party.

Better still if not sure walk away.

I know people go on about the BIB but very few tourists have a bad experience with the police. If you break the "road laws" you may be fined but

2 to 400 baht is small change AND there are no points to worry about.

Just to educate you a little, meter runs irrespective of traffic, if car is stopped, meter still runs.

This is nothing but a scam to get more money than it should cost, and the only reason why bkk taxi's do not want to go into traffic, because they prefer to do small trips because they believe they can make more money(its their theory)

[Johnny S]

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[ggt]

No No No...these folks are not artists...they are just common everyday Thais...Thai culture is saturated with corrupt vendors of all kinds...

Personally, I think it is just those older fat disgruntled ex-pats that continue to sound the Scam alarm on this forum in spite of being called unsavory name...yes...they are the cause of the Scam problems...

[Beetlejuice]

Have to admit that if I were still living in my home country I too have doubts that I would visit Thailand again.

Firstly the country is under martial law that can make tourists travel insurance null and void, Then we had the several koh tao murders and deaths, the King Power duty free shops scams, the jet ski scams, the Downtown Inn and other mystery hotel deaths in Chiang Mai, the taxi mafia, the Chiang Mai karaoke extortions including the blinded Dane, the beaten up Dutchman and the Malaysian tourists rip off, and of course last but not least the high percentage of annual murders of farangs and unsolved causes of deaths here. Most of these events have been well documented abroad, so the word has got round.

Pattaya rapidly being caught up by Phuket have become a hub for crime and undesirables, Chiang Mai and the north with it`s sharp decline in adult entertainments and nightlife due to all the clampdowns has also seen a decrease in tourists over the years.

Today I believe there are other travel and holiday destinations that give better deals and probably safer.

My god, this is the first post by Beetlejuice that I have ever agreed with... :-)

Yes there are some serious issues at play here that need to be addressed,

or Thailand's tourist image will be forever tarnished. With normal Thai " leadership",

most of their efforts are to be sure to protect their rice bowl, and damn the country.

However with Prayut in charge, this could be a golden moment in time for him exert

some real power to stamp out some of these scams. As the Japanese man with

the rant about the airport proved, in the current days of social media, it is not possible

to sweep / ignore problems anymore. Failure to do so, in my eyes, means the very

people who are tasked with protecting the public are in fact helping the criminals.

The famous jet ski scam in Pattaya is a clear cut case of this.The police are in that

up to their necks. Otherwise the chief of police would have a meeting with the jet

ski scammers, and tell them to knock it off or face serious jail time.....Problem solved

in one day.

This could be the beginning of a wonderful relationship.

Also let`s place into another perspective that perhaps not many have thought about, Thai attitudes to westerners visiting and living in Thailand:

Down my way the locals as a whole are extremely nice, down to earth hard working people. But 99.99% of them have certain unshakable points of views regarding my situation in Thailand. Although I have explained all my income comes from abroad that I mostly spend within my local areas, therefore benefiting Thai businesses and in return my money goes a lot further here than in my home country because the cost of living is cheaper and therefore it is a give and take scenario, still many Thai people refuse to see it that way. They can only see one side of the argument, that farangs are well off and taking advantage of the Thai people being able to buy their way in to a lifestyle of ease and plenty, although in actually there are many Thai people among our community that are far wealthier than my family and I. One immediate neighbor and his wife are in the same age group as my wife and I, only he still has to work for a living and I don`t. His family although are always extremely sociable and respectful towards me, deep down my wife knows, according to what they say to her, that his family bear grudges and their general feeling is farangs in Thailand should be entitled to nothing and pay more because in their home countries they would be paying more, so why should a foreigner benefit just because it`s cheaper here considering they are wealthier than the average Thai person? The other unfounded belief and word that goes around the Thai communities is that a dollar is nothing to a farang, therefore make them pay more because they can afford it.

The above mentioned is what I believe is the general opinion among Thais that has knock on affects including the Thai tourist industries. Another viewpoint looking at this from a Thai perspective is that many Thais consider westerners as heathens, who have little respect for Thai culture and can never fully integrate into Thai society and explains why farangs are always regarded as foreigners no matter how long we live here or how fluent we become in speaking the Thai language, the main reasons being is because all though history Thailand has never been an extreme multicultural country, not in the true sense as in the States or the UK for example.

As long as these boundaries exist In all it`s ignorance, then the situations will never change, including these attitudes that are amplified towards foreigners within Thailand`s tourist industries.

Edited January 20, 2015 by Beetlejuice

[digibum]

the best way to stop this is to if possoble ban the social media

They have and do attempt to stop social media from time to time but the biggest problem for Thailand is that they can only control social media domestically. Someone posts a video they don't like they can block YouTube. Someone posts something on a message board that offends Thailand, they can block the entire site.

But, only inside of Thailand.

They just might be catching onto the fact that just because they can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. People outside of Thailand, as in potential tourists, keep seeing the negative things being posted about Thailand. They quit coming. Everyone suffers.

I said a looooooong time ago that social media and the internet would be the downfall of the current Thai socio-political structure.

First off, us foreigners would and do use it much more effectively and avoid businesses and activities reported for ripping off people. Even five years ago it was hard to find info but as social media continues to expand, so do reviews. Yelp isn't in Thailand yet but when it (or something like it) arrives, it'll be a game changer. Imagine a business owner who has been watching his business steadily decline for months finding a review site where hundreds of people have "reviewed" his business and warned other tourists to avoid the place.

I've found that many tourists come much more informed than they did even 10 years ago. They know what's what (as much as anybody can on their first visit to Thailand). They've already heard about many of the scams. Good for them.

Second, the internet and social media are giving normal Thais a big voice. I remember Thais walking around with expensive smartphones and no data plans (just like they all had to have a phone with Bluetooth even though they had no other Bluetooth devices to pair) not so long ago. Nowadays, they all have Facebook. They all have Line or WhatsApp. In between selfies and pictures of their latest meal some of them are posting about social and political issues. More and more, they're reading about the jetski scammers, the murdered tourists, the scams, and police shakedowns, etc, etc, etc, and

A few years ago, my wife never had any interest in what was going on beyond her own world of friends and family and general Thai gossip. Today, nearly every day she'll ask, "Did you hear about . . . ?" She's being exposed to more and more news about Thailand and her general attitude about Thailand has changed a great deal.

The old system worked because it operated in the shadows. Information (i.e. negative news) was very compartmentalized and very difficult to share across large groups of people. But all of that is slowly changing. It'll be a very interesting next decade.

[MaiChai]

If its any consolation, Thais get ripped off by other Thais all the time. Chances are if you are a country Thai person, you may not be aware of the price of certain things, and being away from the cities, cannot shop around for the best price. Along comes a chap in a pickup who then provides a service and rips you off! Happens all the time! A couple of examples: basic satellite system install 5000 baht, 4 x window installs in a house 35000 baht (you can buy them at Global House for 900 baht each).

We needed a roller shutter 3m x 2.4m. We got various quotes, 13,000, 12,000, 8,000. Eventually found a manufacturer who will deliver 80km to us for 5,500. We can also have it in cream rather than the normal drab grey. If you are rich then price does not matter, but for the rest of us the money has to be spread around various needs.

Edited January 20, 2015 by MaiChai

[Tchooptip]

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That's right! Only 350 bucks for an hour of howling Chiang Mai fun.

And we promise not to gang up on you and kick you to death!

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Learn how to wail like a dog hit by a tuk-tuk. Sing like a cat caught under Grandma's rocking chair!

You ting tong

[Mister Fixit]

And this is news ...?

[placebo365]

If the coal plant in Krabi goes ahead, watch the tourist numbers plummet. Irreversible damage to the reefs with the knock on effect of dive and tour businesses going down the pan, as well as all the livelihood of many Thai people who work in this industry.

Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect Thailand

[SantiSuk]

Lonely Planet were running pages on the Bangkok tourist scams two decades ago. Didn't seem to affect tourist numbers disastrously over the last 20 years so I fear that the ThaiV drama queens are in for a big disappointment licking their lips over the destruction of the industry.

[maprao]

Another one reported in the Thai media recently is where tourists hire a longboat to tour the Klongs in Bangkok. When in the middle of the Chao praya the boat guy and friends demand money or they will throw you over the sideI think I would rather run across the Je tski gangs than this one!

[iReason]

Damn foreigners. If they didn't complain then we wouldn't have these problems. Don't they understand Thainess? It's our country and you must accept that this is the way it is here. Curse you foreigners.

Damn posters who can't read. This is exactly the opposite of what the report actually said...

"Tourism and Sports Minister Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul said yesterday that she acknowledged all the problems and promised to deal with the issues."

[Anthony5]

Lonely Planet were running pages on the Bangkok tourist scams two decades ago. Didn't seem to affect tourist numbers disastrously over the last 20 years so I fear that the ThaiV drama queens are in for a big disappointment licking their lips over the destruction of the industry.

Twenty years ago not everyone had Internet yet, and just a few bought Lonely planet.

Times have changed you know?

[Jonmarleesco]

I'm afraid the scammers are the image.

'Japanese tourists recently posted a complaint on social media saying that cabbies based in Survarnabhumi Airport demanded ridiculous amounts for taking them to the center of Bangkok ... This complaint spread quickly through social media, with'... tourists lamenting the bad behavior of local cabbies ... '"The ministry will work with the Transport Ministry, the airport authorities and the taxi group to ease this problem ..." ... This problem has been solved since then, with authorities setting up automatic queue-card taxi kiosks.'

It has? The issue has just made itself known. One expat and a viral post. Queue system was already in place. So what have they done that's different?

Edited January 20, 2015 by Jonmarleesco

[NeverSure]

I suspect mentioning the coal fired power plant that most expats have never heard of, nevermind the tourists, is merely yet another red herring of 'Thainess': in this case diversion tactics to recast blame or avoid the uncomfortable truth.

Anyway, the Thais deserve their tourist industry to die and they need a good dose of face loss. Anything less will not pop the stupid childish bubble they live in.

Yes, but as we see, when there are fewer types of scams and fewer people to scam, they just come up with new scams and scam harder. The fewer the tourists, the higher are your chances of being scammed.

Now, go do your pee test.

[RealisticRon]

[hawker9000]

Lonely Planet were running pages on the Bangkok tourist scams two decades ago. Didn't seem to affect tourist numbers disastrously over the last 20 years so I fear that the ThaiV drama queens are in for a big disappointment licking their lips over the destruction of the industry.

Let's see. In 1984, people were running their Commodore 64s and Z80 PCs, and DNS was first introduced. AOL went online in 1985, offering email, electronic bulletin boards and news. (Dial-up Internet for consumers and a World Wide Web based on something called "hypertext" weren't introduced until 1989.) Hardly the Internet with live text & video and social media we have today.

And back in 1984, Lonely Planet sold HOW many copies of their Thailand travel book? Hmm?

So that's going back three decades, not the two that you cherry-picked. But you get the idea. Twenty years is a long time when it comes to information technology. Compuserv, AOL, and Prodigy opened their doors in 1995; Google in 1998. A lot has happened; a lot has changed..

But this actually illustrates PRECISELY the mindset that positively cripples officialdom in understanding their problem. They think they're back in 1984, with no worldwide common knowledge of what goes on in Thailand becoming widespread. They don't get terminology like "going viral", or the implications of social media, or the availability of cheap & easy multimedia. They're clueless when it comes to how fast bad news actually DOES travel nowadays, and what it means for a PR apparatus based on grand-sounding public statements & empty promises.

Edited January 20, 2015 by hawker9000

[cookee68]

They brought the bill down to 40,000 Baht from 150,000 Baht, they should have arrested the people working the karaoke bar, this is Thailand The Land Of Shit, used to be The Land Of Smiles, not any more

[Tokay]

Check out the story in TIME Magazine about Thailand and its scams by Ian Lloyd Neubauer.

[BKKdreaming]

you need some undercover cops to get the scam tried on them......oops they are also the scammers !

but really maybe some Army guys who do not look Thai ????? as you can see that is the problem , most of the scams are done on Tourists and its hard to catch them in the act

make it illegal for TukTuk guys to talk to tourists.........yeah thats the plan !

[joemisko36]

No mention that it was an illegal Karaoke Bar.

[Diplomatico]

But this actually illustrates PRECISELY the mindset that positively cripples officialdom in understanding their problem. They think they're back in 1984, with no worldwide common knowledge of what goes on in Thailand becoming widespread. They don't get terminology like "going viral", or the implications of social media, or the availability of cheap & easy multimedia. They're clueless when it comes to how fast bad news actually DOES travel nowadays, and what it means for a PR apparatus based on grand-sounding public statements & empty promises.

This. ^^^

What's interesting are the self-flagellating stories regarding Thai scams that are appearing with increasing frequency in Thai media outlets. So at least someone here understands the multimedia implications....just not the right someone(s).