TM30 Experience

[NancyL]

They shouldn't be removing either your TM30 or 90 day report receipt from your passport when you leave the country.  The only document of concern to the Imm. officer at the airport should be your Departure card.  

 

These are important documents and you shouldn't let anyone take them.  

[KhonKaenKowboy]

Maybe staple a copy of tm30 a d keep the original in your wallet.

[CMMCB]

I decided to (double)check up on the need to "update" the TM30 after an overnight trip out of town (domestic), staying in small hotels in neighbouring provinces. Went to building 3 at the airport branch, brandishing passport and TM30 receipt slip and asked about this. Answer: no need, only when coming back from abroad. 

[CMBob]

19 hours ago, john_bkk919 said:

 

They took mine at the airport.  This was at the start of the hysteria, so perhaps things have changed and the policy is to leave it in now. 

 

 

I've had them (for some inexplicable reason) take out my 90-day Receipt of Notification a couple of times - and I've not cared about that because it's irrelevant/unneeded thereafter.  But they've done that only a couple of times (normally it's not removed when I hop out of the country).

 

I'm guessing that the officer who took out your TM30 Receipt of Notification did it thinking it was your 90-day deal.  They do look almost the same.

[CMBob]

48 minutes ago, CMMCB said:

I decided to (double)check up on the need to "update" the TM30 after an overnight trip out of town (domestic), staying in small hotels in neighbouring provinces. Went to building 3 at the airport branch, brandishing passport and TM30 receipt slip and asked about this. Answer: no need, only when coming back from abroad. 

 

Thanks for the report....and I'm hoping that your experience becomes the norm.  What the officer told you is what an officer has told me (but, as reported here at TV more than once, other officers are apparently saying something different).

 

[CMMCB]

Yes, CMB, I'd been told something different by another member of staff previously too. 

[chiang mai]

Two weeks ago I went to see my agent who registered me (first time in 15 years) online (chanotte/usufruct, wife's tabien bahn and ID card) and gave me a print out of that event.

 

Last week I went to Bangkok and spent one night in a hotel before flying to the UK for a week. This afternoon I returned to CM and went to Immigration with a request to update my TM30, 5 minutes later, job done and now in possession of stamped certified grade A TM30 receipt, cost zero baht. 

[alfieconn]

38 minutes ago, chiang mai said:

Two weeks ago I went to see my agent who registered me (first time in 15 years) online (chanotte/usufruct, wife's tabien bahn and ID card) and gave me a print out of that event.

 

Last week I went to Bangkok and spent one night in a hotel before flying to the UK for a week. This afternoon I returned to CM and went to Immigration with a request to update my TM30, 5 minutes later, job done and now in possession of stamped certified grade A TM30 receipt, cost zero baht. 

 

Why, how much should it cost ?

[chiang mai]

13 minutes ago, alfieconn said:

 

Why, how much should it cost ?

 

Why what and how much should what cost!

[KhonKaenKowboy]

8 hours ago, CMBob said:

 

Thanks for the report....and I'm hoping that your experience becomes the norm.  What the officer told you is what an officer has told me (but, as reported here at TV more than once, other officers are apparently saying something different).

 

And told me, too.  And I asked the guy, who took the money and signed the receipt.

Edited November 7, 2016 by KhonKaenKowboy

[naboo]

10 hours ago, CMMCB said:

I decided to (double)check up on the need to "update" the TM30 after an overnight trip out of town (domestic), staying in small hotels in neighbouring provinces. Went to building 3 at the airport branch, brandishing passport and TM30 receipt slip and asked about this. Answer: no need, only when coming back from abroad. 

 

A year ago, fining people for non-compliance with TM-30 was unheard of. Who's to say they won't be enforcing the rule of visits outside of the province in a few months time?

 

I think our only defense now is to find out every single ridiculous law and take up all their time complying with them. I'm sure there are many, we can do it in weekly shifts. Bombard them with TM-28 slips by moving between wife and sister-in-law's house daily. Kind of like a "Denial of Service" attack on a website.

[Dante99]

4 hours ago, naboo said:

 

I think our only defense now is to find out every single ridiculous law and take up all their time complying with them. I'm sure there are many, we can do it in weekly shifts. Bombard them with TM-28 slips by moving between wife and sister-in-law's house daily. Kind of like a "Denial of Service" attack on a website.

Really?  You think confrontational approaches work well with the police?  With Thai people in general? Please do tell us your past successes with such an approach.

[naboo]

Confrontation? Compliance, surely.

[alfieconn]

12 hours ago, chiang mai said:

 

Why what and how much should what cost!

 

Iv'e just no idea on why you mentioned the price and your experience of handing in a TM30 form, i mean it's  the same price and no different from the way anyone else would do it  

 

[chiang mai]

51 minutes ago, alfieconn said:

 

Iv'e just no idea on why you mentioned the price and your experience of handing in a TM30 form, i mean it's  the same price and no different from the way anyone else would do it  

 

 

You may have missed that many people have been/are being made to pay a "fine" of THB 1,600 for failing to register a TM30 in the first place and/or for not keeping it up to date. Actually I'm pretty sure you wont have missed that fact and that your current post is leading into one of your regular troll attacks on things that I post. So back into your cave Alf, we're not playing your games today.

[alfieconn]

2 hours ago, chiang mai said:

 

You may have missed that many people have been/are being made to pay a "fine" of THB 1,600 for failing to register a TM30 in the first place and/or for not keeping it up to date. Actually I'm pretty sure you wont have missed that fact and that your current post is leading into one of your regular troll attacks on things that I post. So back into your cave Alf, we're not playing your games today.

 

Paying a fine because they are late registering, where has anyone had to pay fine when they register within 24 hrs ?

[CMBob]

1 hour ago, alfieconn said:

 

Paying a fine because they are late registering, where has anyone had to pay fine when they register within 24 hrs ?

 

Geez, as I read and understood the post, all the poster was doing was trying to advise that he/she wasn't fined.  Even if the poster said that in a roundabout fashion, it hardly merited your additional three posts.  

 

The cost to timely (which apparently means either within 24 hours or within a week or within god/Buddha only knows long) file a TM30 is nothing and everybody seems to understand that.

Edited November 8, 2016 by CMBob

[luther]

If you (the renter) get your landlord to fill out and sign the TM30 form, can you (the renter) file the form and pay the fine without dragging your landlord to immigration?

 

2nd question:  Can this form be filed at Promenada, the old immigration office, and inside the airport?

[CMBob]

2 hours ago, luther said:

If you (the renter) get your landlord to fill out and sign the TM30 form, can you (the renter) file the form and pay the fine without dragging your landlord to immigration?

 

2nd question:  Can this form be filed at Promenada, the old immigration office, and inside the airport?

 

I'm not 100% sure on your first question but believe the renter can actually file it if the landlord has signed the form and you have all the other proper documents. I can't even be sure what set of documents is acceptable to every officer there but in my case it was the following (and it's possible that some of this was unneeded):  completed TM30 form signed by the landlord, copy of landlord's ID, tabien baan, and chanote (deed to the townhouse I'm renting), copy of the lease between us, and my passport junk (believe I provided the photo page, current extension, arrival stamp, and departure card).  I'm guessing that the copy of the chanote wasn't necessary but they gave no documents back.  Whether necessary or not, I signed each page of the lease copy and all the passport copies as one does for about everything at Immigration.  And it's hard for me to believe they won't accept money from anyone (in my case, the landlord forked it over....he being fined as I had already lived here for about 4 years when the filing occurred).

 

As to your second question, the only place you currently file the TM30 here in Chiang Mai is at the back building of the old Immigration office near the airport.  I have no idea if that'll change.

[chiang mai]

18 hours ago, CMBob said:

 

Geez, as I read and understood the post, all the poster was doing was trying to advise that he/she wasn't fined.  Even if the poster said that in a roundabout fashion, it hardly merited your additional three posts.  

 

The cost to timely (which apparently means either within 24 hours or within a week or within god/Buddha only knows long) file a TM30 is nothing and everybody seems to understand that.

 

As my visa agent explains matters he says there are problems at two levels: the first is having never registered a TM30 before and this means a person is simply not in the database; the second is filing a late TM30 update following an overnight stay in say a hotel or after a trip overseas, potentially you can get fined for either/or.

 

In my case I had never filed a TM30 before although records had been filed on my behalf by hotels that I had stayed in over the years and presumably from landing card data after returning from abroad. I guess what all of that represents is merely a series of disjointed and disconnected records. Given those things, I suppose that if I were to have simply shown up at Immigration and tried to file a change to my TM30, what might have happened? I suppose the database would reflect my address as being the last hotel I stayed in some months ago hence any attempt to update would be seen as late, ergo a fine is due.

 

But by having the agent register my current home address online (using the same system the hotels use) and getting a copy of my record to prove the fact, I have effectively brought my history up to date and there's nothing to dispute or be fined for. Then as I left my home on my most recent trip and a hotel in Bangkok updates my record of stay, AND following my return to Thailand a week later my landing card reflects my return, all the latest records are connected and show continuity - my subsequent visit to Immigration when I returned was straight forward as a result.

 

 

 

[CMBob]

28 minutes ago, chiang mai said:

But by having the agent register my current home address online (using the same system the hotels use) and getting a copy of my record to prove the fact, I have effectively brought my history up to date and there's nothing to dispute or be fined for. Then as I left my home on my most recent trip and a hotel in Bangkok updates my record of stay, AND following my return to Thailand a week later my landing card reflects my return, all the latest records are connected and show continuity - my subsequent visit to Immigration when I returned was straight forward as a result.

What is possibly interesting.....some speculation here....is whether one can get around a fine if the reporting is done online, even if that reporting is done very late.  For example, let's presume you've lived at a condo for 2-3 years and there's never been a TM30 filed for you.  If one now has condo management for you as the owner (or, if you're renting, either condo management or your landlord presuming the landlord has an online account) do the reporting online,  would that alleviate the fine problem?  I seemed to have gotten the hint from a post or two in this or other threads that it might work that way.  But I'm not sure if that's the case. 

[chiang mai]

2 minutes ago, CMBob said:

What is possibly interesting.....some speculation here....is whether one can get around a fine if the reporting is done online, even if that reporting is done very late.  For example, let's presume you've lived at a condo for 2-3 years and there's never been a TM30 filed for you.  If one now has condo management for you as the owner (or, if you're renting, either condo management or your landlord presuming the landlord has an online account) do the reporting online,  would that alleviate the fine problem?  I seemed to have gotten the hint from a post or two in this or other threads that it might work that way.  But I'm not sure if that's the case. 

 

As said in  my earlier post, my agent updated/created (?) my record online using the hotel reporting system and asked for copies of my wife's ID card, tabien bahn and our chanotte.  All of that seems to be in line with what others have said previously that the system requires a Thai person to make the initial report. Interestingly, my TM30 receipt references my wife and her name appears on the receipt - presumably if hotels issued TM30 receipts the name of the hotel would occupy that name field although I don't know whose name would go there in the case of a foreign owned condo. since that seems to be the all important Thai contact field. Perhaps in that case it is the juristic person at the condo. complex who must make the initial report and their name will appear there?

 

I think in the example you cited, the problem will be in reverting to your original address following a stay in a hotel for one night, Immigration simply has no record of that address so you need a means to tell them what it is, that's where the agents bogus report beforehand is all important, I think because that sets the base address to which you return each time.

[CMBob]

7 minutes ago, chiang mai said:

I think in the example you cited, the problem will be in reverting to your original address following a stay in a hotel for one night, Immigration simply has no record of that address so you need a means to tell them what it is, that's where the agents bogus report beforehand is all important, I think because that sets the base address to which you return each time.

 

I'm not questioning the issue of not re-reporting (or re-registering), I'm questioning whether one can avoid the fine in the first place if the first reporting (even if done very late) is done online. 

If I'm guessing correctly in your case (I've been a bit confused by how you did it), you've lived for sometime in a house or condo owned by your wife and nobody in the past filed a TM30 for you.  And somehow you got some agent (who had an online account with Immigration) to file the TM30 for you (or, technically, for your wife).  And, even though late, the fine was avoided.  If that's correct, then that's what I was guessing could happen.

[chiang mai]

3 minutes ago, CMBob said:

 

I'm not questioning the issue of not re-reporting (or re-registering), I'm questioning whether one can avoid the fine in the first place if the first reporting (even if done very late) is done online. 

If I'm guessing correctly in your case (I've been a bit confused by how you did it), you've lived for sometime in a house or condo owned by your wife and nobody in the past filed a TM30 for you.  And somehow you got some agent (who had an online account with Immigration) to file the TM30 for you (or, technically, for your wife).  And, even though late, the fine was avoided.  If that's correct, then that's what I was guessing could happen.

 

In 15 years here I've never filed a TM30 and I've lived in a variety of accommodation, condo's that I've owned, houses I've rented and for the past three years, a house hat I effectively own via an usufruct - none of those things changed or provided data into the TM30 system.

 

But I have stayed at hotels in Thailand regularly and those hotels have supplied TM30 data to Immigration during my stay, as indeed they do so on all foreign guests and are required to do so by law. I've also travelled outside Thailand many times and my landing card has always shown an address, another source of TM30 update data.

 

So if you imagine what my TM30 record looked like on the Immigration database, it was nothing more than a series of largely unconnected data records from different hotels and landing cards, all showing different addresses on different dates but none of them showing my actual home address.

 

Enter the visa agent who is able to access the Immigration database, I think as a hotel, and he sets a record that shows my name and critically, myhome address, at that point I'm up to date as far as TM30 in concerned. Then I go outside Thailand and come back and I report my trip and request that my record be reset to my home address (it was changed away from my home address when I stayed in the Bangkok hotel and I filed a new landing card when I returned from overseas).

 

Is that clear and does it make sense?

[alfieconn]

11 minutes ago, chiang mai said:

 

In 15 years here I've never filed a TM30 and I've lived in a variety of accommodation, condo's that I've owned, houses I've rented and for the past three years, a house hat I effectively own via an usufruct - none of those things changed or provided data into the TM30 system.

 

But I have stayed at hotels in Thailand regularly and those hotels have supplied TM30 data to Immigration during my stay, as indeed they do so on all foreign guests and are required to do so by law. I've also travelled outside Thailand many times and my landing card has always shown an address, another source of TM30 update data.

 

So if you imagine what my TM30 record looked like on the Immigration database, it was nothing more than a series of largely unconnected data records from different hotels and landing cards, all showing different addresses on different dates but none of them showing my actual home address.

 

Enter the visa agent who is able to access the Immigration database, I think as a hotel, and he sets a record that shows my name and critically, myhome address, at that point I'm up to date as far as TM30 in concerned. Then I go outside Thailand and come back and I report my trip and request that my record be reset to my home address (it was changed away from my home address when I stayed in the Bangkok hotel and I filed a new landing card when I returned from overseas).

 

Is that clear and does it make sense?

 

The crux of it is Bob is that he went out of the country and when returning a TM30 was done by the hotel within 24 hrs and then  a TM30 was done again  within 24hrs  at CM, so unless they look at his past record of filing a TM30 which it seems they don't then there is no reason for a fine, nothing to do with an agent doing this and that !

Edited November 9, 2016 by alfieconn

[chiang mai]

4 minutes ago, alfieconn said:

 

The crux of it is Bob is that he went out of the country and when returning a TM30 was done by the hotel within 24 hrs and then  a TM30 was again  within 24hrs  at CM, so unless they look at his past record of filing a TM30 which it seems they don't then there is no reason for a fine, nothing to do with an agent doing this and that !

 

You're assuming that a landing card does in fact create a TM30 entry and I don't know if that's true or not. But if it doesn't and a person obtains a long stay visa, comes to Thailand and rents/buys a condo and never stays in a hotel, there will  be no TM30 records at all hence when he goes to extend his visa, a fine awaits - and if he tries to update his record himself beforehand, guess what, there may not be one hence a fine awaits! But hey, if you know better and more accurately on this subject than Assist Thai Visa, go for it!!

[alfieconn]

3 minutes ago, chiang mai said:

 

You're assuming that a landing card does in fact create a TM30 entry and I don't know if that's true or not. But if it doesn't and a person obtains a long stay visa, comes to Thailand and rents/buys a condo and never stays in a hotel, there will  be no TM30 records at all hence when he goes to extend his visa, a fine awaits - and if he tries to update his record himself beforehand, guess what, there may not be one hence a fine awaits! But hey, if you know better and more accurately on this subject than Assist Thai Visa, go for it!!

 

Where have i assumed that a landing card creates a TM30 entry ?  the 2 instances where you say a fine awaits seem correct, where have i said anything different ?

[chiang mai]

7 minutes ago, alfieconn said:

 

Where have i assumed that a landing card creates a TM30 entry ?  the 2 instances where you say a fine awaits seem correct, where have i said anything different ?

 

You didn't I simply made that statement. But if it doesn't, how does the TM30 record get made in the first instance so that when a person living in a condo. for example, someone who has never stayed in a hotel, can go and change it because they've moved and/or because they want to extend their visa?

 

And you did say that the agents action in making the Immigration TM30 record correct had nothing to do with the outcome, that simply not true.

 

And actually I don't know why I'm even bothering to respond to your posts because from history you seem to enjoy challenging anything I write, regardless of the subject or it validity. And frankly, those challenges are typically unhelpful to posters who are looking for fact rather than reading your bored nonsense. So once again, give it a rest!

 

 

Edited November 9, 2016 by chiang mai

[alfieconn]

2 minutes ago, chiang mai said:

 

You didn't I simply made that statement. But if it doesn't, how does the TM30 record get made in the first instance so that when a person living in a condo. for example, someone who has never stayed in a hotel, can go and change it because they've moved and/or because they want to extend their visa?

 

And you did say that the agents action in making the Immigration TM30 record correct had nothing to do with the outcome, that simply not true.

 

 

 

You don't arf complicate things, read what i said previously ! so do you think that you didn't get a fine because of what the agent done or because  in the first instance the Hotel reported you within 24 hrs and that you done a TM30 within 24 hrs of arriving back in Chiang Mai ?

[CMBob]

1 hour ago, alfieconn said:

 

The crux of it is Bob is that he went out of the country and when returning a TM30 was done by the hotel within 24 hrs and then  a TM30 was done again  within 24hrs  at CM, so unless they look at his past record of filing a TM30 which it seems they don't then there is no reason for a fine, nothing to do with an agent doing this and that !

 

You may be right but I'm not so sure.  I don't see where he said that the TM30 was done within 24 hours of arrival in CM.  What I do see is that he said that he had an outfit (we might not want to call this entity an "agent" as too many people think of that as the generic visa agent) which had an online Immigration account file a TM30 for him (or, technically, for his wife who owns the place).  My question is whether the online reporting by that entity (versus showing up in person to file it) caused the fine to be avoided at that point in time. 

 

As to almost everyone, sorry for the confusion.