Phuket Town Retirement Extension Today Sept 14

[Tapster]

Excellent info, thanks!!

 

[Tapster]

After my Immigration visit two weeks ago, to ask questions about our visa extensions (see post 59) I went with my delightful South African wife to get our retirement and dependent extensions (respectively).

 

Monday last week, the 28th November.

 

We arrived at 12:45 at room 103 on the ground floor. At 13:00 there was a not-very-British mild scrum to squeeze into the room and get a laminated number card. We got card number 6....satisfactory!

 

[tl;dr    We got our extensions, collected the next day.

 - Remember - take everything!!! It can easily save another visit.]

 

Again, there was no English-speaking helper and this is a bad thing as I found myself in front of the same grumpy Immigration Officer as I tried to get info from last week. Curses!

 

I was armed with so many photocopies and originals that he couldn't resist my purchase on the seat in front of him and had to take me seriously.

 

He covered his desk with what looked like a random mixture of my and my wife's forms and photocopies. I think he'd be great at that pea under the cup street game. After mixing everything together he gave back the Foreign National Information forms (as expected) and took everything else.

 

For me:

- Completed TM7 form

 - One passport photo

 - Bank letter and photocopies of all pages of bank book (even though the bank letter included a printout statement, same as bank book).

 - Photo of the happy couple in front of residence, showing the house number.

 - Photocopies of everything in my passport (can't hurt to provide everything, in case).  He kept all of that and then moved my departure card to the page with my last entry stamp on it, and had me get that photocopied, together with the page on which he had stamped the (not yet approved) retirement extension stamp (why?)

 - He accepted the Receipt of Notification from 2015 as notification of residence, so no need to get a new one this time.

 

Then he was nice to us;

because I hadn't printed my (and wife's) 90-day notification slip, having done them online, he got a minion to check in the database to make sure we'd done it. I'll print them next time.

 

For my non-Thai wife, as "follower" (....she really doesn't like that term, and rightly so!):

 

- Completed TM7 form

 - One passport photo

 - Photo of the happy couple in front of residence, showing the house number.

 - Photocopies of everything in my passport and in her passport

 - Photocopy of wedding certificate (he wasn't interested in the original, but we waved it at him.

 I think I'd always take the original.)

 - The Receipt of Notification of residence from 2015 was accepted.

 

 

Money was paid for both.

 

Extensions collected after 13:00 the next day, within 3 minutes of my arrival.

 

All relatively painless, given that I made three visits.

 

We will go back to get multiple-entry, re-entry certificates as we know we're leaving LOS at lease twice in the next year.

 

 

 

[Kopitiam]

36 minutes ago, Tapster said:

After my Immigration visit two weeks ago, to ask questions about our visa extensions (see post 59) I went with my delightful South African wife to get our retirement and dependent extensions (respectively).

 

Monday last week, the 28th November.

 

We arrived at 12:45 at room 103 on the ground floor. At 13:00 there was a not-very-British mild scrum to squeeze into the room and get a laminated number card. We got card number 6....satisfactory!

 

[tl;dr    We got our extensions, collected the next day.

 - Remember - take everything!!! It can easily save another visit.]

 

Again, there was no English-speaking helper and this is a bad thing as I found myself in front of the same grumpy Immigration Officer as I tried to get info from last week. Curses!

 

I was armed with so many photocopies and originals that he couldn't resist my purchase on the seat in front of him and had to take me seriously.

 

He covered his desk with what looked like a random mixture of my and my wife's forms and photocopies. I think he'd be great at that pea under the cup street game. After mixing everything together he gave back the Foreign National Information forms (as expected) and took everything else.

 

For me:

- Completed TM7 form

 - One passport photo

 - Bank letter and photocopies of all pages of bank book (even though the bank letter included a printout statement, same as bank book).

 - Photo of the happy couple in front of residence, showing the house number.

 - Photocopies of everything in my passport (can't hurt to provide everything, in case).  He kept all of that and then moved my departure card to the page with my last entry stamp on it, and had me get that photocopied, together with the page on which he had stamped the (not yet approved) retirement extension stamp (why?)

 - He accepted the Receipt of Notification from 2015 as notification of residence, so no need to get a new one this time.

 

Then he was nice to us;

because I hadn't printed my (and wife's) 90-day notification slip, having done them online, he got a minion to check in the database to make sure we'd done it. I'll print them next time.

 

For my non-Thai wife, as "follower" (....she really doesn't like that term, and rightly so!):

 

- Completed TM7 form

 - One passport photo

 - Photo of the happy couple in front of residence, showing the house number.

 - Photocopies of everything in my passport and in her passport

 - Photocopy of wedding certificate (he wasn't interested in the original, but we waved it at him.

 I think I'd always take the original.)

 - The Receipt of Notification of residence from 2015 was accepted.

 

 

Money was paid for both.

 

Extensions collected after 13:00 the next day, within 3 minutes of my arrival.

 

All relatively painless, given that I made three visits.

 

We will go back to get multiple-entry, re-entry certificates as we know we're leaving LOS at lease twice in the next year.

 

 

 

To save yourself another trip to the Phuket Immigration for your re-entry permits, you could have done it immediately after you received your extension of stay.

[Tapster]

@Kopitiam..........................

 

yes, of course, but we had other stuff to do that day.

 

And it was almost certainly more than my small brain could cope with!

 

 

[madmitch]

14 hours ago, Tapster said:

@Kopitiam..........................

 

yes, of course, but we had other stuff to do that day.

 

And it was almost certainly more than my small brain could cope with!

 

 

Well don't forget to do it like I did!

 

So much hassle starting from scratch again.

[JetsetBkk]

My friend went today at 9:30, upstairs by mistake, but the volunteer checked his papers anyway. I think he went upstairs because downstairs was packed.

 

So she then sent him down to room 103. He got ticket number 1 but was told to come back at 1pm. Maybe they were busy after the holiday.

 

He went back and was done in under 10 minutes, back tomorrow for passport.

 

Neither the volunteer upstairs nor the Immi. guy downstairs knew - or said they knew - anything about the new 5/10 year visa.

 

[Kopitiam]

6 hours ago, JetsetBkk said:

My friend went today at 9:30, upstairs by mistake, but the volunteer checked his papers anyway. I think he went upstairs because downstairs was packed.

 

So she then sent him down to room 103. He got ticket number 1 but was told to come back at 1pm. Maybe they were busy after the holiday.

 

He went back and was done in under 10 minutes, back tomorrow for passport.

 

Neither the volunteer upstairs nor the Immi. guy downstairs knew - or said they knew - anything about the new 5/10 year visa.

 

I was there (Room103) this morning (9.30am) and got ticket number 29.  They only handle 30 cases in the morning and 30 cases in the afternoon.  They re-cycle the numbers, i.e. those who come late in the morning are given numbers starting from 1 again and were told to come back after 1pm in the afternoon.  There was one more new form to fill in (acknowledgement to inform immigration should there be any change of status).  The IO informed that those applying for retirement extension can now do it up to 45 days before expiry date.

[JetsetBkk]

7 minutes ago, Kopitiam said:

I was there (Room103) this morning (9.30am) and got ticket number 29.  They only handle 30 cases in the morning and 30 cases in the afternoon.  They re-cycle the numbers, i.e. those who come late in the morning are given numbers starting from 1 again and were told to come back after 1pm in the afternoon.  There was one more new form to fill in (acknowledgement to inform immigration should there be any change of status).  The IO informed that those applying for retirement extension can now do it up to 45 days before expiry date.

 

Ah, so my friend must've been applicant number 31!

 

He lives in Phuket town so it wasn't a big deal to come back in the afternoon. I'll let him know tomorrow when I see him.

 

I like the 45 days period - more time to get things sorted in case there's a problem.