An actual compliment for Thai immigration in CWt .

[IMA_FARANG]

For once I will actually compliment the service at Chaeng Wattana immigration.

I had surgery on my left arm after a fall in the first week of March.

Yesterday 30 March I went to CW with a request from the hospital doctor for a medical extension to my tourist visa and in a couple of hours was given a 60 day extension to my visa for a 60 day stay in Thailand to recuperate form the surgery.

All done professionally and courteously by the medical stall and immigration at CW.

So I must compliment them, and I will here.

 

Edited March 31, 2017 by IMA_FARANG
correct typo

[ezzra]

 

A UK friend of mine is trying to get a spouse retirement permit in CM

been married to a Thai lady for 20 years with 2 kids, you wouldn't

believe the hoops they made him jump through and the mountain

of paper work and pictures they asked for, while some immigration;s

staff are friendly and companionate, the majority aren't, and at times

when I go renew my retirement permit, I can feel the belittling and

dismissive attitude being shown by the staff at CW.... saying

like, hey, we doing you a favor here pal....

 

[taiping]

1 hour ago, ezzra said:

 

A UK friend of mine is trying to get a spouse retirement permit in CM

been married to a Thai lady for 20 years with 2 kids, you wouldn't

believe the hoops they made him jump through and the mountain

of paper work and pictures they asked for, while some immigration;s

staff are friendly and companionate, the majority aren't, and at times

when I go renew my retirement permit, I can feel the belittling and

dismissive attitude being shown by the staff at CW.... saying

like, hey, we doing you a favor here pal....

 

"belittling and dismissive attitude" at CW?

Never, in all my years going to CW and Soi Suan Plu for marriage and retirement visa extensions. They are government employees just trying to do their job, so I don't expect to be treated like a VIP, but they have always been courteous with me.

Must be something wrong with his attitude. 

Edited March 31, 2017 by taiping

[pogpog]

We went to CM immigration today, at 10am, for a 30 day extension.

They were polite and very helpful. Out of there in less than an hour.

Well done!

[gjoo888]

3 hours ago, taiping said:

"belittling and dismissive attitude" at CW?

Never, in all my years going to CW and Soi Suan Plu for marriage and retirement visa extensions. They are government employees just trying to do their job, so I don't expect to be treated like a VIP, but they have always been courteous with me.

Must be something wrong with his attitude. 

I agree. In 11 years of living here, I've never had a problem at Suan Plu or Chaeng Wattana. Most of the officers are just doing their job, certainly not overly friendly the majority of the time, but never discourteous either. A couple of times I neglected to bring a document, but both times they allowed me to complete my extension the same day after I went home to retrieve them. 

[HHTel]

I've never been able to criticise immigration at Hua Hin in all the years I've been here.  Reading comments about other immigration offices leads me to believe that they should all take a look at the way the staff work here.  Always helpful, always friendly and courteous. Now they even have people with shirts emblazoned with 'Immigration Helper'.  These guys will fill any forms you need to do and even take a queuing ticket for you.

I've never spent hours there as in other offices.  Quick and efficient with none of the ridiculous 'extra info' forms.  A true credit to immigration Thailand.  

[bbbbooboo]

hmmm...... only in the "land of smiles"?

[Skeptic7]

20 hours ago, taiping said:

"belittling and dismissive attitude" at CW?

Never, in all my years going to CW and Soi Suan Plu for marriage and retirement visa extensions. They are government employees just trying to do their job, so I don't expect to be treated like a VIP, but they have always been courteous with me.

Must be something wrong with his attitude. 

Not always the case and wrong to assume 'something wrong with his attitude'. Government employees are famous worldwide for bad, lazy, power tripping behavior and baditude.

 

Was at CW recently and one woman was so rude, condescending and dismissive it was gross. I was happy, smiling, clean and shaved, looking my best with not even a hint of badittud, nor any reason for it. Her colleague was obviously embarrassed by the other woman's behavior and when the bitch finally slithered away the nice one answered my questions and provided useful information.

 

Point is, it all depends on the official one gets...and the kind of mood they are in that day. This woman was far and away the ugliest acting person I've EVER encountered.

[smo]

On 3/31/2017 at 3:53 PM, pogpog said:

We went to CM immigration today, at 10am, for a 30 day extension.

They were polite and very helpful. Out of there in less than an hour.

Well done!

 

And the cherry on top is their newly renovated bathroom in the basement. Definitely a notch above Motel 6's! I was there this afternoon couldn't believe my own eyes so I whipped out my phone and snapped a pic. What you don't see in the photo are the new electronic toilet seats (a saner and simplified version of the japanese shenanigans one has to put up with at Terminal 21; this one does the job with just two separate WASH and BIDET functions, though at some point if you go overboard they simply shrug "is tis what you want?" and merge into one big jet! might as well...) And what you don't hear from the photo is Bach played in the background, I thought I had died and gone to Immig heaven! I liked it so much that I used it before during and after my travails in the office upstairs. Definitely something to look forward to comes next year pilgrimage!

 

[Correction: this is at Chaeng Wattana , not CM. For some reason there is no quote button at the OP post so I couldn't quote from there.]

 

 

Edited April 4, 2017 by smo

[rwdrwdrwd]

On 3/31/2017 at 2:13 PM, taiping said:

"belittling and dismissive attitude" at CW?

Never, in all my years going to CW and Soi Suan Plu for marriage and retirement visa extensions. They are government employees just trying to do their job, so I don't expect to be treated like a VIP, but they have always been courteous with me.

Must be something wrong with his attitude. 

Lucky you.

My recent experience strongly differs, despite me being well dressed and polite (at least for the first four hours of entirely unnecessary hoop jumping), and with all documents organised in a folder, copied in triplicate, an officer there decided to take her bad day out on me for no justifiable reason right from the get go.

 

Her very first words, after responding to my smile and wai with a scowl, were to accuse me of not doing a TM30 despite me having the receipt in my passport, she then told me I had to do one every 3 months and the receipt I had was not valid. Absolutely not the case, which is why, I assume, she decided to 'ignore' it. 

Finally after going through everything with a fine toothed comb and having found nothing to take issue with she decided to reject the photos because the one that showed the house number did not show enough of the house in the background. The glee on her face was palpable.

To add insult, she stopped processing my docs for a couple of minutes and took someone else's, rubber stamping the whole lot without a second glance. At one point about 8 hours in she aggressively threw 6 copies of the same document at me to fill in. By that point I was close to flipping, so I just filled in one and threw the rest back in the same manner. No further words were exchanged between us and when she finally rubber stamped it I just took it and walked off to the next official with my stamped docs.

And indeed, as with Skeptik7's report, once I finally to the next official, who had witnessed the whole escapade, she was extremely friendly and appeared somewhat embarrassed and empathetic. I wonder if we got the same person... extension issued fine, thankfully not back there for another year but the whole experience has tempted me to go onto an Elite visa.

It's the first time I've encountered this sort of issue at immigration to be fair, but it was a highly stressful day due to a nasty individual power tripping. Hopefully I don't have to see her wasp chewing face again.

Edited April 4, 2017 by rwdrwdrwd