income letter uk embassy bkk

[OJAS]

3 hours ago, 007 RED said:

I think that for most regulars its a case of printing out the form that we used last year, so this 'enhancement' is easy to overlook.

 

A good facility for those that live a distance away from a post office.  It will be interesting to get some feedback on how this works out.... good/bad/indifferent.

Hmm, not so sure that I would be particularly happy about sending a completed credit card authorisation form by email, though.

[Moonlover]

11 hours ago, 007 RED said:

I think that for most regulars its a case of printing out the form that we used last year, so this 'enhancement' is easy to overlook.

 

A good facility for those that live a distance away from a post office.  It will be interesting to get some feedback on how this works out.... good/bad/indifferent.

If this issue of payment had not been raised by the OP, I would not have been aware of this these changes, so I'm very thankful that he did. One of my criticisms of the FCO is that they do not publish a local newsletter that we can subscribe to, to keep us informed of these enhancements. Is it a case of ''when in Rome''?

 

I have just used the email service and I'm pleased witht result. I  sent the application last Wednesday, payment was taken on the the Thursday and I received my letter yesterday (Wednesday). That's 5 working days, including 1 day in transit.

 

I can also confirm that, if you use a UK bank card, payment is taken directly in Sterling. I read in an earlier post that the embassy use Barclay's for their card transactions. This is probably how they are able to bypass the usual THB/GBP exchanges. It may also explain why they are unable to accept Thai debit cards.

 

And I do not begrudge them the 63 Baht handling charge!

Edited August 3, 2017 by Moonlover

[007 RED]

14 hours ago, OJAS said:

Hmm, not so sure that I would be particularly happy about sending a completed credit card authorisation form by email, though.

Life as a whole is not without risks of one form or another. 

 

If you send your CC details by EMS post there is no guarantee that your letter will not get ‘lost’ on route, or delivered to the wrong address.  If that happens someone is able to easily read your CC information without any problems.

 

If you attach photos (or scanned documents) to an email it is encrypted on route between you and the recipient….. If you look at the internet address bar at the top of your screen you will see a small black padlock… that indicates that the communication is encrypted using SSL… if you click on the padlock you will get more details.

 

If your email is intercepted, then some fairly sophisticated software is required to decrypt the attachment and then a good optical character recognition software to be to read the data held on the photo/scanned document.

 

Yes it’s possible to intercept and read the contents of your email, but I personally would put the risk as very, very low.

[007 RED]

6 hours ago, Moonlover said:

If this issue of payment had not been raised by the OP, I would not have been aware of this these changes, so I'm very thankful that he did. One of my criticisms of the FCO is that they do not publish a local newsletter that we can subscribe to, to keep us informed of these enhancements. Is it a case of ''when in Rome''?

 

I have just used the email service and I'm pleased witht result. I  sent the application last Wednesday, payment was taken on the the Thursday and I received my letter yesterday (Wednesday). That's 5 working days, including 1 day in transit.

 

I can also confirm that, if you use a UK bank card, payment is taken directly in Sterling. I read in an earlier post that the embassy use Barclay's for their card transactions. This is probably how they are able to bypass the usual THB/GBP exchanges. It may also explain why they are unable to accept Thai debit cards.

 

And I do not begrudge them the 63 Baht handling charge!

I agree with your comment regarding the embassy providing decent update information on their website.  It appears that the British Embassy in BKK no longer has control over the content on the website.  The FCO as recently adopted a policy of standardisation across the world, so that one embassy site looks very much the same as all the others.

Unfortunately, the downside being that there is little/no scope for relevant local input by embassy staff.  May be this is something that TV members could raise with the embassy via email.

 

Glad to hear that everything went well with your request by email….. and you saved yourself the EMS postage fee (37 Baht)

[billd766]

12 hours ago, OJAS said:

Hmm, not so sure that I would be particularly happy about sending a completed credit card authorisation form by email, though.

 

How can I send a bank draft by email too?

[billd766]

4 hours ago, Moonlover said:

If this issue of payment had not been raised by the OP, I would not have been aware of this these changes, so I'm very thankful that he did. One of my criticisms of the FCO is that they do not publish a local newsletter that we can subscribe to, to keep us informed of these enhancements. Is it a case of ''when in Rome''?

 

I have just used the email service and I'm pleased witht result. I  sent the application last Wednesday, payment was taken on the the Thursday and I received my letter yesterday (Wednesday). That's 5 working days, including 1 day in transit.

 

I can also confirm that, if you use a UK bank card, payment is taken directly in Sterling. I read in an earlier post that the embassy use Barclay's for their card transactions. This is probably how they are able to bypass the usual THB/GBP exchanges. It may also explain why they are unable to accept Thai debit cards.

 

And I do not begrudge them the 63 Baht handling charge!

 

Ut worked for you using a UK credit card.

 

Many people left the UK years ago and don't have UK cards. Why would I need a UK card for one or two transactions at most in a year?

[Lamkyong]

7 minutes ago, billd766 said:

 

How can I send a bank draft by email too?

good question   you cannot   so like myself another  unusable option

as another poster remarked why can they not  allow online money transfer to their bank account   to come  in line with  most online service providers

[Moonlover]

47 minutes ago, billd766 said:

 

Ut worked for you using a UK credit card.

 

Many people left the UK years ago and don't have UK cards. Why would I need a UK card for one or two transactions at most in a year?

I also left the UK many years ago, but one of my pension providers does not have an overseas payment service. So I have to maintain an account there. Actually I have found it useful on many occasions.

 

[Moonlover]

41 minutes ago, Lamkyong said:

good question   you cannot   so like myself another  unusable option

as another poster remarked why can they not  allow online money transfer to their bank account   to come  in line with  most online service providers

Well, I guess that's a question you could direct to the FCO.

[billd766]

40 minutes ago, Moonlover said:

I also left the UK many years ago, but one of my pension providers does not have an overseas payment service. So I have to maintain an account there. Actually I have found it useful on many occasions.

 

 

All 3 of my pension providers have an overseas payment service.

 

I scrapped my UK accounts years ago as it was costing me about £70 a year for them to handle my money

 

I got charged ATM fees at this end plus bank charges at the other end

 

They didn't want to send my new bank cards to Thailand

 

A new manager took over the branch and decided that my overdraft was to high and decided to suspend my account without bothering to tell me. I only found that out as I was in Papua New Guinea and the ATM refused me. It cost me over $150 to manage to talk to the bank to get them to unsuspend it.

 

3 or 4 times my account was blocked as money was withdrawn while I was in Thailand despite the fact that my address was in Thailand where they sent my statements to.

 

It was costing me about 20,000 baht a year (this was about 8 or 9 years ago) so I paid off my overdraft, transferred the balance of my funds to my friend in the UK and closed the account.