Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing, it seems I do one of these almost every 2 months, 3 months. I do a video where it's like "hey, yet another kind of almost horror story about Visa agents and some problems there." I got to thinking of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Foreigners 'deceived' by Visa service. Quote: PHUKET: Police on Wednesday raided a brokerage company after receiving complaints from six foreign nationals who accused the firm of taking their money and failing to deliver visa extension services, causing them to overstay their visas." Yeah, this can be a real problem. This is me talking. This can be a real problem. I will get to this more in a minute in the analysis. Quoting further: "The foreign nationals reported to Muang Phuket police and lodged a complaint against the firm. They said at least 60 foreign nationals had been deceived by the firm which has since closed, resulting in them over staying their visas." Yeah again a real problem. Quoting further: "Police yesterday raided the Visa Service Company at two locations, a house and a commercial building in the downtown Muang District. No one was found. On Monday four foreign nationals came knocking on the door and left after finding no one there. However, a woman was hiding in the building and dashed out after the four people left the neighbour said." I added that in there; I urge you to read this if you are interested in this stuff this was a rather I almost say funny article. It was kind of almost like reading almost like a child mystery novel or something: The mystery of the missing Visa Agent or something. Quoting further: "Police Colonel Sarawut Chooprasit, Superintendent of Muang Phuket Police, said company registration records revealed the firm was run by three Thais and a foreign national." 

So yeah, this is just something that does happen from time to time and you will often hear these horror stories about visa agents. They take somebody's passport, we saw it a lot under COVID. In those circumstances I was a little bit more sympathetic to "visa agents" because the COVID situation was just so unprecedented that it was difficult for anybody, us included, to really get our mind around how to deal with things. Now that being said, in every case we dealt with, we managed to find a solution for folks. 

The thing to understand and take away from this video, especially when you are coming up on the end of a Visa, first of all you want to be dealing with somebody who you trust. Yes passports, we hold for brief periods of time. We don't really like to because it is an important travel document; it has a lot to do with somebody's situation but we oftentimes will hold a person's passport for a day or so, if they need help with a 90-day report, or they need assistance dealing with something or we need a copy of it or we need it to file a document or something like this, we may hold a passport for a day or two. Having a Visa agent hold a passport for a prolonged period of time, that should cause some internal hesitation I should say in anyone overseas especially the case when they are still holding it and you are coming up on overstay. My opinion is if overstay is in the offing you want to be dealing directly with whomever you are dealing with. I am not talking about, it is weeks off, I am talking about it's days in the offing and you have been dealing with this person for a prolonged period of time and the matter is still not resolved. You are probably going to want to get your hands on that passport so that you can try to push whatever it is through or deal with or work out the situation however best you can. Yeah, it is a real problem. We've seen it where agents have just completely dropped the ball; they have left their folks hanging and they end up in overstay and it can result in things like a prolonged blacklisting. So something to keep in mind, just be very, very careful when you are dealing with Visa agents here in the Kingdom of Thailand.