Why is the group emphasizing the use of visa agents now, and are moderators affiliated with them?

Great words

Well said Andy !

I agree. There's one poster who continually pushes Thai Visa Centre (which can only be seen as for his own gain). If you challenge his stance and suggest the process is easy to carry out independently he becomes very insulting, which I believe is a bad reflection, not only on the group, but on the agency.

Thank you. I recognised that something had changed. Now I know why.

I think that, because visa agents are an actual real part of expat life in Thailand, until they give the whole immigration system a real overhaul, we should be able to discuss abd recommend agent services.

That way fewer people will get scammed by agents charging 400% more than others and and also learn what risks are involved in buying a visa through an agent. Sharing of information and real life experiences are a good thing 👌

Um, since when does FB allow groups/pages to be sold/bought by a controlling administrator/founder/"owner" since no one individual (or company other than Meta) can actually "own" a group/page according to FB TOS? Has this been changed? I started a coupla buy/sell groups in another country with 80k-ish members each now....would love to make some cash off them if legit.....

I would love to see ONE comment where any of us have "pushed" using a visa agent.

Its not that the mods/owners are pushing agent's, Its that immigration office's are making it a pain in the ass to go direct>

ur choice always

As one of the mods I would like to concur with

@Bra****

that none of us have an affiliation with the groups owners. We do this on our own time and for no financial benefit.

We would rarely ever suggest going down the agent route unless circumstances would probably require that. Even though the owner of the group is an agent. They don’t tell us how to manage the group nor ask us to push their services.

On many occasions we would recommend someone using a service like a visa run company to do a border bounce or visa run. Purely because they know how to “grease the wheels” for those that have past histories of entries. The same would go for using a “fast track” service if flying into Bangkok or Phuket. Not for gain for us or the groups owners, just because it’ll probably work out cheaper for the person to use use one than not.

If you ever see a post or comment about someone recommending a particular agent or service then please let one of us know so we can review it.

Lets me come from perspective of someone who has been both sides of fence and was there when group was bought

I was either admin or mod when Thai Visa bought the group.

The only financial thing from selling group was to the guy that started the group. There is no "bonuses" or incentives given to moderators for pushing any visa services nor is it requested.

I left because after covid work for me started coming back big time and as Brandon said lots and lots of people send messages rather than post on group and some of these can be urgent such as person is stuck in immigration and you end up on phone with IO. So the group is more time consuming than you think.

Also personally didnt like the addition of collecting e mail address by new owners, but easy enough to put fake e mail in

I have never noticed Moderators pushing anything.

The presence from the visa company is minuscule, and if anything people are overwhelmingly suggested not to use agents unless for specific conditions.

I came for the covid protocols, i stayed for the unintentional comedy.

I'd say the contrary. I know it's been owned by an agent for a while but in the early days they had some clumsy interactions with poor feedback so have thankfully mostly withdrawn.

In the meantime the mods here offer brilliant help, personally I use it as an education resource as you know what gets proffered by them is objective factual help.

I've never seen our Big People push agents. Maybe you transposed two groups?

May I ask what it means when you say that Thai Visa Centre has bought this page? What does buying this page entitle them to? Thank you for answering clearly above, that's helpful.

There's only 3 of us moderators, and none of us have anything to gain from this group at all. We're not affiliated with the agency that bought the group.

Could you provide some examples of what you are describing?

I rarely recommend people to use an agency, but when I do it's because based on previous experiences of members, the situation they are in would either be difficult for them to solve on their own or impossible. And when I do recommend an agency I usually explain why.

We do not allow agents to advertise in the group (or any other advertising at all for that matter) but we do allow people to recommend services they've personally used and have experience with, whether it be transportation, real estate agents, or visa agents. When that endorsement is in response to a question we let it stay as long as it's not excessive.

Usually the 2 circumstances that I recommend an agent is when someone wants to do a land border bounce from Bangkok and have a long history in Thailand, I'll recommend Thai Visa Service since they have a good reputation and are easy to use since they pickup and drop-off from the Lotus at On-Nut BTS station.

The other time I recommend an agent is when someone has a long history in Thailand or problematic visas like an ED or Volunteer in their passport and they want to fly into Bangkok or Phuket visa exempt or with a tourist visa. Then they should utilize a VIP entry service which will ask them for their history and give them a price to guarantee entry through the airport. When someone is likely to benefit I will recommend to contact Thai Visa Centre (who are the owners of this group) as I don't know of any other agencies that offer the service. I'm sure they are out there I just don't know of any.

(Don't confuse VIP entry with Fast Track. VIP entry includes Fast Track but just regular Fast Track is not the same)

One final note: for every horror story you see posted the group, us admins know of 3 more that came to us through DMs of people begging for help or suggestions on how to fix a situation. We have a lot of experience with the bad experiences of others. We try to help where we can but we don't know everything and don't have any special connections.