Most common scams in Thailand

there are all the old-fashioned scams about tuk-tuks overcharging and trying to drive you somewhere you never asked to go like a fake gold or fake diamond shop, or accusing you of damaging jet skis on the beach at Phuket and Pattaya and demanding payment but those are getting less than before.

most of new scams seem to be online with fake visa scams and the like, there are many warnings I've seen about fake TDAC and ETA websites...

also real estate scams are still popular as before, I don't think buying property is a good idea unless your Thai wife (or husband) already has land under their name.

I read quite a bit about Thailand before coming and one scam that came up a lot was in Bangkok at the Grand Palace. Tuk tuk Drivers just outside the entry would flag you as you walk by and ask if you're going to the palace and if you said yes they would say Oh it's closed this morning for a religious holiday But I can take you here here and here and by the time we return the palace will be open. Of course none of that is true they are just looking for your business the truth is the palaces nearly never closed. I read about it and then they tried it on me.

The police are another scam waiting to happen. I once ran a red light and a policeman started following me on his motorbike and followed me for quite a ways until I came to a secluded area. Then, he pulled me over. He told me it was a 2000 baht fine and waited for me to pay him. He started making small talk sort of killing time but it was obvious that he was just waiting for me to pay him. When it became clear I wasn't gonna give him any money he told me to follow him to the police station. At the police station they wouldn't take scanned money it had to be cash which seemed sort of odd maybe there was a reason for it. My very first time I came to Thailand I was stopped for not wearing a helmet in the policeman took me into a small booth and told me it was 500 baht fine. Being the neophyte I was I just paid him instead of of course he's supposed to write you a ticket then you take it to police station pay it and they give you a receipt.

Hello all,

Thank you for your insight!

Would you say that the language barrier is one of the main factors that make these scams possible?

Keep sharing your experiences, every bit helps! 😉

Cheers,

Cheryl

@Cheryl

Nothing to do with language, just dishonesty

I agree that it has less to do with language and more to do with opportunity and taking advantage of people that don't know procedures or rules. So, it pays to be familiar with what goes on where you are traveling to. Real estate is another area I have found people to be very unscrupulous. As for the commission for an agency to get when making a sale I have had some agents tell me 5% and others say it's 10%. I believe it's supposed to be 5%. And 3% when it's a non-agency person. I'm sure someone on here knows better and can correct me on this. This isn't anything new. People in my home country are pretty dishonest in this business. I had a friend do it for a while and quit because he said his boss kept asking him to do immoral things.

Many time the SCAM is explained as "this is how we do things" when in reality its just greed. Some "polite" push back usually works for me.

I've always wondered why with all the stories you here about the Problems at immigration (I've been relatively lucky), If their is some type of special silent deal between immigration offices and various agents...make things difficult, and the foreigner will out of frustration head to the Agent...everyone make money.

Food and beverages...a couple times I've order a meal or beverage, only to find out that the bill is 2 - 3 times more expensive than it should be, "Sorry Sir, we were out the items you ordered, and we upgraded your order" (top shelf booze, or ingredients $$$).

Grab - Bolt taxis have weeded out many of the Taxis scams. Also, spend a couple minutes online, and just ask "how much is a taxi from the airport to the city" saves a lot of frustration.

I've mellowed over the years, I use a modified 1 - 3 strike rule...screw me over once...OK maybe a mistake was made...after that,  you don't deserve my business. Also, I try to chalk these scams up as a Learning Experience.

I will share one more scam that I see all the time it happens at Big C grocery store. Doesn't really have to do with the store but there is motorbike parking in the front and there is only so many slots so sometimes people park on the red and white stripe which is illegal. Outside of Big C there are many scooter taxi drivers looking for of course customers leaving the store that have groceries to carry. What often happens is a customer will park outside of the allowed parking and into the red white stripe area. The Scooter taxi driver will see this and call the police to have the bike chained up and a note pinned to it that says to release the bike they must go to the police station and pay a 500 baht fine. The scooter taxi driver will wait for the customer to exit the store and go to his bike to find it chained up. The taxi driver will offer the customer a ride to the police station at an inflated price.

Several times I have seen this and I will approach the victim and offer to give him a ride to the station free of charge just to spite the scam.

I think I'm pretty savvy.

Before I went to Thailand for the first time, I looked up scams online, and thought I had it sussed.

Anyway, I wanted to go to MBK, so I got a taxi and made sure the meter was on.

The driver wanted me to go to to a jewellery store or something like that, I said no, just take me to MBK.

He kept on about it, I kept saying no, he stopped the taxi and said that MBK was just up the road, I got out and was in the middle of nowhere, without a clue where to go, and I had paid for MBK, luckily I stopped someone and asked, he had dumped me a couple of miles away.

Suffice so say, I never. Made that mistake again.  I believe they get gasoline tokens for taking people to these places.

It didn't give me a great first impression of Thailand to be honest.

I'm told that is why the taxi mafias were fighting so hard to block Uber and Grab from starting in Thailand but they thankfully lost the battle...

there is never a good reason to use a tuk-tuk or taxi in Thailand these days.

only use Grab, seriously unless your street has a few of those motorbike taxi guys and you have lived there a while and already trust them for short easy trips but many of those guys don't exist anymore cuz they are making better money driving for Grab now.

also never rent a jet ski or motorbike in Pattaya or Phuket or Bangkok it's not worth the risk unless you are in a quieter area and you already know which shops are honest, but even then you might run into other scams like @scbrock mentioned, part of the reason I avoid those 3 cities in Thailand and I'm guessing a few other places like Krabi are probably also getting worse that way too

and never buy jewels or jewelry in Thailand, most of it is fake... GOLD is the only thing that's real in Thailand and they do have some of the most pure gold in the world but you need to be very careful in which shops you choose, usually in a large shopping mall where you see many Thai customers is safer, or a few famous gold shops in Chinatown Bangkok are also legit but even for gold there are many fake shops so be very careful about that

I'll share one more scam I ran into recently when I visited the island of Yao Yai. We wanted to rent a motorbike but the choices were limited because it was low season. The place we normally rented at was closed so we tried a new place and the prices seemed OK for the 125 size 250 baht for 24 hr isn't great but not terrible. For the 150 bikes it was 500 for a day which it too much. Where the scam comes in is I was going to put a couple liters anyway of 91 gas. There was a pump about 20 meters away that I was going to use. This guy tells me that you can only use 95 grade gas in this bike. Completely untrue 91 is just fine but he had bottles of "95" That he would sell me. Of course these bottles had no markings on him they were just old coke bottles or something. I suspect that he just went to that same pump of 91 grade filled his bottles and sold them as 95 At an inflated price. I can't be 100 percent sure that that is what he did but I strongly suspect it.