Thailand vs The Philippines (Again)

[Freebie]

Any recommended agents.. there are a few large ones.. Siam Legal for instance and a whole bunch of others.. any recommended.... or any "do not touch !!!"

[ThaiWolf]

1 hour ago, Freebie said:

Any recommended agents.. there are a few large ones.. Siam Legal for instance and a whole bunch of others.. any recommended.... or any "do not touch !!!"

Siam Legal is a definite for 'do not touch'. Ask anyone who uses an agent. (Plenty in Pattaya)
I honestly can't recommend an agent as I have never used one. Like you are doing now, ask on a Thai forum such as AseanNow which actually promotes agents in some of their ads. It's a large forum with a large membership. I'm afraid it's rather brutal so you need a thick skin to wade through the dross.

[Jack Peterson]

[Mike J]

16 hours ago, ThaiWolf said:

I have received the wrath of many when I say that if you can't afford to plant around 20k GBP in a bank account for emergencies you shouldn't be considering living in another country like Thailand or even the Philippines, especially retirees

Makes perfect sense to me.   

[BrettGC]

17 hours ago, ThaiWolf said:

I have received the wrath of many when I say that if you can't afford to plant around 20k GBP in a bank account for emergencies you shouldn't be considering living in another country like Thailand or even the Philippines, especially retirees.   
 

 

1 hour ago, Mike J said:

Makes perfect sense to me.   

The horror stories you hear when people don't allow for this. 

[ThaiWolf]

I noticed a thread about electricity :

Thailand prices are fixed nationwide except for Bangkok. 

4.42 baht = 6.99 peso approx.
There is a very small service charge 25 baht pm and at present a 0.9 baht/kWh surcharge until November 2023. This is to recover the subsidies given during covid.
It's very rare to experience an outage and if there is (normally a transformer blow in a thunderstorm) it's up and running within the hour, day or night. Bills can be paid online / Banks / Offices / Seven-Eleven stores. If a bill is not paid within 4 weeks you are cut off until it is settled, also includes a small re-connection fee.

[BrettGC]

17 minutes ago, ThaiWolf said:

I noticed a thread about electricity :

Thailand prices are fixed nationwide except for Bangkok. 

4.42 baht = 6.99 peso approx.
There is a very small service charge 25 baht pm and at present a 0.9 baht/kWh surcharge until November 2023. This is to recover the subsidies given during covid.
It's very rare to experience an outage and if there is (normally a transformer blow in a thunderstorm) it's up and running within the hour, day or night. Bills can be paid online / Banks / Offices / Seven-Eleven stores. If a bill is not paid within 4 weeks you are cut off until it is settled, also includes a small re-connection fee.

Interesting.  Here's what we're paying in central Negros - about an hour south of San Carlos and 3 hours north of Dumguete. More than double the example you showed.  

Unplanned outages are rare where we are as well and usually rectified within an hour.  About once a month they have an all day planned outage on a Sunday in one of NORECO I's areas but we're always hit for at least an hour at the start and end as our town is a major distribution node.  They normally run from 6am to 6pm.  It cycles around to us about every three months for the full outage.  They're mainly for line and pole upgrades, other infrastructure improvements and tree clearing etc.  

Since they started the upgrades our unplanned outages have dropped significantly.  

[hk blues]

8 hours ago, BrettGC said:

Interesting.  Here's what we're paying in central Negros - about an hour south of San Carlos and 3 hours north of Dumguete. More than double the example you showed.  

Unplanned outages are rare where we are as well and usually rectified within an hour.  About once a month they have an all day planned outage on a Sunday in one of NORECO I's areas but we're always hit for at least an hour at the start and end as our town is a major distribution node.  They normally run from 6am to 6pm.  It cycles around to us about every three months for the full outage.  They're mainly for line and pole upgrades, other infrastructure improvements and tree clearing etc.  

Since they started the upgrades our unplanned outages have dropped significantly.  

That's a good bit dearer than we are paying - we are around 12.95 or so. 

[BrettGC]

2 hours ago, hk blues said:

That's a good bit dearer than we are paying - we are around 12.95 or so. 

Yeah I know.  I keep up to date on most of the electricity co-ops around the closer islands. 

[Heeb]

12 hours ago, hk blues said:

That's a good bit dearer than we are paying - we are around 12.95 or so. 

Our Zameco II (Zambales) rates have been as high as 23p per kilowatt hour, the last bill was 14p and that’s the cheapest I’ve seen in over a year. Meanwhile we are getting power delivered as low as 180vac sometimes on weekends when the resorts are full.