Why was my Soft Power DTV visa application rejected at the Taipei embassy for a 2-week cookery course?

@Roberto ******

what consulate did you call? The Thai consulate in Frankfurt does not answer calls or emails. And this has been the same with Brasil. The Frankfurt Consulate of Mexico answers the phone 1x per week for 1 hour. You have to ask in person to know when that is.

@Ric *****

not what I’m seeing on the Thai embassy of Frankfurt site. It’s literally asking you to call them and “Don’t be a stranger, say Hello!” Lol.

Where are you looking?

@Roberto ******

@Saul ******

Washington DC.

@Justin *******

yes, the Ed visa has been good, I was just replying to your comment that NO soft power nothing is going to take 180 days py for 5 years.

As I do muay thai long term I considered your statement incorrect.

@Ric *****

thank you for this reply! I was going to say the same thing.

@Justin *******

I don't think that's the case at all. All Thai consulates operate in a similar fashion, but the interpretation of the rules may sometimes be a little different AND sometimes the rules change over time.

In Laos, due to a large volume of applicants, particularly from countries such as Myanmar who used agents, they clamped down on the financials, requiring applicants to keep the required funds in their account for 3 consecutive months, to prevent agents from lending the money for a few hours, then asking for it back.

This did not occur at consulates further afield, meaning that at those consulates, they care less about how long the money has been in your account (which is relatively meaningless) but more about how you acquired the funds (say through your salary or invoices being paid to you).

@Luit ****************

just meant, if their intent with the dtv was to time box the soft power activity, they'd have told embassies to grant dtvs with a visa length equal to the activity length. clearly it wasnt the intent overall since they made dtvs a fixed length visa type of always 5 years ☺️

@Justin *******

I think the DTV is not designer for soft power, but for workcation and digital nomad.

The soft power is just an extra option.

Thailand has no variabele length visa as far as I know.

Maybe they were just to naive about people not finding the correct visa for their situation, but just wanting DTV and then try to comply with requirements.

If I would have to do some activity in a country which takes 2 months, I would look for a visa covering this, and not finding a 5 year visa.

That would be the logical thing to do.

For some reason this logoc is not valid for Thailand.

I see a lot of people here trying to trick the visa system in all kind of possible ways, including border runs, visa runs, wrong types of visa, bribing officers through agents and so on.

MFA should know about this stupid practices, and could have done a better job to make each visa type only available for the correct group.

@Luit ****************

But the Thai government is pushing the soft power options. Getting people into the country to spend money is the object.

@Roberto ********

Yes, they try to push, but with only 2 week training it does not really do much for the economy.

A lot of people in this group are not really interested in the soft power options, but only see it as an excuse to get a visa not meant for them.

So when the government really wants to help the companies behind the soft power options, they should change the requirements for the DTV so applicants really have to invest into soft power options.

And getting people into the country also might be an objective as you say, but when I read here most of the people applying now for soft power, are already in the country, and are not really interested in the soft power options itself, but want for as less money as possible this DTV visa.

@Jay ****

thank you ! :)

@Jay ****

and are you using the Thai Embassy or Consulate at which they have obtained the DTV visa for their Muay Thai training students?

@James *******

no

@Jay ****

frankly I think it's NOT a wise decision to not 🚫 go to a Thai Embassy or Consulate which has not already issued a DTV Visa with documents from the Muay Thai training school where you will be training.

@James *******

well I'm Australian and I'm in Australia so I applied in Australia. It really should make no difference. Although I have heard some are harder than others

@Jay ****

Where is Australia did you apply from? I am looking at going through Tiger Eye also. How long did you wait?

@Ellice ***

I'm in Queensland and applied at the Canberra Thai consulate. Applied about 4 days ago and the application is pending approval so hopefully not much longer.

@Tiger *******************

was great, very fast response and provided all the documents quickly.

@Lili *******

London appears to be a lot easier with the dtv

@Roberto ********

But you have to pay for the appointments before you get the visa . They want to see a receipt for the payment , rather than just a booking

@Werner ***********

I think you're joking. It's a well-known fact that embassies around the world run their own shows and make their own rules. Even in Australia there are inconsistencies between the Canberra Embassy and Sydney Consulate with visas and pricing. There's no way in the world they have meetings! 😆😆😆

@Sky ****

Taipei will tell you beforehand if your application is successful. So you do not lose money. That will change when they move online next month

@Paul ******

Yeah, by the book and reasonable is a good way of describing them before. Of late though they seem different especially with the financial requirement.

@Hana *****

Heard of Embassy websites ?

@Hana *****