My husband and I just received our 10 year LTR visas today at the BOI, in the Wealthy Pensioner category. We chose to have him as the primary and me as a dependant, assuming it make things easier with the paperwork (although in the end that made very little difference).
As it’s a new visa, there is still very little talk about it in this group so I’m happy to answer any questions. Here are a few thoughts based on our personal experience:
- it took 5 weeks from start to stamp
- we did not go through an agent and we don’t feel that would have been necessary at all
- the BOI website was extremely user friendly
- there are way less documents to produce compared to the Non-OA which made this much easier for us (we had started the Non-OA process and felt quite frustrated by it for a variety of reasons - it’s not that the Non-OA or the Non-O are difficult per say, but that some of the requirements didn’t suit our particular situation, or required multiple complicated steps to obtain in our circumstance)
- you can call the BOI to ask questions or get an update and they always pick up… always! They were incredibly pleasant to work with and treated us like VIPs. It did not feel like we were communicating with bureaucracy at all.
- that said, you will need to call the BOI to get the file moving at times… for example, my status as a dependant indicated “approved” yet I wasn’t receiving any emails indicating next steps; we called and within 20 minutes, we received an email and were rolling again
- unlike other visas requests, there is no fee to be paid until all is approved and you are minutes away from receiving the stamp in your passport (so no stress of being rejected and wasting money)
- the fact that there is no reporting makes this an amazing visa to have (exiting and reentering the country once a year counts as your reporting)
- we needed to show health insurance but unlike the non-OA, it doesn’t have to be a Thai insurance company. We used IMG Global.
All in all, a fairly stress free process! I’m happy to answer any questions. 😁
