Good point I had assumed there was an immigration office that could be accessed before going air-side, but I don't know if that's true or not.

I've never had to correct such a mistake probably due to luck but maybe in part by doing the things I mentioned. I can't say John's advice to go to local immigration is wrong, because I've no personal experience with this. I do have general experience with bureaucracy and if it's possible to fob you off by telling you to go someplace else that's often what happens. I think you're safer going back to the airport (the place where the error occurred), but I can't know that for sure. Good luck!

Yes. If an immigration office is closer you could go there but likely they will advise you to return to the airport to have it corrected.

Out of curiosity did you remember to put your visa number on your TM-6 Arrival/Departure Card? You should do that. I also accidentally fold over the passport page that contains the visa when I give the IO my passport which makes them curious as to why the page is folded over and helps bring their attention to the fact that you have a visa rather than are just requesting a 30-day visa exempt entry.

Also, when you get your passport back from the immigration officer take a few seconds to make sure you have received the proper permission to stay before you move away from the entry point.

Oops, sorry. I read your first post as 20,000, rather than 2,000. My mistake. 2,000 is a completely reasonable fine for what the person did (not file for a whole year). That makes perfect sense. If it happened repeatedly (year after year) and I were his Immigration Officer I would start fining him 5,000 baht because, in my opinion, he is being flagrant about breaking the rule.

On the other hand, good to know that if you disregard this rule you will likely only face 2,000 baht per year. ;-) However, he may also be getting a stamp in his passport indicating he routinely doesn't file a 90-Day Report. There are no official consequences for doing that but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want that in my passport.

Man, the person you know must have really pissed his immigration officer off! The only way it makes sense to me (legally speaking) is that he didn't do 90-Day Reports for a whole year (or longer) and they decided to charge him the maximum fine of 5,000 (for flagrant violations) for each 90-Day period he missed. That's really unusual! But you know what, sometimes you can really piss off an immigration officer and then they rack their brains for ways they can stick it to you, so I don't discount your story. But like I said very unusual. You have to work pretty hard to piss off immigration officers that badly ;-)

Annika Almersson I have not heard that, but I guess anything is possible. Just checking with you that we're talking about the 90-Day Report that one on a long-term stay needs to file when he has been in Thailand for 90 days, and not some sort of visa where he needs to leave every 90 days. The worst fine possible in the law is 5,000 baht for flagrant violations of the 90-Day Report rule. I've never heard of anyone even getting that high a fine for this reason. The 20,000 sounds like the sort of fine you get for an overstay. Not doing a 90-Day Report will never get you on overstay, those are two different things.

You will not be fined at the airport. If you have business in the future with your immigration office they may notice that you had missed a 90-Day Report. If they do they could fine you 2,000 baht. That's basically the worst case.

Did you know you can do them online or mail them in? There's really no good reason not to do one. Put it on your calendar.

Only four: UK, US, Australia, and Denmark, unless you know of another.

Don't know, but I'm interested in finding out what the answer is.

Grenville Berliner That was a decision for Thai Immigration to make. Not the embassies. If it were a problem of honesty why where no affiants ever prosecuted for committing perjury? No, it was simply that those embassies wanted to get out of serving their constituents with this service and used Thai Immigration as the excuse. The embassies were doing nothing wrong. Thai Immigration never threatened to stop accepting income letters from those embassies. The embassies should have continued on as before and if that were unacceptable to Thai Immigration, then TI had the power to require additional evidence from the applicant during the extension process (as they did with Americans in Chiang Mai and other places), or simply not accept the embassy letter.

That was their call. Not the embassies call. The embassies acted in a self-serving way without the least thought to their constituents. Putting their nationals at a severe disadvantage compared to the embassies that didn't join them in their "protest." Luckily for their citizens Thai Immigration came to the rescue and now the staff at those embassies get to sit on their lazy butts. So a win-win, I guess.