@John *****

Your insurance company has to sign a specific document from the embassy in order to be able to use your own insurance. And it's almost impossible to get an insurance company to sign this document. And that's only for the initial non-OA visa. You can't use that form for subsequent extensions, so you would have to get one of the qualifying Thai policies unless you go back home and apply for a new non-OA visa.

@Paul ******

Don't really know much about that

@Paul ******

as of January 1st 2025 the last embassies switched to online. But there are still a couple that requires payment in person at the embassy. I only know of Laos and Myanmar where that's the case though.

There's no such thing as in person applications anymore. Every Thai embassy is now using the e-visa system.

Go online to the Thailand evisa system and enter your location and passport country, and it will tell you which embassy your application will be processed by.

@Alan *********

there's no law affecting what they are doing with bank accounts. There's no law that says tourist can't have bank accounts, it's just bank policy which means it's at the discretion of each bank branch manager. So that portion is irrelevant. And I haven't heard of any agents having problems with immigration, so it doesn't sound like anything is coming to an end. It's just in the news and will be gone from the news in a couple months. Same as everything else in Thailand.

@Alan *********

nothing is coming to an end. You can still get a Bangkok Bank account open with an agent today. The price is just higher than before.

@Robert *********

yes, but you're going to have mandatory insurance forever if you do that. It might end up costing more in the end.

A little confused about your statement of wanting to be stamped in on the DTV so your wife could apply for one. That's not a requirement. You just need to upload your DTV e-visa for your wife's application. Doesn't have anything to do with you being stamped in or not. Unless you just said that to get in, then it would be fine.

You can try the site that the owner of this group created. They made a more user friendly version and it's also free as long as you are submitting within the same 3-day window that the official site offers.

Most likely they're just lazy and don't want to deal with it. So they try to push you off on someone else.