@Cloudy ***

thank you. You're very kind! I have now ditched the agency 100%. I've been reading everyone's posts on this group for a while now seeing what people recommend. I should have just done it for him myself. Anyway... here's to a more positive experience and outcome doing it myself ✨

@Wayne ********

Honestly I really really want to. It has been pointed out to me that defamation law in Thailand is very strict and regularly enforced, through civil courts if not criminal. So I'm really hesitant because it's pretty obvious from what I've described above who we are. The agency would know just by looking at my post.

And apparently it can be classed as defamation even if what I'm saying can be proved as true which is super annoying because I have proof of everything but can do very little about it, sigh.

What I can say it's using them was a huge disaster. They lied to us about the reason for the rejection. I had to demand copies of everything as it was submitted. Copies of the emails from the Embassy. Copies of what they did to figure out that actual problem (nothing!).

I do plan to make a post about our experience once I've figured this out and hopefully once he's gotten his visa approved. It actually cost us far more because of the agent. We only used them because of the guarantee. Sigh. Sigh. Sigh. I just won't be able to name the company.

@Tim **********

I checked that one in advance but the vast majority of people I've seen who used Thai bank accounts seem to have been approved with no problem. They're not penalising people for wanting to stay in Thailand, I don't think. I could be wrong though.

@Wayne ********

We got the paperwork directly from the gym ourselves. We just made the mistake of using an agent that does the online submission for you with a guarantee that if there is a problem they will figure it out and resubmit it until it's approved. They can't find the answer to the problem though and gave up. So they were pretty pointless.

@Cloudy ***

Just to confirm we did deal directly with the gym. Just paid a relatively nominal fee to a company to do the document submission for us. That seems to have been a total fail though. The gym is definitely legit, as is the paperwork. Maybe the fact the agent used an agency email address instead of my partner's email address made it look suspicious... I'm not sure.

@Greg *******

excellent imagery. You made me smile despite my frustration at me not being able to figure this out 🙃

We got the paperwork directly from the gym ourselves. We just made the mistake of using an agent that does the online submission for you with a guarantee that if there is a problem they will figure it out and resubmit it until it's approved. They can't find the answer to the problem though and gave up. So they were pretty pointless.

@Peter *****

good point. I'll check with them. When we spoke to them a few weeks ago they said they'd had 5 or 6 people apply and get DTV. I didn't think that sounded like too many. But also not too few, if that makes sense.

I thought we'd done everyhing very much by the book. Genuine gym. Genuinely joining to do Muay Thai and actually train regularly. There must be something I'm missing but I can't figure it out.

We're hoping we can figure it out and re-apply in Hanoi. That's why I wanted to check if anyone else has had any problems. Bit confused right now.