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True Vision scam

Thai lady wins major UK Award

Turn down the air-conditioning and take better care of parking

True Vision scam

Editor;
I was surprised to see a reply from the editor to ‘Electric fitter scam’ letter in your last issue. Whilst on a winning streak might I point out a True Vision scam, not necessarily pulled by the company but by the ‘engineers’ who do the fitting.
Our Condo Block has Sophon cable and when I wanted another True Vision connection in the bedroom the engineers made the connection through the Sophon box in the hallway. Connection fee 3,000 baht. True’s picture was perfect but Sophon’s was terrible.
The True engineers were called many times, bringing boosters at 900 baht a time which seemed to work for a short period but then we were back to a bad Sophon picture again. Subsequent investigations showed they actually cost half that!
Eventually a Sophon engineer called while the True fitters were also here; they said there had to be a separate connection, not a dual connection. True fitters said they couldn’t do that and left. I drilled a hole in the bedroom wall so the cable from the dish could be extended into the bedroom, True fitters came and tried to charge me 1,500 baht for the 3 meters of cable!
I contacted True many times asking them if they outsourced the fitting or if they employed the fitters but got no reply. I have since heard of other True customers in Jomtien Complex Condos having the same problem.
Perhaps you could get True to explain.
Regards,
RW
Ed’s note: We passed this message along to True Visions, and received the following, unsigned reply:
Dear Sir or Madam,
On behalf of True Visions Care, we would like to inform you that we did not neglect this case but we are co-operating with our relevant department to investigate the case and will inform our customer back when we have any further progress.
Best regards,
True Visions Care
Support & Non-Voice Management

Thai lady wins major UK Award

Editor;
First of all, why is it so many people (men and ladies) typecast all Thai ladies as sirens of the night? My wife of 20 years, Soodsawat (Ooy) Rigg, who has lived on and off in the UK (we have a home in the Mabprachan area of Pattaya) and has run 14 Thai restaurants and fast food takeaways, has just been named the North West winner of the O2 Female Entrepreneur of the year for her social enterprise educational school road show.
She does not frequent bars, nightclubs or discos, but has constantly worked up to 20 hours a day to establish her businesses and now has also just opened the first Thai cultural cooking school here in Barrow in Furness in the North West of England.
She will now be sponsored to not only take her cultural educational road show around the UK, but we hope to also perform at the various orphanages in Pattaya and the rest of Thailand. She has been to over 900 schools and performed her unique cultural cooking show for more than 100,000 people in the last 3 years. Couple this with also bringing up our daughter over the last 17 years, this is no mean feat.
She is also shortly opening up another Thai restaurant on a floating nightclub and casino (The Princess Selandia) that will specialise in Kantoke dinners and weddings. All this to hand, not all Thai ladies are just after a quick money grabbing scheme to rob the ideal farang man and retire to a lazy life of their dreams.
Yours,
John Rigg

Turn down the air-conditioning and take better care of parking

Editor;
Before I have a moan, I should say that the New Central Department Store on Beach Road has generally been the best thing that has happened in Pattaya in the last ten years as far as I am concerned. However, we just got back from seeing a movie I came away a bit disappointed and bruised from the experience.
Firstly, as I often do, we just go to the movies on whim without doing research and make the decision on what movie to see based on the starting time and the descriptions on the boards in the foyer of the movie theatre. So when we went into a theatre expecting to see a light hearted Shirley McClaine film about a talented kid, and ended up watching a load of 18 rated rubbish about a gay Austrian I was somewhat disappointed. Please change the description. A quick search on Google just now reveals the other ‘Bruno’ about the kid was made in 2000. Yes it was the wrong description in Thai too. We had to freeze our butts off too throughout this drivel. How about having less air-conditioning, using less energy and improving your green credentials and save movie goers from catching a cold at the same time. Win/win. Not difficult to do.
So having left that, and getting back to the motorcycle parking, firstly I nearly knocked myself out on a low and solid pipe in the middle of the main foot entrance to the motorcycle parking. I mean seriously low even by Thai standards and I was half expecting it to have drawn blood. Yes it had some yellow and black tape round it but, a bit like the traffic cones put immediately on top of the road works here, it was too little too late for the less alert of us. I had my head turned at the time. It wouldn’t pass health on any job site that I have worked even in a hard hat area.
Finally, arriving at my bike, we had to wait for no less than ten minutes in a long queue the entire length of the car bike double rowed because all the staff from the store use the same park and security gate. This has been the second time this has happened and makes the advantage of riding a bike as a convenient mode of transport pointless.
On a plus note, it was particularly noticeable by its absence that there were little fumes from all these scooters and shows how clean burning they are. It wouldn’t have been survivable in a similar queue in an enclosed place like that 20 years ago in Thailand when I first arrived! However, it doesn’t mean we all want to sit there though does it? Now, I am all in favour of security but honestly, I can’t see your average customer in a Benz expected to do the same thing if all the Central staff had cars. As usual motorcycle users are treated like second class citizens. Central please get it fixed.
One last point before I finish; if the movie finishes late and you park your car somewhere around the middle floors, good luck in finding a door open to the car park and finding your car! Not only is this annoying but it could be very dangerous in the event of a fire or emergency.
So to sum it up, please Central get the movie descriptions fixed, make reasonable access to all parking areas and separate customer from staff motorcycle areas to make leaving the premises less of an ordeal. We all love Thailand and most of the time I shrug these annoyances off like the rest of us do when we get incorrect information, feel physical pain because of the poor infrastructure and construction, and learn to get used to unnecessary queues. I just don’t think these are the aspects of Thailand that a supposedly top class department store should be inflicting on its badly needed customers. We can get that at any old talad nad all over the country. Yes I know if I don’t like it I can go somewhere else. Well actually a lot of tourists don’t like it and yes they do go somewhere else as is painfully obvious.
Paul Pearmain

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