There are two types of people to whom you should never give your phone number and email address:
Women called Ning who have a look in their eyes that you mistake for lust but is in fact indicative of a deep-seated drug habit of the type that compels them to phone you at three o’clock in the morning some three months after you have concluded a brief and messy relationship, to advise you that they still love you desperately, but also that they want to cut off your genitals and feed them to their sister (that they don’t have); the two slightly dissonant messages delivered in a single sentence by a voice heavy with narcotics and totally devoid of emotion before the line goes dead, briefly preceded by a noise that sounds exactly like a phone being thrown against a brick wall.
Estate agents.
The first is of course merely an example, and anyway her name was Nina. The second is based upon bitter experience on a number of occasions.
‘Estate agents’ is a wide-ranging and probably too polite a term for the ever increasing numbers of people in Pattaya who are involved in the noble pursuit of trying to sell us real estate (and real estate is a wide-ranging and probably too polite a term for the ragged assortment of incomplete housing estates, failed condo projects and thirty square metre boxes offering a “100 metre walk to the sea - provided you don’t mind scaling a couple of walls”, that make up the Pattaya property market).
You can find the hopeful sellers perched on stools, sitting in impressive sales offices, gesturing at a balsa-wood mock-up of the project rising magnificently from a plywood base; whilst a muddy field out the back has been cleared to show you just how committed they are to deliver your future home. Increasingly, you can also find them manning little stalls in shopping malls, armed with artist’s impressions, payment schedules and a desperate expression.
Their modus operandi never varies. The project is wildly popular beyond all expectations and I better get in quick. They just happen to have a unit that satisfies my requirements available now but it will be gone tomorrow etc etc. They are invariably deeply disappointed that I don’t sign up immediately; but as a small compensation they are most insistent that I should give them my contact details. They shove a piece of paper in front of me upon which they expect me to write my name, my email address and my telephone number. It’s like going into Tesco’s, considering the carrots, and then being required to provide a personal profile before exiting the shop. I refuse to play.
Please give us your contact details.
Why?
So we can contact you.
Why would I want you to contact me?
So we can advise you of any new deals, phase 2, construction progress; things like that.
If I want to know any of that I can contact you.
Oh. Anyway, please give us your details.
No. Sorry, I have to rush back to that jeans shop I was just in and give them my home address and webpage URL.
Then I walk out. In fact, showing an interest in a property development and then watching them squirm as you refuse to provide your contact details is an amusing way of filling in time while your wife raids shoe shops. As a variation on a theme, collect the business card from one stall and use the phone number on that as your contact details at the next. For extra pleasure, ask any foreigners manning the desks if they have a work permit.
Foolishly, I used to be more compliant. If a smiling sales girl asked me to write down my contact details; where was the harm? The answer soon came in a stream of unwanted emails from the developer I had visited, but also from other property companies I had never heard of, offering me sea views, an infinity pool and a fitness centre; all in one convenient location with unrivalled investment potential and a completion date based on quantum theory.
Most disruptive of all were the phone calls I received from Raimon Land. You know Raimon Land: Northshore, Southshore, The Lofts; well you may not know them for The Lofts because it never got built. I won’t bore you with the story of my phone call exchanges with Raimon Land because I have already bored you here. But their email assault has continued.
The smaller companies who bombard me with their feeble sales pitches can be usually dealt with by a salvo of moderate abuse informing them I no longer wish to receive their spam and could they please stop. Usually they do, although it can take a few attempts.
But Raimon Land, being big, professional and properly organised, have a convenient sentence on the bottom of their missives which reads “If you would prefer to no longer receive this newsletter, please unsubscribe from this newsletter”. Excellent, so I click on “unsubscribe” and I am informed that:
Unsubscription Completed
Your email address is unsubscribed from our mailing list.
Delighted with my unsubscription, and wondering what genuinej would say, I relax and wait for something more pertinent to arrive in my mail box.
About a month later, what arrives in my mail box is another newsletter from Raimon Land and I invoke my unsubscription again; with similar zero effect, and so it has continued for the past year. I have been pondering some form of direct approach to stop their trolling; but then suddenly I am glad I didn’t because I received this:
The Unixx is to be built (allegedly) on the same plot that The Lofts wasn’t. The publicity material informs me it will include a multipurpose lawn and three meditation pavilions, so I will admit my interest is piqued.
I open up my spreadsheet of potential investment properties and check the key information I have recorded about the Unixx. Cost per square metre, number of units in the development, facilities, location, closeness to beach, city and transport routes, maintenance costs, likely achievable rental, projected resale after five years, foreign ownership availability; and all the other factors one takes into consideration before committing several million baht on what can be a speculative investment.
But suddenly, with this latest information in this email, everything on my spreadsheet seems somehow superfluous. For should I sign up now they will present me with an iPad! And not just any old iPad, no sir. An iPad Mini. And not just any old iPad Mini, no sir. A bottom of the range 16GB Wi-Fi. That’s an 11,200 baht value right there.
Problem is, I already have an iPad. So I have written to Raimon Land asking them if they will give me an 11,200 baht discount off a 3 million baht unit instead; and also promise to never, ever contact me again.
Comments 🔗
2013-03-05| Craig saysGlad you are back in form
2013-03-05| Clive saysSo this is either where we all have a nice little chuckle at my warped sense of humour, or where I end up getting in trouble. Again.
The trick here, and it is a trick, is to keep a small scrap of paper in your wallet that contains the email address of anyone who has annoyed you, sent you spam email, or a virus, or, preferably, the email address of the last bunch of muppets who asked you for your email.
Tell the assistant that you will gladly provide an email address, just don’t specify whose. Granted, this digital sleight-of-hand is so subtle that you won’t get to see the delightful end result, but sometimes your imagination does a better job of that anyway.
In today’s other top tip, handle junk mail the same way… Carefully collect any “postage paid” return envelopes that are sent to you from double-glazing companies (I bet you get a lot of those in Thailand, right?) and fill them with the junk mail from estate agents. Send the estate agents your double glazing offers by way of return favour. This trick, in particular, has a double whammy. First, you get to annoy some poor sod at the receiving outlet, who excitedly opens their return-paid envelope in the hope of an order, only to discover a flyer for some other dross; and later they realise that because the envelope was post-paid, they have just had to fork out hard cash to receive the junk you thoughtfully send them…
Also, if ever you get unsolicited phone calls, wait for them to pause for breath before asking if you can just go turn your stove down before you take the call. Put a box over the phone and check every hour to see if they got bored and rang off. In the interim, they can pay for the call…
If you want to be really devious on the email one, find out the mail address of someone really important. Like a Police Chief Inspector. Or… Um… Just saying…
Alternatively, if they’re cute, tell them they can have your number if you can have theirs…
2013-03-05| Pete saysIf Raimon Land are, as you say, “big, professional and properly organised”, how come they can’t get the spelling and grammar in their advert correct?
2013-03-05| Jock saysSo, I guess next time I´m in Jomtiem and a women called Ning, an estate agent from Raimon Land approaches me I should avoid her … unless she´s cute !!
2013-03-06| Spike saysAll fine suggestions. in my Bangkok days we used to come across some real arseholes in the oil industry. Those foolish enough to furnish their business cards had their names adopted on a night out in a seedy bar and their card handed over at the end of the evening to the roughest girl in the room. “Call me anytime, day or night”.
2013-03-06| Spike saysThey don’t have access to genuinej.
2013-03-06| Spike saysNext time you should read the post properly.
2013-03-06| Pookety saysBought off plan myself in Bangkok, Property Perfect (a familiar big builder, so we’re confident of the quality/build, but also because we only pay about 10% down, the rest on transfer so its no/low risk to us). http://pf.co.th/condominium/icondo/sukhumvit103/index.aspx They’re only just past the piling stage (click Project Progress, wait for the photos to scroll in) which puts them about 3 months late. I consider that to be ‘prompt’ by Thai standards.
You should see some of the projects here in Phuket, there was a field we went to to see the Geminids meteor shower end of last year, a nice dark field with no buildings and no street lights surrounded by nature. Perfect for seeing the nighttime sky. We went back there last week and it’s been cleared and a new housing estate half built and it was 2/3rds sold out. Largely due to the prices. 2.2 million for a large town house.
The rate of property construction is nutty, I lived in Bangkok for a year and 3 condos went up within view of us while we were there. I moved to Phuket, been here less than a year and 2 housing estates and a 24 hour supermarket have been built walking distance from us. From land clearance to finished project in a few months. Which is why I don’t think property is a good investment as long as there is an infinite supply of new constructions how could you resell or rent out old ones?
As for the phone/email thing, buy a smartphone with block feature, and gmail has create filter->trash which does the same for email. You’ll never really worry about those again.
I have to say though, in the UK I would have spent all my money living in some tiny little flat. Here I can have a Bangkok condo, and a decent house near the sea, eat like a king, have a new car bike, new water proof camera (went for the Lumix FT4 thanks for pointing me to review sites), new computers, new this new that. So I think I’m fantastically lucky to live here.
2013-03-06| Spike says“So I think I’m fantastically lucky to live here.” I’ll drink to that sentiment.
2013-03-06| Grant saysClive your warped and evil sense of humour does you great credit! Years ago, when it was possible, I used to send subscriptions to Herbert W Armstrong’s “Plain Truth” magazine to anyone who had irritated me. It was quite a few… The other thing we used to do when the junk mail got really annoying was to wrap bricks in brown paper, paste the reply-paid addressed envelope to the front and drop it in the mail box. Cost them a heap of postal surcharge to get your brick…
2013-03-06| Grant saysPass the gin old chap, Cheers!
2013-03-06| Clive saysNow you’re talking…
About 15 years ago, a friend of mine was stitched up badly by a former school chum of ours, who asked for help and then did the dirty on my friend, who was left out of pocket and annoyed. For revenge, he bought a small selection of “top shelf magazines”, and of course the obligatory British tabloid papers that had/have advertisements for dodgy “fashion” clothing in the back.
He sent off requests for brochures and information to every outfit he could find - literally used up several books of stamps and made numerous phone calls. Shortly thereafter, a certain rotter could not believe the sheer volume of hugely dubious advertising catalogues that starting to pour through their letter box.
Let’s just say the person concerned quickly became a reformed man, largely because his then girlfriend threatened to leave him when the post started to arrive.
That one sure did give us a chuckle…
2013-03-07| Grant saysThat’s a real beauty Clive, fun with a lesson learnt! Remind me to tell you sometime how we once cancelled someone’s pilot’s licence with a ’letter’ from the Civil Aviation Dept…
2013-03-07| Grant saysBut they could have! You could arrange that…
2013-03-07| Grant saysDon’t spoil his fun! Knowing Jock he’s liable to end up totally shagged with a free condo…
2013-03-10| galumay saysI didnt realise you knew Ning too.
2013-03-11| Spike saysOnly in the biblical sense.