Education visas are often seen as the easiest way to be able to live in Thailand for 12 months without having to go on a visa run every three months.

Simply find a school, hand over 29,000 baht and sign up for a course of 200 hours of Thai lessons. The school will take care of the rest? in theory.

In practice, however, many Phuket expats, including Australian-born Karen Ellison, are finding out the hard way that sometimes things don?t always work out the way one may hope.

Karen recounts how she originally heard of www.athaivisa.com ? the website
she claims she was duped by, ?I visited the website earlier this year, partly because they had advertised in another local publication. Upon requesting information, I was immediately referred to the Surin International Language School and after subsequent conversations decided to pay the 29,000 baht fee for 200 hours of classroom training
which would entitle me to a Thai Education Visa.?

That was back in February however, and Karen remains without an education visa or much hope of ever recovering her lost money and tuition.

Unfortunately, Karen?s experience is far from being an isolated incident in Phuket, with many claiming to have been the victim of a similar type of scam.

The Patong International School is the other school owned by the MDG English training company who ran www.athaivisa.com. Both closed mid-July, 2010 and are under investigation by the local authorities.

The school in Surin was closed because it was without a Ministry of Education(MOE) recognised teaching license. The school in Patong meanwhile had a license to issue just eight-month visas instead of the yearlong visas that they actually advertised for.

Both the schools and the teachers must be registered at the MOE if they wish to operate as a legitimate school.

The first step that must be taken by a prospective student if they wish to 'study? is to make all the payments and submit their details to the MOE to see if they are entitled to study. If they are accepted, they should take the relevant documents to a Thai embassy abroad and will be issued with a three-month visa.

The student will then be issued with more documents that they have to have signed by the school before taking them to the Immigration Department to get their visa extended.

A school more than willing to do that legally is the Andaman International Language School
(AILS) owned by husband and wife, Dennis and Thanyarat Asher. Principal Thanyarat knows only too well the disparity between the AILS and the other less reputable schools, as she was the principal at the Patong International School until she left in April, 2010.

?I left a few months before it closed down. Michael Dylan Gregory (the manager of the school) was very rude to me and used to threaten me that if I didn?t sell more courses I would get sacked. I was very scared at times,? recounted K. Thanyarat.

Allegedly Mr Gregory also didn?t pay the staff?s salary or office rental in the months leading up to his disappearance and the schools? closure.

Karen, Dennis, Thanya and many others have been to the police and have filed a report against Mr Gregory and he is currently being ?investigated? by other local authorities. The problem, however, is that according to Thai law, the case is viewed as a civil instead of a criminal case.

The police informed Irish-born Phuket resident, Patrick Gerard O Callaghan
that if he wanted to get the money back or file a complaint, he had to sue K. Thanya
for damages, and then K. Thanya in turn could sue Mr Gregory.

The extent to which Mr O Callaghan was "messed around" by the Patong International
school causes a visible mixture of mirth and frustration on the Irishman?s face as he reclines on the sofa in the AILS? reception area anddescribes how he had been scammed.

?I paid 26,000 baht to them when I arrived on 16 March, 2010. I went to Penang with all the relevant documents and had it stamped at the Thai embassy. I came back and dropped off my documents at the Patong International School and assumed everything had been sorted. But when those three months expired, I was told that I would need to leave the
country again because the forms hadn?t been properly processed.?

He added with incredulity, ?So I went to Kuala Lumpur and had to pay for my own accommodation and visa. When I came back in July, the school had closed.?

One thing that is similar between the Patong International School and the AILS however, is the students? quite literally! This is because upon realising that they had been duped, many of them contacted K. Thanya for some answers.

Both she and husband Dennis were able to provide some but unfortunately not a refund.

?We?re out of pocket as well,? said Dennis, ?Although K. Thanya and I had nothing to do with all this, we are now teaching them for free and helping them get education visas.?

For some of the students like restaurant owner, Jean-Luca the money isn?t the biggest problem, ?We lost lessons. I have only completed 65% of my classes. This causes a problem with my legal status here.?

Although a school obviously can?t force the students to attend lessons, they do make a monthly report of their attendance and submit it to the MOE. This means that if they don?t have a valid reason for absences ? like sickness then they will be in trouble and may be forced to leave.

The education visa scam was one thing that many of the students weren?t expecting to learn at a school in Thailand. Before you enroll at a school make sure that the school is MOE certified.

The Post was unable to contact Mr Gregory and would like to point out that he has of yet not been charged or found guilty of any infringement.

If you have experienced problems with the aforementioned schools, please contact: www.andamanphuketlanguageschool.com or 076 296923.