John Galt Presents: Recommendations and Referrals

If you love Stick, you may not consider me a friend. You may even dislike me for hammering on Stickman from week to week. I understand how you're feeling. You've been reading Stick's articles for years. He has provided you with valuable information. You're faithful in his following. I relate to what you're saying. I too felt like he was a friend to me. But this began to change once I realize what Stickman was doing when he "went commercial".

And now, sadly, I have to caution you about getting ripped off. I have to explain to you why you can't not follow Stick's recommendations too closely because it's not to your best advantage. In fact, it is likely to be to your disadvantage. Fundamentally, the commercial aspects of advertising in Thailand can lead to trouble for the consumer. Stick knows exactly what I'm going to tell you here. But, he won't repeat what I'm saying because it will cause him to lose money.

Finding reputable businesses to buy from in Thailand is much more different than it is in the west. You have heard of the horror stories of people getting ripped off in this country. Rips offs happen in the west as well, but they are much more common here for the westerner. There are very specific reasons for this. The westerner is accustomed to having mechanisms in place to protect them. The western's instincts are to trust the seller.

Please understand that Thais themselves also suffer from lack of the same services BUT, they don't have an instinct to trust the seller!

There is one mechanism that is used to insure a good and fair business deal. It's used all the time in Asian and you need to understand it. Without it, you are an island. Without it, you are at much greater risk. Without it, you will end spending more money than you should. Asian businesses and individuals are highly built around this mechanism. The mechanism of personal referral.

If you needed a maid to clean your house. You might ask a friend if they know anyone. That friend would say, yes, I know one person who my Thai wife's sister's friend. She can be trusted. That sister has known her friend and family for 6 years and they do good work.

In this case you have a referral that will prove to be reliable because that maid won't steal from you because it would reflect badly on the family.

If you put an ad up in a public place for the job, you could end up getting the same girl, but if there are no relationship that ties to you through to that family, she would feel less likely to be honest by you. She might have the weakness to steal from you if she thought that you didn't have any personal connection to her. This is how it basically works. She wouldn't necessarily be a bad person, but the temptation could be there to not always do the right thing. People in Thailand (and in other parts of Asia for that matter), don't always take full personal responsibility for their actions. They are fatalistic and will blame their weaknesses on other surrounding conditions. They can even be heavily into denial to the point where you would call them pathological liars.

People remain more honest and true to their word if they have a reputation to lose or a friendship that would be hurt. They will work better for you and be more reliable if a friend or family member recommends them.

The same holds true for a business. If a previous customer bring a new customer, that business will be more likely to provide better service and certainly a lower price to the new customer because they want to reflect positively on the previous customer. A company will not want to embarrass a previous customer buy doing someone wrong to the new customer they have been brought. Even IF something would go wrong, the recommending customer will usually come to the aid of the referred customer and leverage their relationship with that company to rectify any situation on behalf of the referred customer.

Here is a posting made by Stickman. He doesn't know anything about these people except that their business MIGHT be interesting to the farangs in Bangkok who will be buying a used car. WTF? Does he really expect you to go there blindly without any research on his part? Why even go through the trouble of making the recommendation?

Perhaps Stick is waiting for that company to see a few thousand hits from his site and then they'll call him and ask to advertise with him? Is that how the web site business should be? Letting the customer be the guinea pig? In Asian this not the respected way.

If you buy a second-hand car in the West and you don't know so much about cars yourself, you'll probably do one of two things - either drag a mate along who is pretty good with cars, or get a vehicle inspection done. Buying a second hand car in Thailand has never been a preferred option as in addition to not necessarily having a car savvy mate, there were never any car inspection companies in business. Add to that the fact that many locals never service their car but simply top up the oil and it could be a recipe for disaster. Help is now available with this company opening up a vehicle inspection service that on the surface looks very professional. Now buying second hand might make more sense.

Buy his own confession he says he know nothing about cars, but he gives this place a plug because it "looks very professional"? Come on Stick. This is Thailand. It's suppose to look good! Just making this recommendation without any knowledge of these people is completely against Thai customs. Stick knows better than this. If you knew Stick directly and had any kind of connection to you -- he would not recommend someone he does not know! That makes his recommend very obviously wrong.

This particular business is obviously new. They have no customers in the pictures. Their shop has no markings of ever having any business. This is a negative.

In Thailand, I have seen situations where people (with good intentions) take large loans and open businesses that they have no clue about. They are a disaster waiting to happen in some cases.

Take Galt's advice. Don't go to anyone without a firm knowledgeable recommendation from someone else who knows them and knows their work first hand.

The Galt knows about cars. I did just the smallest amount of research on this company and here is what I came up with. I emailed them and asked them about 2 of their pictures. I asked them to explain what is going on.


This is sensor that should determine if there is plastic filler on top of the metal body panel.	This is a sound meter pointed at the exhaust.

About this photos they said -- "We measure the color thickness to detect car accident and noise level meter to detect the noise level."

I responded "How does the noise level indicate a problem with the car? How can you really tell if a noise level is too high?"

They said, "Noise from car under the Thai law should be : i. 85 dB A when measured at 7.5 m. ii. 100 dB A when measured at 0.5 m"

The Galt has been around cars and shops quite a bit in previous years, and I can tell you no one that I know uses these "metal detector" type sensors. They do four things to look for body repair work. 1) They look at the reflection on the body panels for distortion in the reflection (waviness), 2) They run their fingers over body panels to feel for any waviness on the surface (often times you and feel what you can not see 3) They tap on body panels with a knuckle on their hand and listen to the sound and feel for the hardness. Plastic sounds and feels differently than metal. 4) They look on the opposite side of the body panels for obvious signs of repair. You can sweep a car in just a couple of minutes without a fancy sensor.

It had been pointed out to me that these meters are good at looking at the thickness of the paint. Doing so can show if a body panel has been repainted. My previous paragraph is geared directly at the detection of a dent repair with plastics and fillers.

I would suppose that knowing about paint thickness can be helpful to see if all panels on a car match and there by strongly suggest that the car has the original paint from the factory.

A reader did inform me that when he went to register his motorcyle for the 5 year, they required a sound check. So, in fact the sound meter may play an important role. This is something I had not seen yet as my motorcycle is only on it's 3 years.

The second picture is a decibel meter. The sensor is certainly not in the right place. I had not heard of Thai law governing sound but it is possible that they have law in this area. Of course, any local person in Bangkok would probably realize that cops barely have equipment to enforce speeding and drunk driving laws, so is there really a need to verify if a car is 100% "noise compliant"?

My guess is that these Car Test guys are low in practical experience or are "showing off" with technology to help impress potential customers. I would be very skeptical of this service.

The site says clearly that they don't recommend repair shops. Bull-shit. The culture here is all about recommendations and referrals to friends. I would be very surprised if the "tech" working the car doesn't recommend a friend on some occasions and you can be sure he will have a financial angle on that referral.

I'll tell you what I like best. I like when I'm out at the clubs with a couple of girls friend (who I don't sleep with) and they recommend me to a girl at another table.

This just happened to me this past weekend. I'm at one table with my 2 friends and I spy this other sweetheart at the next table. I look a few times. I smile. I tell my girls friends that this girl is very attractive (actually they ask me before I even open my mouth). During the course of the evening my friends are going over talking to this girl on my behalf. I didn't even ask them to do this. It is a natural tendency in the Thai culture to "fix people up". Their personal recommendation was a big foot in the door for me and it's a wonderful part of the Thai culture. Personal referral is an integral part of the Thai culture.

This might be of interest to your nemesis Stickman:

Q. Do you know how New Zealanders practice safe sex?
A. They spray paint X's on the back of the sheep that kick!

Oh Boy. (LOL), hang on a minute, we have to straighten this out. We can't be sinking down to a lower than Stickman level here. Besides, you know that Stickman isn't really a New Zealander anymore.

No, this is true. He has been here in Thailand 8 years and that is half of his adult life. He has now mutated to something between farang and Thai. "Ha-sip Ha-sip". Not everyone handles power all that well. It can turn you as dark as the rice patty worker. The Stickman has now become the Emperor Stickman. That's right. Stick has turned to the dark side and has very significant plans for the empire. According to the Stickman web site, the Emperor has called to order a meeting with all his storm-trooper writers next month. No doubt this meeting will be to discuss the plans on how to conquer the Thailand web space. To use a Stick-ism here "rumor has it" that one of his goals will be to break the hold of www.ThaiVisa.com's Internet market share. "The Galt" is only a rebel flea on the Emperor Stickman's back and is unlikely to be discussed at the imperial meeting. We should have some more on the Emperor's agenda on-line in the coming weeks because I have spies within his dark underworld organization.

Did you read the latest submission? Its truly sad story about guy playing around in Thailand while he has a girl at home and contacted HIV....what does Stick do? He uses the story to advertise his bar girl investigations business, check the top of the page it reads 800,000 Thais are said to be HIV pos if she sleeps around...this guy is rich...

This guy has a very good point. If you go and look at Stick's submission called A Sad Situation you'll see that Stickman is using this story to scare people into using his bar girls investigation service. Stick specifically quotes a pie in the sky number HIV infection number of 800,000 and implies that your girl may be sleeping around while you are away. The fear factor method of generating business is very low and shameful act.

Well, guess what. It's extremely likely that your girl is sleeping around. And there isn't a thing you can do about it. No investigator in the world can figure it out IF she wants to keep it a secret. See my article on That Damn Farang for more on the secret cheating of Thai females.

Stickman has been extolling the virtues of a restaurant called Sin on Sukhumvit Soi 4. Is the Sin restaurant and pool hall what the Stick promised it would be? (for the benefit of his readers of course). A reader who won the "Where's that picture" contest a few weeks back had this account posted on the TeakDoor.com forum. Click here for the article.

Not exactly the good deal the customer had expected? Interesting. Certainly if Stickman had reported on this business in a normal way he would have noted the higher than expected food prices BUT Stick won't talk about that because Stick takes money from these people SO YOU the consumer get ripped off -- not Stick. Lying for personal revenue at another person's expense is almost like stealing from people. Shame on you Stick. "Whack"

A reader sent Stickman this email about my site. He writes Stickman and tells him specially about this site:

The reader knew immediately that Stick was lying outright. Oh Mr. Stick. This site is coming right at you. You can run but you can not hide. Like I said to another reader here, Stick is free to continue miss-leading customers if he just plays dumb about The Galt. He does not have to answer the accusations against him until he confesses to have read them. Silly that he would not be a man a just defend himself. He has to lie to side step any normal responsibilities. Let's give him a whack for this - shall we? "Whack"

We had a another decent week. Nothing to write home to Mom about but the numbers seem to be holding. I believe that offering solid practical, truthful, unbiased information will win readership. You won't know for at least a year if I'm being straight with you. Understanding an Asian country does take some time.

It's been another busy week for me. We just had a new plastic injection mold completed. We are going to production with it.

The first company that I hired to make my first mold 2 years ago did a terrible job. I found the first company because they bought a franchise name from a reputable US company. However, in this case, they did not have the expertise to do the work. They tried their best but screwed up. That project took 6 months and in the end I barely had a workable mold. They even ask me to pay extra because they spend extra money to fix the. That is typical Thai thinking but the Galt wasn't having it.

I received a new referral for another mold / injection company. The new company made this mold that you see here. They did it on time in 6 weeks and the quality is top notch. In this case, the referral system worked for me.

I can't tell you yet exactly what the Galt does yet, but I will say, there is a Las Vegas company who is going to lose business to me because I have this new mold in production. How could they beat me here in Thailand? I have ultra low expenses and the Internet is a direct sales tool to contact customers all over the globe.

I firmly believe Thailand has some great opportunities for business. I'm trying to get caught up around the office here so I have more time to work on the business information section of in my web site.

Thanks for stopping by. Keep thinking about what you want to do down the line. Thailand might be an opportunity for you. You might retire here or certainly vacation here. If you haven't been here yet, you should give a visit some serious thought. But don't believe me just because I say so. Most of what you read here at this site can be seen on any basic vacation.