21 Oct Passport or deposit – Scooter Hire Koh Phangan

Deposit options for a scooter?

I’ve got to leave my passport with the person I rent to scooter with! Is that safe?

Yes, it’s safe as long as you look after the scooter and return it. What happens is that people do runners and leave the scooters somewhere in the jungle. It became a common occurrence, so scooter shops had to take some precaution to protect their scooters. Now 99% of renters are good, but it only takes the 1% to try and steal a scooter or keep it longer and not return it, getting away with the rental fee.

You can leave a deposit instead. Many people hate leaving money instead of a passport. In actual fact, they just don’t like leaving anything for the scooter shop. You will be taking one of their scooters which is worth approx. 50,000 Baht or more. Therefore they want something from you so that at the end of your renting period you will return the scooter.

Why do they take a passport? So your comeback and return the bike!

As many scams there are from the renter shops, there are just as many from the renter!

Scooters get dumped in the forest, they get sold, they get parts were taken off them, and most common is they end up getting damaged from bad use or an accident.

So the shop needs to take a precaution and get something from you to guarantee you will return the scooter in the same condition you took it in.

You can ask the scooter shop to leave a deposit instead, something in the region of 5000 Baht is normally sufficient.

Would you give any stranger your own scooter and say see you next week! You going to worry about your own scooter, so you going to want something as a guarantee.

Your passport is safe

By law in Thailand, you are meant to carry your passport on you at all times! So a deposit is better!

Leaving your passport at a scooter shop while you rent a scooter is perfectly safe. You are able to retrieve your passport anytime for any emergency situation. You must know that no matter what the circumstances your passport cannot be withheld from you. Therefore if any problems from a scooter shop not giving you back your passport and using as leverage, you can do one simple and easy thing, which is phone the tourist police.

The tourist police will come and the first thing they do is get your passport from the shop and give it back to you. Easy! All motorbikes shops in Thailand cannot legally withhold your passport from you.

There would have been a reason the scooter shop is not giving back your passport and that will become a discussion with you, the shop and the tourist police after you have your passport back.

Naturally, if a shop is not giving back your passport or even your deposit you then you the renter has done something wrong, like damage to the scooter or not paid the full rental fee. The tourist police may get involved and assist both parties in solving the problem if you get the tourist police involved. Photos of the scooter come in very handy if this becomes an issue.

Scooter Hire tips

When you first rent a scooter, get your smartphone out and take photos of the scooter in many angles as possible, it takes 2 minutes. This gives you evidence of the bike condition before you take it. We can only advise you to treat the scooter as if it was your own and then you will have no problems.

All the scams we hear and read about on the internet have a lot of common sense to them. Somewhere the deal between two parties went bad. So for us to say there are no shops who try to scam more money out of you is wrong, they do exist. But nowadays they get punished by the internet reviews and just general word of mouth especially on social media, which in turn is bad for their business.

Tik Scooter Shop

Here at TIk Tik Scooter Shop we are extremely fair and steer away from bad publicity and unfairness. You work with us and we work with you on whatever the problem. We work hard to keep our customers happy and always want to be 100% fair when a problem arises.

You fill out a form, a sort of contract when you rent a scooter, entering all your details and on the back of this form is a part list for the scooter, this part list shows all the prices of the parts of the scooter. You sign this agreement. So by law, it’s down to you to look after the scooter.

Many people will say the part prices are overpriced, if that’s the case then you should not be renting a scooter. Because most people who can ride a scooter, know how to ride the roads and look after the scooter. This is full moon party Island and many youngsters come here and ride scooters very fast and stupid, which leads to accidents. Ride safe see how to ride a scooter