Beware China Visas in Thailand

I am a UK teacher in China with all the necessary and legal documentation. Today I applied for my Thai wife to accompany me and went to the Chinese Embassy here in Bangkok with all the paperwork and was refused. Original documents required which was impossible. A flight ticket to be booked in advance which we hadn't and so fortunately saved ourselvers a lot of money, letters of invitation now required and they didn't even look at the marriage certificate . . . . . downstairs crooks were selling 'copy' flight tickets with the full knowledge of the counter staff upstairs who were aware of what was going on and then refusing them . . . . . what on earth is going on in this once respected Embassy? Is it now simply a money making machine? Applicants were being turned away in droves . . . . Have the Embassy staff been told to keep foreigners out of China now?