UK Government helpline is 69p per min+VAT for PASSPORT assistance

el_gringo_3

Weirdlittleman wrote: »

Why shouldnt people pay for advice they need. Far better than expecting everyone else to pay for services they will never need.

If you can afford to travel/live in Austria you can afford 69p a minute when you need a replacement passport.

Try telling that to the many snow addicts that spend all summer working and saving to go and spend their winters working and ski-ing in the Austrian alps, where the cost of living is fairly high.

RadoJo

My guess would be that part of the reason for charging is to ensure that people try to find out the information by any other means they can before calling up, thus cutting down on the cost of manning phone lines to provide information that is easily available elsewhere, which I think is perfectly reasonable.

dzug1

jno wrote: »

I understand this is a consulatncy service, but it is a rip off.

.

It's not a rip off. It is (an estimate of) the actual cost of providing the service.

The last government (or maybe the one before that - it was some time back) made a policy decision that certain types of government service would be paid for by the user rather than out of general taxation

You may disagree with that policy, but it's a fact

I doubt if the new government will change it - they may well extend it as a way of maintaining services without increasing taxation

jimbms

So let's see if I understand this right, someone goes to another country and either does not ensure thier passport is correct, up to date and has all necessary details in it or the due to negligence lose the passport. they then have to ring a number to correct the mistake they made and do not want to pay themselves but have others who use/take care of thier passports pay for these mistakes via taxes. mmm good system.

glider3560

jimbms wrote: »

So let's see if I understand this right, someone goes to another country and either does not ensure thier passport is correct, up to date and has all necessary details in it or the due to negligence lose the passport. they then have to ring a number to correct the mistake they made and do not want to pay themselves but have others who use/take care of thier passports pay for these mistakes via taxes. mmm good system.

Not necessarily. Take this as an example:

• You live in Kuwait (just an example), for whatever reason (e.g. for work)
• Your passport expires whilst you are there (perhaps you've lived there for more than 10 years?)
• You have to apply to the British Passport Processing office in Düsseldorf, Germany - you cannot apply at the local embassy anymore
• You send the form and all the documents by courier, but you don't get any response
• You want to find out if your application has been received, so you have to phone up and pay 69p + VAT per minute, on top of the cost of an international call

Seems like an excessive charge to me. Perhaps the cost of applying for a passport abroad should be increased slightly to cover the cost of a call centre.

jimbms

Same applies, you live in another nation then why should the british taxpayer pick up the bill?

dzug1

glider3560 wrote: »

. Perhaps the cost of applying for a passport abroad should be increased slightly to cover the cost of a call centre.

It already is increased to cover additional costs of issuing passports overseas.

Why should it be increased further for everyone rather than the few who need it? And why should a rich expat in Kuwait (who is not paying tax anyway, to make a sweeping assumption) sponge off a subsidy from the British taxpayer/other possibly less rich expatriates?

There are arguments both ways of course, but the pay your way one is dominant at the momentr

jimbms

dzug1 wrote: »

It already is increased to cover additional costs of issuing passports overseas.

Why should it be increased further for everyone rather than the few who need it? And why should a rich expat in Kuwait (who is not paying tax anyway, to make a sweeping assumption) sponge off a subsidy from the British taxpayer/other possibly less rich expatriates?

There are arguments both ways of course, but the pay your way one is dominant at the momentr

Not just rich expats as you say, even us Manx nationals are quite rightly (and proudly) classed as non UK when it comes to this.