Passport costs

vikingaero

pimento wrote: »

I believe the Canadians are the same.

Mrs V. has a Canadian passport and she has to find a specialist photography studio that will take passport pictures to the Canadian standards. They don't accept the Photo-Me pictures for £4/£5. The local studio near us that has closed down cost £15 for a set of 4 Canadian standard pictures. Now she has to travel to London for a £20 set.

Nimeth

vikingaero wrote: »

Mrs V. has a Canadian passport and she has to find a specialist photography studio that will take passport pictures to the Canadian standards. They don't accept the Photo-Me pictures for £4/£5. The local studio near us that has closed down cost £15 for a set of 4 Canadian standard pictures. Now she has to travel to London for a £20 set.

American passports are similar to Canadian ones in that they don't accept the Photo-Me prints due to being an odd size. Fortunately I have a local photography shop that will do these for me at £5, but I only get two pictures.

xangeleyes

Well, can you offer to pay for this? As a birthday treat or something? I would if it was my parents, esspecially as it was one of the things they looked forward to each year.
Of course this depends on what YOU can afford too. What about siblings? Chip in to help?

We had to buy all of ours seperatly It was for 2 adults and 2 children. The childrens one is £50 odd and we've still got to buy our sons one.
I wish they renewal was cheaper AND I wish they did deals like buying a family one then get a discount AND if you've over 70yrs get a discount.

It's not like people over 70 (most people over 70) will be able to afford LOADS of holidays on their pension and be using the passports constantly, unlike a 30 year old who might use it more often.

Why don't they get a temp passport? How much are they? Someone mentioned about one of them to me, you get them from the post office but you still need a witness signature.

RadoJo

I suppose the theory is that anyone who can afford to leave the country should be responsible for bearing the cost of the security involved in securing their safe passage between countries. Unfortunately there is always someone who can only afford one or the other and has to save up for longer, but I don't think that necessarily means that the system is inherently unfair or that the prices are in any way artificially inflated.

As someone has suggested above, could your parents not holiday in the UK this year? Or if you head to the travel board, someone might be able to suggest a way of finding their holiday cheaper to allow them to afford both.

Jeff_Bridges_hair

A lot less effort goes into renewing a drivers licence though so your arguement there is flawed a little. .All new EU passports come with a chip in them and the paper they use does not come cheap either. For less then £8 per year i think its great..

peachyprice

Rachel_murray wrote: »

Why don't they get a temp passport? How much are they? Someone mentioned about one of them to me, you get them from the post office but you still need a witness signature.

You haven't been able to get those for donkeys years.

olias

Hmmm, I'm quite surprised by most of the replies I have had. For a money saving forum, most people seem to be going out of their way to agree with and justify the cost. I can't imagine, nor have I seen, people doing the same with any other similar expense.

I do take exception to one comment by fluffnutter, that a passport is not a right. I believe that freedom of movement in a democracy is absolutely a right, certainly to and from other free countries. Are you saying that a citizen of a free and democratic country should not have the right to pass over his own countries borders but be imprisoned within them?

Just as an aside, I recall it was only a few years ago that we were all told that being part of the wonderful EU, we would not require passports to move between member states. That never happened, except in the Schengen area as part of the Schengen agreement, which for some reason we were never part of.

Olias

maninthestreet

RadoJo wrote: »

I suppose the theory is that anyone who can afford to leave the country should be responsible for bearing the cost of the security involved in securing their safe passage between countries.

Eh? What do we pay our taxes for?

lazer

I agree - they are overpriced, effectively they are charging £75 for a 30 page notebook with your photo on it - I doubt it costs that much to make them.
And security should be paid for via taxes - the increased passport cost is just another Stealth tax.

OP - Have your parents considered Jersey or Guernesy? - you still get the sunshine and don't need a passport!

wacko911

Tesco should do, tesco value passports - open the market up to private companies instead of this public sector bloatness