Praise for the Passport Office

TELLIT01

The Passport Office gets a lot of stick, and is likely to get much more if the strike goes ahead, however they aren't always bad. 

I applied on line for a passport and Royal Mail took 4 days to get my old passport to the Passport Office despite PO advising used of 'Guaranteed 24 hour Delivery'! 

The timeline once the Passport Office received my old passport was as follows -  Friday, old passport received - Saturday, application approved - Saturday, passport printed - Tuesday, notification that passport had been despatched - Wednesday lunchtime, passport received.  That's 6 days in total from the time they received all the information they needed to me receiving my new passport.  Pretty good in my opinion.

TonyMMM

Renewals don't seem to be a problem, ours also came back very quickly indeed recently.

 It is the new applications where the hold ups are.

Marvel1

My old was signed for 27th March,  my application status says still waiting for the old one.

tightauldgit

Put my daughter's passport in last week for renewal. Got confirmation of having received old passport. Nothing since. Didn't expect anything to be done quickly so I'm interested to see how long it takes

TELLIT01

Although both old passports were in the same envelope, my application went through and passport printed within 48 hours of them being received at the Passport Office and my wife's took several days longer.  As they have now started their strike it's inevitable things are going to take longer.

Marvel1

tightauldgit said:

Put my daughter's passport in last week for renewal. Got confirmation of having received old passport. Nothing since. Didn't expect anything to be done quickly so I'm interested to see how long it takes

Curious do you know what date they received it if you sent it tracked?

HampshireH

Also had a great experience this year when applying for a new passport for our little one. 

Came back within 4/5 weeks. I have however now been waiting over 8 for her birth certificate to be returned which I paid extra for and am yet to receive it

TELLIT01

Marvel1 said:

tightauldgit said:

Put my daughter's passport in last week for renewal. Got confirmation of having received old passport. Nothing since. Didn't expect anything to be done quickly so I'm interested to see how long it takes

Curious do you know what date they received it if you sent it tracked?

Just an example of timings.

24/3 Confirmation old passports received

25/3 Approval of 1 application

25/3 Passport printed

26/3 Passport despatched

28/3 Approval of 2nd application

30/3 Passport printed

31/3 Passport despatched

I do need to clarify information in a previous topic.  I said there it was 10 days between 1st and 2nd passport approval, when it was actually 3.  I blame my age!

tightauldgit

So got confirmation that daughter's renewal was approved on Easter Monday (weirdly) and then printing confirmed yesterday.

So old passport was sent March 28th, confirmed received on April 3rd, approved April 10 and printed April 11. 

Can't really complain about that turnaround time. 

Just waiting for DHL to confirm dispatch now. 

TELLIT01

We have also had both of our old passports back.  2nd arrived today.

tightauldgit

New passport arrived today - just over 2 weeks including Easter weekend. Not bad