Passport Renewal - April 2025

Ayr_Rage

Applied online 3/4, one week before the price rise and the website said they were busy with an estimated 3 week turnaround.

Old passport sent First Class mail the same day.

Updates by text and email at every stage.

New passport received 11/4.

Old passport received 16/4.

Well done Passport Office !

vacheron

I've had nothing but good experiences the last few times we have used the passport office. 

I had to travel urgently 2 years ago so needed a renewal using their 1 week service. The online process and subsequent office visit were both smooth and trouble free. 

My wife and son had their renewals at the end of last year. My son's went through in under a week, despite 3-4 weeks being stated at the time of applying. My wifes application however was caught up with a tricky issue due to rule changes in relation to surnames on other foreign passports, which could have been a disaster in the "computer says no" age we often encountered, however instead we were called back by a very competent and polite senior assessor who understood all the nuances of the issue and resolved it quickly and effectively.

Their tracking system for following your documents through their system is also fast, easy to use and effective.

Credit where credit is due indeed! 

elle_may

The only issue of using online renewal was the photo my daugher used on her phone, even when we used the same phone and background  on sons immediately before. One said i was not looking at the camera.  so had to go and use a booth one. In all it took only ten days to go through online and informed all the way through.

Ayr_Rage

elle_may said:

The only issue of using online renewal was the photo my daugher used on her phone, even when we used the same phone and background  on sons immediately before. One said i was not looking at the camera.  so had to go and use a booth one. In all it took only ten days to go through online and informed all the way through.

I had 6 photos on my phone, some taken by a friend and a couple of selfies.

For those that haven't done it, you can upload each of them in turn and the system will grade them in real time.

You can only do one at a time, just submit the one that gets the best result from the checker.

My best was a selfie that got graded well into the "good" level, the head and shoulders shots taken by a friend only got "fair"