Rant: New Passport with wrong birthdate!

sal-ad_daze

My son has just received his new passport - and the birth date's wrong!
It's nowhere near the proper date, apart from the year but because they've got it wrong we have to take a day off to go to our local passport office, fill in another passport form (which means bothering the friend who signs the photo's yet again), take the birth certificate AND a letter stating the problem.
If we're lucky they'll admit to their mistake and rectify it free of charge (except of course for the lost day and transport costs). If not it's another passport fee (and this time the full hit for personalised service!).
I just want to go :mad: :mad: :mad:

lackingwedge

It is their mistake and they should not charge you.
Even if the form was filled out wrong, they should have checked it and rejected your application.
Goes to show that you don't even need to falsify documents or go through elaborate ruses to get a British passport nowadays.

squibbs25

I had a similar problem with my sons passport, One of his middle names is spelt wrong, but i never noticed it, my son did.............. even though he's had it 2.5 years and has travelled on it several times!
I will get round to getting it changed, but not sure when. (hehe.......)

sal-ad_daze

Just had a rant to a friend who shrugged and said why bother changing it, they never check them properly (she's been married 3 years and still uses her passport in maiden name) and the birthdate isn't no tickets anyway unlike names.
I'm tempted because it's a loss of money we cand do without but am concerned because son is 18 and will be using passport as a form of identification - if some eagle eye notices dates on a form don't match dates on a passport it may cause problems.
What do you think, leave it and trust to luck or go and change it with all the rigmarole involved?

bryanb

If son is 18 why take time off, surely he's old enough to deal with this alone?

sal-ad_daze

Yes he can deal with it himself, in fact they'd probably refuse to deal with us but he's still in the 6th form and the school won't give him permission to leave early (and that affects his EMA) so we've got to pick him up as soon as his lessons (thankfully he only has two on this day as they do sport in the afternoon)finish and race him to Liverpol so he has time to go through the process on the same day.
He's off on a school trip and there's a meeting on Monday where they have to take copies of passports etc!

M4RKM

errors do happen, my name was spelt wrong, so all i did was to make one quick phone call, and then just send off my passport, and within a week i got a new one..

did you already speak to them to say that they needed you to go to a passport office?

sal-ad_daze

i rang the helpline number on the website and the lady on the end of the phone read parrott fashion what we needed to do!
I think I'm going to try to find the number for Liverpool tomorrow and speak to them direct, I can't believe we have to go through the whole form filling rigmarole again!

Voyager2002

What's the rush?

I can't imagine that this passport error would be a problem on the school trip. So just let him go, and make sure he has a good time.

Once he is back there will be plenty of time to return the passport and get it amended by post. I agree that in the long term he might have problems using a passport with an incorrect date of birth.

sal-ad_daze

We're going away for Easter as a family less than a week after he gets back and I just don't want anything to go wrong because of a mistake that I could have got rectified.
I'm a worrier I'm afraid!

Voyager2002

sal-ad_daze wrote: »

We're going away for Easter as a family less than a week after he gets back and I just don't want anything to go wrong because of a mistake that I could have got rectified.
I'm a worrier I'm afraid!

Don't worry, nothing will go wrong. Assuming, that is, that his passport has the year of his birth more or less right. (If it says that he was born during World War I and someone notices, he might be asked the secret of eternal youth.)

No, the only problems that might arise would be with things like opening bank accounts, where you whole credit record is indexed by date of birth. But I am sure that you can safely leave it until he needs to use his passport to obtain a financial product.