gzlex

Hi guys,

It looks like I may have caused myself a whole lot of trouble.

My passport has officially run out of free pages, and the UK, unlike other countries, does not supply extra pages.

No big deal, time to get a a passport.

However, since 2013 all passport renewals are sent back to England, rather than inside China or to HK. On the official gov website, the time estimate is 'at least 6 weeks'. Although, reading around the internet reveals horror stories of up to 4 months!

My employer is due to apply for new visas at the end of May, and obviously I have no space for it and if I were to send my passport back, I wouldn't get my new one in time.

My options, as far as I see them are,

A)send passport back ASAP (I have an appointment, Monday) and hope it gets sent back to me with 6 weeks.

B) Fly back to England and get the express or premium service. Obviously choice B, comes with it's own set of negatives...

or C) Use a courier service, like UPS, DHL, FedEx and get family to apply on my behalf. Although I'm pretty sure the legality of this is questionable...

Quite frankly it's ridiculous that this is the system now, although I really should have been more proactive and started the process after Chinese New Year.
Talking with the consulate in China, is next to useless, as they refuse to even discuss anything passport related, and instead tell me to call the office in England!

Has anyone here had the experience of renewing their passport since the changes took place? Or any suggestions, that may expedite the process, with the least amount of stress!
Thank you in advance

bakedbean

Hi and welcome to the forum

Yes, you have to think ahead with passports and how many free pages you have left, particularly when you get visas that take up a whole page.

There was a topic going on (I think) in the Moving Back to the UK section of the forum about how long it was taking. As I understand it, you'd probably get it back within 6 weeks (unless things have changed) so I would plump for Option A and make it a priority.

Best of luck.

marooned5

We did ours a month ago and they came back in 2 weeks!

meowski

Hi, I was wondering if you could let me know what you have decided to do. My friend is going through the same thing, except his UK passport and Chinese work visa both expire in less than 3 weeks! he wanted to renew his passport in Beijing but it could take more than 6 weeks and he would be here in China with an expired visa, or he could go back to the UK and get the one day rush, but it's costly and he's not sure whether he can re-enter China with just a couple of days left on his work visa. Please help, any advice is greatly appreciated!

gzlex

Hi there,
In the end I decided I couldn't risk sending the passport through the official channels.
So, I'll be flying back to London this Monday and I'll renew and person.
Yes it's super costly, but I need to have a passport, so I just bit the bullet.
My visa is valid until the end of July, I'm uncertain if your friend will have trouble.
Wish them luck.

kevray

I applied for mine (also ran out of pages) in Shanghai, it took exactly 6 weeks, and I had to return to SH to pick it up, which was a real nuisance, as its a 12 hour journey for me. Plus reschedulling work etc, the renewal system was fine before they changed it, my colleague did his via Hong Kong and it was sent back by post within 4 weeks. Why they had to change an efficient system for this crappy one only HIM knows.
Visa/residency takes two weeks and MUST be started prior to the expiration plus the admin time, my employer cocked up two years ago and left it late to renew by one week, had the devils own job getting it done and it cost twice as much to do a rush job.

It may be a chinese custom to leave everything to the last minute, but that doesn't make it right!!