I'm trying to renew my passport from Canada. The Gov.uk website all goes swimmingly until it asks for a postcode. It won't recognise anything as a valid postcode. My Canadian postcodes don't work, and neither does my parents in the UK. It just gets stuck in a loop asking for a valid postcode.

Has anyone encountered this? Is there a correct format that I haven't tried (I've tried everything I can think of).

With Skype gone it's now complicated to call their hotline and end up on a a $200 call waiting to speak to someone, so trying here first to see if there's a solution.

Cheers in advance.

Can’t advise at present but my son is just about to do his this week so will see how that goes and let you know.

My wife has just applied for renewal of her UK passport (from the USA) and had no problem with entering the zip code. Check that you have correctly entered the country you are applying from. I think maybe this sets the format for the postcode entry.

BTW, you do not need to spend $200 on a phone call! To call the UK (or pretty much anywhere overseas) I use Mytello or Talk360 apps, these are very cheap and work for me, just setup an account, add $10 credit and away you go for many hours of calls. The recipient of your call may see a call ID coming from Germany but they should answer.

Are you applying on the correct website?

https://www.passport.service.gov.uk/filter/overseas

I had no problem with a Japanese address, fairly easy and received new passport in 3 weeks.

We recently had this problem when my daughter attempted to apply for her daughter's first passport.
In her case, the system did not recognise a canadian zip code but when entered another page appeared where she was able to enter her correspondance address.
It needed this in order to return all documents submitted.