Ngaizone

Hi, I am looking for anyone else that has applied for a British passport throught the Wellington office. I put an application in for our family of five at the post office on 19th February and it was received at Wellington the next day. On my receipt it said it would take two to three weeks for the application to be processed. It was checked at the post office which cost another nearly $50 on top of the $293.00 for each passport.
After six weeks I thought I should chase it and found that there was a premium call line at $4.50 a minute to ring. I listened to the pre recorded message and then got through to a clerk. He told me it would take six weeks from when the process started which was 2.3.10. If I had not received it in a week to call again. The call cost $23 plus gst. I am still waiting for the passports. I can not afford to apply for emergency passports for the five of us and my 89 year old father has had a heart attack and a nasty fall involving a head injury. I have flights booked in nine days. I do not know what to do now, anyone got any ideas? We have dual citizenship and I wish now we had applied for Kiwi passports which take ten days.

Jerseygirl

Hello and welcome to BE.

This forum is purely to welcome new members to our forums, therefore I will move your post to our NZ forum. Hopefully our members who live in NZ will be able to help you.

Stoof

i think you'd better ring them again… the premium rate number sucks doesn't it? the message telling you it's going to cost you $4.50 per minute takes a minutes itself!

I rang them this morning as it's been just over four weeks for ours - it was received by them on 18th March, and they started to process it on 1st April… they confirmed it's been processed now and approved and is just waiting to be printed and quality controlled… this apparently takes a day, and they're not sure when it will be done, but she was confident we'd have it back before we fly in 4 weeks….

anyway, what i'm trying to say i think is, if it was me, i'd be ringing them first thing in the morning (did you get a reference from your last call? They gave me one this morning to give them if i had to ring again - didn't fill me with confidence i have to say!) and explaining why you really REALLY need the passports… they must have processed them by now!

i think it stinks that they say they will provide a service (ie your passport processed within 4 weeks) then charge you $4.50 per minute to chase it up when they've not done what they've said they will - AND you've gone through the hoops they provided for you!

don't suppose that really helps you very much, but GOOD LUCK!

Justcol

Thats a bit odd,we renewed our sons via wellington last year.
We sent it off in november and added a note in the additional info section
saying we had flights booked for the 6th Dec.
We got his new one in the post 3 weeks later.

cleverchap

Contact the Wellington High Commission direct and explain your situation.

What to do in an emergency is on this page:

http://ukinnewzealand.fco.gov.uk/en/...y-travel-page/

And their phone number is on this page (this is in New Zealand and does not cost $4.50.min):

http://ukinnewzealand.fco.gov.uk/en/...on/contact-us/


For anyone else wondering how the new passport application system works it is all explained here:
http://ukinnewzealand.fco.gov.uk/en/...pplying-in-nz/


I hope this information helps

Ngaizone

Thanks for your thoughts and replies

I rang again on the premium number as the other numbers supplied won't accept calls concerning passports.
I got the same guy and the same response. If it doesn't arrive soon give us another call. The passport is still in processing and he couldn't see why it had taken so long.
I wrote a letter and faxed it to the number given on the website for passport faxes.

I am very distressed that we have to go through all this angst before our trip when the website states the process takes 3-4 weeks. There is no way we could afford five emergency passports.

When I hear any more I will let you all know!!

cleverchap

As i said in my previous reply, give the High Commission a call direct as, from what you have said, this is no longer just a case of passports. If you have a genuine reason to travel immediately they will talk to you.

JAJ

If you are New Zealand citizens, then why don't you get NZ passports as your first choice?

simonsi

Well it says they aim for 3-4 weeks but to apply at least 6 weeks before travel and also warns of courier delays

Stoof

well OP, I know this doesn't help you - but just thought I'd let you know we got ours back by courier today - it would be 5 weeks tomorrow since we left the application at the post-office.