I had to renew my Spanish passport in the Spanish Consulate in London about 5 years ago. It will last for 10 years as I'm "mature" now. It was more expensive than in Spain (keeping in mind that prices will normally to go up when we are talking about something that only needs to be renewed every 5-10 years). Also, it's more expensive to get a new one if the current one is lost, than if we are simply talking about renewing an out of date passport, just as it happens in Spain.

I was about to travel to America, so I needed my passport; for the UE we have our DNI. I understand that issuing a passport abroad is more expensive than doing so in your own country, so no problem with that, but I discovered that the system is both silly and illegal!

I lost it, but they wouldn't give me a new one unless I gave them a good reason why I couldn't present the old one. Silly thing: I couldn't say that it was misplaced; they would only give me a new one if I showed them a police report saying that it was stolen.

So, I had to go and report to the Police that somebody stole my bag with my passport among other things. Ridiculous, I actually had to lie to the policewoman for 15 minutes, inventing a silly story to explain why I couldn't give any details of who had taken my bag with only a tenner and few personal things as well as my passport, and of course without any force against me so it wasn't a serious crime, the bag simply disappeared. The look she gave me! Many Spanish and Italian people went there to give false reports to get a paper for their close Embassies, as that is the only way they can get a new passport if they have lost it.

Stupid system, and I felt terrible as I actually committed a crime, I am a Lawyer!!! They issued the new one in about a week, same time as in Spain.

Do you have this kind of problem in your Embassy/Consulate if you simply lose your passport?

About never changing our DNI, passport, SS numbers and surnames, etc... I am very happy with that, many thanks. I will never understand why a woman is first her father's and then her husband's, never herself. We pass our surnames (father's and mother's) to our kids, so we never lose our identity and can recall our ascendants. We only accept name changes when there is a good reason, for instance that we get a silly combination of names and surnames that offends people or can traumatize the poor guy carrying them.

I remember having to investigate the ID of a woman who married 4 times, changing her surname is each marriage and then deciding to change her name and surname again simply because she wanted to. Nightmare, it took me ages!!!

friend of mine works at a Passport Office, more than 50% are of Asian origin, on certain holy days the office is almost empty.
one was caught dropping passports in bulk out of the toilet window. They still don't know how many actually disappeared, and although she never came back there was no report in the local press about any criminal action either.