Sharik

I need help and reassurance!

I applied for my passport at the beginning of March. Payment was taken from my account March 29th. I received an email this past Monday saying my pictures were wrong - apparently I smiled, raised eyebrows or something like that. Anyway I got new pics and sent them out overnight mail - delivered Tuesday. I had to use a reference number on envelope.

Anyway wondering if anyone has any experience as to how long passport will take. I leave on May 14th and thought it would be back in plenty of time. The 'helpline' is a joke - on hold for more mins than you talk to them - and charged an arm and leg only to be told they can't tell you anything or tell you who to contact.

Is there someone else I can try calling or emailing? I didn't have this much bother the last time I renewed.

Thanks
Sharon

Sue

Did you send it to Washington? If so it shouldn't be long now. I had forgotten to get my son to sign the form (he's 15 now and last time he was 10 and didn't have to sign) so they asked me to print-off the signature page, get him to sign it then gave me a reference number to include on the page and on the envelope. I did that and we got his new passport 8 days later (which was last week)

Hope that helps

Sue

sicce

I am in exactly the same position, I mailed my kids passport on March 29th, payment taken on April 10th, I am still waiting, My kids leave for UK on May 8th.

Sharon let me know when you get your passports back, maybe I can establish some sort of a timeline.

I agree the passport office phoneline is a Joke and a serious waste of money.

Regards
Jay

Sharik

It arrived this morning! I am soooo relieved.

I resent the pictures last Monday to arrive on Tuesday so it took an additional 8 days.

Now to look forward to my trip....

Thanks!
Sharon

sicce

Just received my passports back - it took exactly 4weeks to the day.

Thanks
Jay

aliandchris

We sent ours off on 3/31. UPS said it was delivered on 4/2. They received the payment on 4/15. Based on when the last person's payment was received we expected the passport on 5/5 and we still haven't received it. This sucks.

Jerseygirl

Bad news I'm afraid...

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=607590

aliandchris

We already knew it was an ongoing problem. We were assuming it would have been a similar time frame to Sicce's. Unfortunately not, I am guessing sometime in between mine and hers the problem occurred. This really sucks, my wife is upset.

TonyD

The democratic (am I being old fashioned & naive?) way to resolve these passport delay problems is to get through to someone who cares at a Consulate or Embassy. Wailing to Abtran is unlikely to be effective because who knows what their obligations to us mere citizens are?Someone in the Embassy in Washington has to be informed about this and convinced to add the resources to remove the back-log or at least change the web site information to warn us of the 8 week delays I discovered today.
Being a "wingeing Pom" is unlikely to help us.Anyone know a phone number at the Embassy so we can actually inform someone who cares? Yes. I am naive enough to hope there are several such people there!